Anthology Complex II by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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Years before, I would decide to settle out to sea to spend my remaining years in isolation, but when my boat would fail me, I would have no choice but to return here, and so now here I am. Returned to a place I so despised. To a government I profusely and rigorously rejected.
Turning back around away from the road, I would see the sign again, but would not respect it as I was in need of food and water.
I walk pass the sign and not too long after a sort of temple appears before me. I enter the temple in hopes of finding another living person, and that's when I begin to have an out of body experience.
It is as if my soul had left my body and rose up like a gas, and when I look down, I see many rooms of many types.
In a westward room I would see seven blazing lamps that could tear your eyeballs into seven different parts if you stared at it long enough, and in an eastward room I would see a sea of glass that left an empty feeling inside of you. The most inspiring sight, however, was the revelation of a new Heaven and a new Earth.
Before I can study the new Heaven and the new Earth, I am forced back into my body as an old man in a robe attempts to wake me up. “You are not a citizen of the state,” he asks. I am not sure if I was suppose to reply, but I tell him that I had been away for a long time.
He begins to stare at me, and this is when I realize that he has two glass eyeballs.
When he realizes what I've realized, he says to me, “The world has changed since you left 102 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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it, and you have chosen to return when it is nearing the end of its course.”
“What do you mean?,” I ask. He stares at me, and then tells me to follow him. As we are walking through the temple, he asks me, “Of who were you born?,” but as I think and I think I cannot find an answer. “It is understandable that you do not know who you are,”
he pauses, “I am John the Citizen, though I am born of a civilian.”
At the end of the revealing of his identity, we finally reach his destination. Before us there is a staircase that leads down into a darkness I had never seen before, not even in my time of isolation.
We begin to walk down the stairs and at the same time he tells me more about the new world. He tells me about how dangerous all living things had become, he and I both included. Then he goes on about the “Civilians,” about who and what they were. Why they did the things they did, but more importantly, their plans to bring civilization to the entire world by eliminating those who would not “evolve.”
This is when I begin to feel a sort of strangeness throughout my body. “Do you feel that?,” the old man asks me. “Yes, what is it?,” I reply.
“The ancient scrolls that I have studied define it as either the repelling or the expanding of matter at a sub-atomic level,” he tells me. “It happens back up there as well, however it becomes more and more magnified as we walk down these stairs.”
After a moment the old man continues to walk further down into the darkness, and for some reason I follow. “This force that you feel now, it is what is causing what is happening in the outside world, and it will also most likely be the death of it,” he says, “I believe it has been going on since the very beginning, and it is only now that we are beginning to feel its effect, and as it gains more and more momentum, it will eventually become unstoppable.”
The further down we walk, the more I feel my body ripping out of itself, but I have no desire to stop. It makes sense to me that a force like this would bring about the destruction of the modern world. My entire life I'd see people divide but not conquer.
Even in the “tight-knit” communities I would see a repelling of some form. The divorce of the physical world.
So now, John and I, we decide that we've felt enough, so we turn around and walk back up the stairs. He offers me food, but not shelter as I am not a citizen of the state.
When I get back outside, I find that it is night, and remember that my boat is still deep underwater.
When I wake up, I see that I had fallen asleep in my basement and I feel heavy air all around me, and after breathing my first conscious breath, I realize that I am getting sick.
The sore throat. It always starts with that damn sore throat.
I get up and go to the kitchen to have a glass of water, but sometimes it almost seems 103 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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like drinking anything makes it worse. Makes it more realized. Yet you do it anyway.
I leave my parents' home and go to my own, and by the time I get there I feel even more sick. I have another glass of water, but it doesn't really help. As I am leaving my kitchen I notice a bag on the floor, so I throw it in the garbage bin. When I try to leave my kitchen again, I notice something else.
On the floor there is a pattern that seems to be marked in by black ink. When I take a closer look, I realize that it is not a pattern but a set of words. I try to read them and at first fail to realize that the letters are backwards, but once this is realized, I finally understand.
I go back to the garbage bin and take out the bag that I had thrown away, and I read what is printed on the bag, and of course it matches what had been marked in on the kitchen floor. I am puzzled at first, at how this could have happened, but when I look at the receipt that I would find inside the bag, I would see that I previously purchased water and milk, and of course it was the sweating of the milk that soaked through both the bag and the ink, which had now been imprinted onto my kitchen floor. For a moment this all makes me forget about my coming illness.
When I am finally able to leave the kitchen I go to the bedroom in an attempt to get more sleep, but as the long and estranged seconds go by, I realize more and more that I will not be able to comfortably fall asleep with this sore throat, so instead I go and try to watch television.
As I search through the channels, I find myself watching a show about a place that is unfettered by the realm of reality. A zone, detached from all impossibility.
It turns out that the show is having a marathon, so I watch for a while until I get a visit from Lynne, who tells me that she had finally gotten her car back from the shop. She asks me if I wanted to do anything later in the day, but I tell her that I was developing a cold and wouldn't be up to it.
After she leaves, I go downstairs to check my mail but find that I have received none, so instead I go outside into the windy cold. Hot showers and the thin cold air, these things have always helped me in times of minor illness.
I walk around a bit and then look down at a patch of dirt, the place that used to house Lynne's zinnias. After a while of staring I find myself wondering how I had gotten here.
Not necessarily how I had gotten here to this patch of dirt from my apartment above, but how I had gotten to this point in my life.
In the opening of our dreams we always find ourselves in medias res, or, in the midst of things, never quite knowing how we got there or where we'd been, and in so many ways this is how I feel now as I compare the reality to the dream.
How can you be certain of your own birth? Of your own death? The only thing you're 104 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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ever around to fully and cognitively experience is life, but some people don't even get to have that, and of course this makes the question even more difficult to answer.
Sometimes I've wondered if our dreams are timeless. If, in raw format, they are thousands of still pictures, and our mind pastes them together to create film. Through this attachment, maybe we can development memory, and maybe this is what can help us answer the question. Maybe, maybe not.
There was actually a time when I was fascinated with time itself, fascinated by the possible values it may have carried. Fascinated by its illusion, its concept. I was not, however, fascinated by my own life or by my own tendencies. Tendencies that seem to enable and even encourage my obsessions.
Either way, by the time that time became so interesting to me, I had already begun to bounce ideas from the concept of time onto the theories I had about the dream world.
Zero was one of four numbers I believed to be of unique and significant value to the universe around us. The number zero maintained the fact of nonexistence, the idea of something with no value, the image of nothingness, and I truly believed that if you placed the number zero on a timeline, it could represent the present.
Back in the basement of obsession I remember seeing a sort of timeline-diagram.
Directly in the middle of the timeline was the number zero, and on either sides were more numbers; positive and negative integers that went up to fifty-four and down to negative forty-five. Just above the right side, which was the side that carried the positive integers from one to fifty-four, I saw the word “future,” and just above the left side, which carried the negative integers from negative one to negative forty-five, I saw the word “past,” and of course just above the number zero, I saw the word “present.”
Underneath the timeline I saw definitions and meanings, one of them being that the
“present” has no real value. That it doesn't take up or consume anything, not atleast until the “present” becomes the “past” and obtains a real value of negative one or less, and this value can now represent a time in our life, or even a memory that physically takes up space.
As I had written this down many years ago, I began to think that according to my findings, in terms of time, in order for anything to have a real value, it must be in the past or in the future, but how would the future obtain a real value if it hasn't occurred yet. We can't just think of the future, that's absurd.
Or maybe we can. Maybe we can think of the future of another us in another reality.
Maybe we can dream the future of another us in another reality. Maybe a younger us in another reality sometimes dreams of our future, in our reality, but to our present, their dream has a value of negative three hundred and twenty-eight, which means it is in our past. With time and value, we begin to jump around with perspective, but this may also 105 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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be why our dreams seem random at times.
Now that I'm thinking about this, looking back at what I had come up with, I'm beginning to realize that the entire time I had been writing this theory I was looking at it from a certain angle, that the “present” had to “exist” in order for the “past” and the
“future” to exist. In ways, this is true, but if you remove the zero from the timeline completely, you will be unable to decipher the past from the future because you now have nothing to relate each integer to.
Of course, even if you don't have a present state of mind that is capable of separating what is past from what is non-past, you can still do so by observing other properties other than memory. Imagine taking film roll and cutting up each frame so you have many whole and individual frames. Then you put the frames in a cardboard box and shake them up, then dump them on the floor, and you are now tasked with putting it back in order.
One technique that I have seen used in less complex frames, which is probably also the most obvious, is to observe the physical features that time leaves behind.
For example, if the film is about a sequence of events that leads to a man getting a small cut on his right arm, once you obtain the set of frames that show the man actually getting the cut, you can safely assume that all other frames that don't have the same cut are in the “past” section, and all other frames that do have the same cut are in the “future”
section. Well, that is, and I laugh as I say this, unless the film is long enough for the man to receive the same cut twice.
There is a gap in time and suddenly I'm aware that I'm back in my apartment somehow watching the news. An uncharacteristically ugly man, who I'm assuming is new, tells me about two parents who have accepted a son who likes to play with dolls.
The more I think about the story the more I realize that society has already determined our social roles before we have the chance to determine it ourselves.
If you live in a certain city, then that city's home team is to be your favorite team. If you are of a certain ethnicity, then you are suppose to like a certain type of music. That's not to say, however, that certain individuals do not defy their roles, like a bird chirping at dusk, unable to tell whether it is sunrise or sunset.
As the man switches over to a different story, my door begins to speak. I answer and find Marry to be the puppeteer. She says hello and hands me an envelope. Once again, she received my mail.
“I'm having some family over, did you want to stop by to say hi to them and Anthony?,” she asks me. I tell her that I have a cold and wouldn't want to get him sick, so instead I have her send my regards, and then I thank her for delivering the mail and she leaves.
I look down at the envelope and notice that it is something about insurance for 106 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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homeowners, telling me that I am unaware of what the future may hold, oh but I am.
During my travels I came across a man who convinced me that he could see my future, so when I sat down with him to hear mine, I almost believed him. “Not a different, but a separate path,” he tells me. “Did you travel a long way, or were you born someone?,” he asks me.
I take up more of his time and ask him if he is afraid of death, and he asks me how much one could possibly know about it if one has never experienced it. He asks me what reason is there to fear it if we don't know much about it. “Isn't it the lack of knowledge that makes most people fearful, though?,” I ask him. “Media vita in morte sumus,” he says.
One of the few things we know about death, from the perspective of the living, is the simple fact that you are no longer conscious of your own existence. If you aren't aware that you are alive, are you as good as dead? Maybe many of us have already died.
Later on, he tells me about how there are other worlds. I tell him that I have actually been to these other worlds, and for a while he is confused as I explain my experiences in these other worlds. I tell him about how I have seen gods and angels, about how I have seen purple grass and green skies. I tell him about how in some of these worlds, I have even seen people who have died.
Speaking to him about these other worlds, I realized that I could never be fulfilled here in this one. Even if I found a hypothetical happiness, I would still find ways to poke holes in it, and because of this, I believe the only acceptable life is the one that is written in ink.
Silvio, who had been recently incarcerated, stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the jailhouse. Because Lynne had decided not to press any charges, he was to be set free. As he enters Justine's car, she attempts to converse with him but Silvio is in no mood for discussion.
When he gets home, he is greeted by his family, but this only reminds him of the family he cannot see. It is at this moment that he tells his visible family that he has had time to think, and that he will no longer harass his wife. Not in those words.
Instead, he will attempt to take a civilized approach to the problem and finally find the solution, and this time, he means it. He tells his family that he will submit to whatever he has to submit to, as long as it means he gets to see his children.
About an hour later, most of Silvio's family is gone. This is when Silvio decides to phone Lynne. As he is dialing her phone number, the wind from the window stops blowing and every thing becomes silent. Before Silvio can finish dialing, he hears a series of pops. He runs into the living room to find that every one had already ducked for cover, and then he runs upstairs to his sleeping grandmother. Fortunately, she is still asleep, 107 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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unaffected by the city's most popular theme song.
When Silvio gets back downstairs he finds his remaining family members peering through the living room windows. Though they cannot see what has happened, it was only two blocks south of Lincoln street that was now the current burial ground for several gangsters.
I was constantly told by my father that the struggle was always the most important darkness. That if we weren't struggling with something or someone, then we were at a standstill and present experience was minimal.
I've had dreams where I'm standing on a sidewalk waiting for the light to switch from red to green so I can walk across the crosswalk, but the problem is that the light never changes.
The cars keep driving and the light stays the same. I stand there for hours looking on to the other side of the street, to the next set of parked cars, and every time I think the light is about to turn green because of a decrease in passing cars, I am met with disappointment. Sometimes it makes me feel like a castle in the corner, in a medieval game.
Because I've had this dream so many times before, there are episodes when after such a long time of waiting, I actually become aware that I am dreaming, but even this awareness does not help me in crossing the road, and this is where the true struggle arises.
I've always felt that lucid dreaming was almost in a way a sort of free will in the dream world, as opposed to going through a dream without ever really feeling like you were in control, as if you were dancing with strings and predetermination was your puppet master.
I've often wondered if it's possible that the realization that you are dreaming could have a counterpart for the real world. Sometimes when you are trying to sleep through black therapy, music will begin to play in your head, but as soon as you are aware of the music, it stops. Is it possible that once you are aware that you are existing, you truly exist?
Night falls and I find that my disease is getting worse and that a headache is on the way. While a cold breeze does help to sooth my colds, I've also found that warm showers work as well. I would bet a large amount of money that this has something to do with checks and balances.
When I get in the shower I ask the shower-head for a warmer temperature than normal and it tells me that it won't be a problem. I end up staying in there for a while to prevent a headache that will probably come anyway. These things that we do.
After I've had enough of my skin absorbing water, I get out and walk towards my 108 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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bedroom, and this is when I notice that the lights are on. When I turn into the room, I find a woman laying on my bed, her backside facing me.
I feel I have been here before, but only in my dreams, so I stand there for a while knowing that it's Lynne, but wondering why she's here.
When I finally decide to approach her, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at her prosthetic foot. Eventually she wakes up and realizes that I am there, and when she turns to look at me I see a little feather in her eye.
“You take really long showers,” she says as she laughs. That sound of regret in her laugh that I hadn't heard since around the time I first met her. I smile and ask her what's wrong. She turns to lay on her back and begins to tell me about how Silvio had called her and told her that he is going to change. That he doesn't have much to say because he knows that talk is cheap and that it's actions that are convincing. “Expect child support,”
he says.
“That's good isn't it?,” I ask her. She doesn't answer immediately, but eventually agrees that it may do more good than harm.
A few minutes pass by and we kind of stay there. No one is talking but I know what she is thinking. She's ready to move on, but I'm not quite there yet.
I start wondering when she's going to leave, and just sitting here looking at this image reminds me of when someone told me that the Grim Reaper sits at the edge of your bed while you dream your last dream.
“Tell me about Maria,” she says. I pause, and then look at her as if I am confused, wondering how she could have remembered about Maria. Some people remember everything, despite how big or how small its importance may seem.
After a while, I say, “Maria was alright. I liked her, but I didn't like the people she associated herself with.” “What kind of people did she associate with?,” Lynne asks.
“Well I guess it's not so much who she associated with than it is just the simple fact that she chose to associate.” Lynne stares at me blankly. “What I mean is, it's like in school, or almost any type of institution, you have a set of groups for different types of people and you never really mingle outside of your own group. If you are this type of person, then you are in this group and you socialize and associate yourself with other people who are in the same group. But, there are rare individuals who are an exception to the rule, and these types of people don't associate themselves with any particular group because in ways, they are a part of them all.”
“I know exactly what you mean, it's like they're an O blood type,” Lynne says as she laughs. “Exactly,” I say laughing as well, “But Maria's blood type changed from O to whatever and it took her character along with it. It got to the point where if her blood type wasn't compatible with another person, it would show, and when she was actually around 109 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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people who her blood type was compatible with, she became such a superficial person.”
“High school themes translating into the real world, huh?,” Lynne states. “Something like that,” I reply. “My high school was the very definition of social hierarchy,” Lynne says, “and I just couldn't stand it.” At this point I let out a sneeze, and then say, “Lynne, you can't stay here, I'm very sick.”
She understands that I don't want to spread my sickness so the conversation is cut short and she ends up leaving.
Even though love and hate seem to be completely opposite of one another, people observing the physical properties of both emotions have stated that they both share some of the same nervous circuits in the brain, so as I see her out and as I watch her walk away, I wonder how I truly feel about her.
Kathleen, whose vision has been slowly declining due to cataracts, was having slight trouble doing laundry in her basement when she hears her doorbell ring. Wondering who it could be, she opens the door and finds a young woman standing before her who seems to be in deep discomfort. “Hello,” Kathleen says, giving confidence to the young woman that she does not bite.
The young woman begins to speak, but her words often fumble and streak, however, by the end of her introduction, it is known that her name is Karuna and she had visited Kathleen today to apologize for Joe's condition.
Kathleen invites Karuna into her home hoping it will relax her nerves, and then offers her something to drink. Afterwards Kathleen asks her exactly what she is apologizing for and Karuna explains how she had been trying to get into contact with someone who knew Joe. Karuna goes on to explain how she was at the other end of that collision and that it may have been her fault.
“Your fault? How?,” Kathleen asks. “I was looking for something and the next thing I know I'm hit from the side. I don't know if I ran a stop sign or what,” Karuna replies.
“Were you injured?,” Kathleen asks. “Not at all,” Karuna replies, “which has been bothering me for a while. I just can't get over the fact that he is still in a coma.”
Kathleen, who has received numerous notes about Joe's current state, begins to reiterate to Karuna what the doctors have told her and tells Karuna not to worry, attempting to ease her of any guilt she may feel. Most of all, her efforts are to repel thoughts of Joe's death out of her own mind, as well Karuna's. “Joseph is a strong boy,”
Kathleen reassures.
Kathleen, sensing the kind and compassionate nature of Karuna, realizes that this is a wonderful chance for a new friend in her nearing of old age.
Kathleen reaches for a framed photograph of Joe that she had recently found, and with great pride, plays show and tell with it to Karuna. Kathleen tells her about how the 110 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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photo had been taken on a vacation to Paris in 1992, when Joe was just ten years old.
“Here he is holding a football,” Kathleen says. A football that, if you looked hard enough, you could still find down in the basement below.
“Is that his father?,” Karuna asks about the man standing next to Joe. “Yes,” Kathleen answers, “but he's no longer with us.” Karuna once again apologizes.
“I love this one so much because right after it was taken, Joseph ran up to me and told me that the people behind him were eating a frog's legs. The way he said it and the look on his face made me laugh so hard,” Kathleen says as Karuna laughs, “but I guess the real reason why I love it so much is because it's the only picture that I have left of Joe, so you can imagine how dear it is to me.”
This reminds Karuna of her own family back in India and how much she misses them as well. The thoughts bring her to words and the two begin to talk about the many members of their families, both immediate and non-immediate. In-laws and family friends. Deceased and non-deceased. A little while into the discussion, their conversation becomes so natural that the only aspect of it that feels off is when Karuna addresses her as “Mrs. White,” but this problem itself is soon addressed when Kathleen tells her that
“Kathy” is a fine in stead.
After the two begin to bond, Karuna feels comfortable asking Kathleen if there is anything she can do to help, and to Karuna's surprise, Kathleen tells her about her declining eye sight and how she is having trouble reading. That when she starts off, she can see the words fine, but after about twenty minutes of reading her vision begins to fail her and the words become blurry.
Kathleen tells her about a novel she had found in the basement and how she was nearly done, and would very much like to finish it. Karuna agrees to help her finish it, however her assumption that this will be the first and last novel she reads aloud to someone else is wrong, and she is completely unaware of the impact that Kathleen will have on her life.
Frank Mainor returns home to his wife and children after celebrating the retirement of his lieutenant, Scott Merils. While in bed with the woman he has chosen to spend the rest of his life with, the two discuss Mainor's other future. He had previously been offered Meril's job, but requested time to think about it, time to discuss it with his wife.
Of course, Mainor's wife wants him to take the promotion, or to at least seriously consider it, but there is a voice calling out to Mainor that tells him that he breathes best in the streets of the city rather than inside an office building pushing papers and monitoring whiteboards.
The next day, Mainor finds himself in a parked car sitting in the driver's seat, accompanied by Tim Ryan. The two have been sitting on a location that has been 111 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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identified as a drug lab according to the notes of Rock.
Shuffling through the papers, Frank begins to speak, “A lot of these businesses on here have an association to music.” Tim glances at Frank. “Look, a music store, recording studio, an instrument store,” Frank finishes. “Maybe he's a rapper,” Tim jokes. “You know what this might say about him?,” Frank asks Tim. “Probably that he only involves himself with the things that he knows,” Tim answers.
“Yeah,” Frank says, “or the things that he is comfortable with. I wouldn't be surprised if he has control issues.” “So let's put him in a place where he has no control then,” Tim says as he glances back at the identified location.
Frank continues to look through the papers and brings up the fact that there are two locations that have been under construction for about eleven months. “What are you thinking?,” Tim asks. “More burial grounds?,” Frank says without certainty.
At this moment, an individual walks out of the identified location. After the individual looks around for a brief amount of time, he goes back inside, and then comes out with Omar Robinson.
“Is that Robinson?,” Tim asks as his mind gets thrown into a state of confusion. Frank looks at Robinson's photo and confirms that it is in fact one Omar Robinson. The two had not expected to see their ghost anywhere near this location.
Omar gets in the passenger seat and is then driven away by his driver. “Fuck is this,”
Omar says as he continually switches through radio stations, wondering where the music of his past had been laid down to rest.
A few miles later, the driver tells Omar that they are being followed. Omar glances at the rear-view mirror and grins, seemingly cursing Rock at the same time. “See if you can lose them,” Omar tells his driver. The driver continues to make left and right turns until he feels as if he has lost the unmarked police vehicle.
“Left left left,” Tim shouts at Mainor. Mainor makes a left but Omar's vehicle is nowhere in sight. Mainor then stops the car, then looks around. “Shit,” Mainor says under his breath. He sits there still looking around, and then he begins to drive again. He makes a right, but there is still no sight of Omar. He makes another right and it seems as if their tail had been lost on them. It is not until he makes a correct left that Tim spots Omar's vehicle, parked on the side of the road of an empty street.
Frank drives towards Omar's vehicle and this is when Tim Ryan, knowing the fun game had to end some time, tells Frank to pull over. Frank pulls over to the other side of the road and the two cars are now parallel with one another. As Tim exits the vehicle, Frank asks him where he's going but receives no reply.
At this same time, Omar exits his vehicle and begins to walk towards the road.
Eventually Tim and Omar come face to face, and at this time Frank exits his car and 112 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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looks on at the two behind his vehicle with his hand on the top of his weapon, wondering what the hell Ryan is up to.
Tim and Omar stare at eachother at eye level, but the time soon comes when a smirk begins to grow on Omar's face. Nevertheless, Ryan holds the same exact cold facial expression, sizing up Omar, in an attempt to win the war before it is fought.
After Ryan has made his point, his spits at the side of Omar, then proceeds to walk back to his vehicle. Omar never looks down at the spit, but instead keeps sight of Ryan's back, understanding that this may be his enemy's fatal flaw.
I'm lying in bed but I cannot seem to fall asleep. It appears I have fallen victim to an illness that trenches deep. I find myself coughing and sneezing, my head pounding and unrelieving, and in this moment in time, I realize that this is a pain that I may have to keep.
Now there is a knock at my door, but I don't recognize it. I get up out of bed wondering who it could be, and when I open it I find Jack on the other side.
“Hey buddy, I just came back from the supermarket and hadn't realized how much food I bought. You think you can help me bring this stuff up?,” he asks. So many times have I heard Jesus say to be neighborly. To love thy neighbor as thyself. So of course, I tell him that I'll help him, and before I know it I'm standing outside waiting for him to pop the trunk.
When I see how much food he has purchased, a cloud of regret begins to form above my person. I tell you it could have been enough food to last two terrible winters.
I take about six bags of whatever and carry it up the stairs to his apartment, and for the first time, I see the inside of his home.
You couldn't say that it was messy, but there definitely was a lot to look at. Posters, electronics, books, paintings, furniture; this was just the living room.
When we finally finish I find myself standing against one of his walls, tired of the task that had just taken place. He starts looking through some of the bags and offers me some of the food, and even though I politely refuse, he insists, so I end up owning a couple boxes of cereal.
He then starts telling me that his friend, Mark, with a “C,” so Marc, put him on to this supermarket and was able to get him discount prices. “They have the best fruit,” this is what he says to me.
After I leave and after I place my new cereals on my kitchen counter, I can't help but think more about Jesus, and the first time I ever met him.
I had been walking through a forest, wearing rags for clothes, when I would come to the end of the trees and find hundreds of people on a hill huddled around one man who seemed to be giving a lecture. As far away as I was, I heard his words clearly, as if they 113 | THE SOOTHSAYER
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were spoken specifically for me.
“What are you if not your name?,” he asks the people, “Drums drum and flies fly, smoke smokes but death has yet to die.”
He then goes on to talk about how those who are happy will see less trouble in the world, while those who are not happy, will of course see all of the trouble. That our ill-sense of the world is a subjective flaw that should become a subjective strength, just as when one loses their sight, their other senses become more acute.
“Some of us will step on grass, but not on flowers, even though both contain life!,” he laughs. “The rest of us, we will say we are not writers, or even speakers of the truth, yet language is our world,” he continues.
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done in it will be exposed.”
After the lecture, every one leaves, but I feel that I must stay to learn more about this man. This is when he comes up to me, noticing my rags, and he asks me where I had come from. I tell him that I had been out in the forest wandering when I heard his voice and followed it.
The two of us begin to walk and talk, and eventually we end up in a temple, and it is there he shows me what has been carved into the stone. I look down and begin to read it,
“In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”
When I look back up, I find Jesus staring at me, almost smiling, and with his hand on my shoulder, he tells me to be wise in the coming days of darkness.
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Chapter 62
THE TWIN CITIES
1:2:7:62
THREE and a half years ago, I had an awakening. The white shade and I are standing before two towering skyscrapers that stand beside one another, yet are defined as residing in two separate cities.
The two buildings are attached by an entity that lies between them; stairs that go from the bottom to the top, or from the top to the bottom if this is your perception, of these two towers. On the compartment that houses the stairs, in neon lighting, I see a message.
"Welcome to the twin cities." Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
The white shade and I begin to walk towards the stairs and eventually enter the compartment. “Why don't we just use the elevator?,” I ask the white shade. It looks at me blankly, then begins to tell me about how people tame animals just as a government tames people. Before it can continue I cover my ears and start walking towards the stairs, knowing I can't win.
It eventually catches up to me and we are now walking up these flights of stairs in an attempt to reach the very top.
“As I was saying,” the white shade continues, “people tame animals; conditioning may be the only way we can stop this man of darkness.” “How can we even begin to condition evil?,” I ask it.
The white shade doesn't reply immediately, but after a brief moment asks me whether knowledge is power, or if it is instead wisdom. It asks me if an individual has incredible knowledge of its environment, if it will be drawn to goodwill.
The question forces me to think, and I ponder on the topic of power and how it can mean so many different things. The power to forgive is not the same as the power of forgiveness.
“Perhaps this man is the way he is because of the darkness that resides in his being,”
the white shade says to me. It continues, “If we were to give this man the knowledge of the aftermath his actions have caused, is it possible that these pieces of knowledge will then awaken him to what he's done?”
I think about what the white shade has said and it makes sense to me. If you murder a man and are unaware of how it affects his family, this loss of knowledge may become pivotal to the continuing of your destruction. “To fill the darkness with wisdom,” I say to myself.
After what seems to be hours, the white shade and I finally get to the top floor of the compartment. It opens the door that leads out onto the roof and we step onto the platform.
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me I see a marvelous projection.
A city of angels and a city of sin; cities of roses and emeralds and twins and wind. A city of fountains and a city of music, a city of circles and a city that never sleeps. A city of brothers, of charms, magic and rivers; a city of dreams, where it is only hope, that delivers.
What is it that drives someone to search for peace? The existence of peace, much like many other things, is sometimes discovered by an individual when they become aware of its opposite. I look at these cities, and though I cannot find the words to describe the sight, for the first time I realize that the only thing that can make me feel, truly feel, is all of the injustice in the world.
When the white shade notices my awakening, it tells me to move closer to the edge of the platform, so I do. As I begin to move, I lose sight of my balance and nearly fall, and this is when I look behind me to find instead of a white shade, a black shade.
Before I can open my mouth to question this, the black shade reverts back to the white shade and this is when I ask myself if I am dreaming.
The white shade, being as insightful as it is, looks into my eyes and immediately sees my doubt, so it tells me to remember our conversation about the real world and the dream world. I do, but my conscience begins to weigh heavy realism and I start to back away from the edge of the platform.
“If I tell you that I have two triangles, and that one of them is black, does that automatically indicate that the other triangle is a different color?,” the white shade asks me. “No, I suppose it can be black as well,” I answer.
“If you are scared in a dream, do you not wake up to find your heart beating faster and faster?,” the white shade asks me. “Yes, I suppose I do,” I answer.
“If you were to find that you have woken up from a life that you spent decades living, would you immediately discard it?”
I had always felt that life was the most important teacher. That the things you can learn from it should never be thrown away or discarded as no longer useful. To observe people and their actions; to dissect nature and its forces; to perceive numbers and their tendencies; these were some of the things you had to do on your own and beyond the classroom.
I walk back over to the edge of the platform and I look out. I stand there for a while, and eventually the white shade asks me if I am ready. I tell it that I am, but that I would need a push. As the white shade walks closer and closer to my being, I find that my eyes have been shut, and moments later, am falling.
Scared of my demise, my eyes stay shut. I think of the man cloaked in darkness, even about how he too, maybe sometime in the past, has been where I am now. I continue to 116 | THE TWIN CITIES
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fall, and fall, and fall, and the pain that would come from the concrete begins to develop in my mind.
This is when the curiosity of my death begins to overwhelm me and I open my eyes.
To my surprise, I find that I am not falling, but am flying, and beneath me there are cities that are casted in light.
“This movie sucks,” I say as I take the last bite of my sandwich, “I don't even get half of it.” Lynne, who is sitting next to me, begins to laugh and then asks me if the female protagonist is suppose to be good or bad. Unfortunately I can't answer, and instead ask her about the boy who appeared in the beginning of the film, if he was of any significance.
Lynne puts down half of her sandwich and tells me that I will be the one picking the movie to rent next time. I immediately tell her about a new film that was released last year called “Solomon's Legend,” and it is then we decide that this will be our next study.
While the film is still playing, I can't help but think about how film, much like many other forms of art, can be so subjective. Not even in the sense that one individual will like this movie while another will not, but even moreso in the sense that you can find a particular movie so awful at one point in your life, and then at another, find the same movie so magnificent. I've actually heard of books where the characters in them change as the reader ages.
These thoughts remind me of how Lynne once told me that a blue rose symbolized mystery and sometimes depicted the things that cannot be fully understood or completely unraveled. They remind me even of Lynne's nature, and my favorite painting of hers,
“White Lights.” They remind me of the dreams I've had of her, the singing and the guidance, even the beauty even the silence. I knew you, before you knew me.
I get up and go over to my kitchen and place my plate in the sink, then I get something to drink. When I sit back down, I ask Lynne if she ever went to any kind of therapy for her foot. For a brief amount of time she continues to stare at the television, as if processing the question in her mind, but eventually she looks at me and answers.
“Yes, I did,” she answers. She begins to tell me about how she had a group of people who were very helpful and supportive. How she had a horrible time dealing with the situation she had been put in, but that in the end she came out stronger for it.
She starts to tell me about her prosthetic family. “There was a young girl there, maybe in her late teens, who had been in a car accident and lost both of her legs. The first time I heard her speak I was in awe. Maybe I had lost a foot, but she lost so much more and was able to talk about it. That's when I knew I had nothing to complain about.”
I ask her what the young girl's name was. She fiddles around with it for a while and then tells me it was Candice. I can't be entirely sure if that spelling is correct.
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“The one thing I loved about her is how she said my name wrong, Lynney,” she laughs as she says it, remembering the past. Of course I laugh as well, but I'm sure you already knew that.
“I know it might sound weird, but sometimes I forget that you even have a prosthetic foot,” I tell Lynne. “It doesn't sound weird,” she says. This is when she begins to tell me about how in her previous life, whenever she was in the process of making a new friend, she would constantly ask him or her if the nonexistent foot made them uncomfortable. If the roundness was too much.
“But I don't feel like I have to do that with you,” she says, as if she could see right through me. As if my walls are down and she can see my inability to perceive disfigurement.
The movie continues aimlessly, and more often than not we find ourselves laughing at a horrible production. Instead of paying attention, I am thinking of Candice and her two legs. Thinking of Joe and his dreamless identity. Is it your ability to overcome adversity that defines you as a person? If Candice had not spoken, would Lynne see her as the same person? Would this person who I am sitting next to today be laughing at a silly piece of cinema?
“You know, at my job,” Lynne says as she chews her sandwich, “there is a girl who has two different eye colors.” “It changes?,” I ask. “No, I mean like, one eye is a medium brown and the other is a very light brown. Like hazel almost.” “Interesting,” I say, “I wonder which one is dominant.”
Lynne looks at me blankly, and then I tell her to make a circle with her thumb and her index finger. After, I tell her to pick an object in the room and to focus the circle onto that object, and to stare at the object through her circle. When she is ready, I tell her to close her right eye, and then ask her if the object is still in the circle. She says no. I tell her to open her right eye, but to close her left eye, and then I ask her again. This time she says yes. “Your right eye is dominant,” I tell her. She continues to stare at me blankly, then proceeds to nod her head. “I don't know where you learn these things,” she says, “but they're pretty neat.”
At this point we both hear a knock in the hallway. It sounds like it is coming from Lynne's apartment, so she gets up and opens my door and peers down the hallway to see Deana knocking on her door. “It's Deana, I'll be back,” she says to me.
When she sits back down she tells me that Deana had forgotten her phone number and needed it again. “Who?,” I ask. “Your neighbor,” she laughs. “Oh.”
“A year ago, I had a dream,” I say. Lynne stares at me blankly once again, pondering what comes next. “I mean, I had a dream about them a year ago,” I say. “What happened?,” she asks.
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“This was like a week or two before you moved in. In the dream they were arguing or something and Deana just went nuts.”
“That's weird, Deana is so sweet,” she says. “It's Mike who yells.” Of course I'd known of that truth, but there are worlds beyond ours where the truths bend and the lies blend.
Now there are credits rolling before us and the movie has finally ended. For a while there is complete nothingness, Lynne and I don't really say much to eachother. A therapeutic silence that is comfortable.
Lynne leaves a short while after to wait for Sarah and David to arrive at the bus stop.
Not too long after she comes back and tells me that one of Sarah's friend's mother needed a lift to work, and that she wouldn't be able to come back over because by that time she too would be headed to work. I had always believed that showing someone kindness would lead to that someone's own doing of kindness, and at least in this case, I was right.
Later on it is Sarah who comes into my home and I find that she is currently under the supervision of Alundra. She has a piece of paper in her hand, and she hands it to me. I look it and realize that it is her math homework. For the next ten minutes I am a teacher, and in her eyes, I can see the globes of a distant generation.
Kathy and Karuna return home after taking a long exercisal walk through the park, some advice that had been given to Kathy by her doctor to help treat her diabetes.
During the walk, the two would talk about both the clear past and the hazy future.
“When I was around your age,” Kathy says, “I loved being around animals. Any kind.
There was just something about them that made me feel so calm.” Karuna asks Kathy why she doesn't own any pets now, especially since she lives alone. Kathy tells Karuna about Max, Ema and Aster, and about how they had all passed away. About how after Max died, she felt she could never replace him. Never have another.
“I wanted to be a vet, but before I knew it I met Harry and soonafter we married we had Joseph,” Kathy says. “Every year just got shorter, I guess,” she finishes.
Kathy and Karuna then decide to sit down on a bench to admire the decreasing amount of snow on the ground. Not really. But nonetheless, Karuna begins to tell Kathy about how she is finishing up her schooling on childhood education, and about how she wants to teach children.
“Of course I'd like to be doing something around kids right now so I can start building my portfolio,” Karuna says, “but right now I'm stuck working at a department store,” she laughs.
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she is a keeper of her own faith, says yes, as to keep an open mind.
The next day, Karuna would visit Kathy again as to keep schedule. Karuna would read the last chapter of the novel to her, but because Karuna started reading towards the end, she would not completely understand the story. However, Kathy would tell her that it was really a book that started and ended in the first chapter.
Daylight disappears when I find myself sitting in a corner of my bedroom. The lights are off, yet through the darkness I can see. I begin to wonder, once again, about how I had gotten here in life, but more importantly, how far away I was from death. The window blinds are down, but there is a street light that pierces through them, and even though it does not blind me, it stains my vision.
I am now beginning to remember my very first dream as a baby. No, just kidding.
Instead, thoughts of my childhood ring through my head. There was a time in my youth, a time before I started writing down my dreams, when I would spend hours walking around town attempting to fill a void that I did not yet understand.
You know that feeling of incompleteness, unfulfillment. You walk until your legs give, actually believing that you might see something you've never seen before.
Wondering if there is more to life than eventual death.
I would later tell the therapist about this part in my life, and we would discuss it in full. He would ask me if I still felt that void, and I would say no, I would tell him that I found my dreams, but of course he would tell me that they wouldn't be enough. He would encourage me instead to live in the natural world, but you and I already know the end of that story.
So instead we discuss another story. The week before I had had a dream about a scorpion and a lizard. Simple dream, really. I told him about how I watched as a lizard found a home deep underground. A few days go by, and as the lizard is out and about, a scorpion finds that same home deep in the ground. For years, the two live there without knowing that the other had taken residence in the same home.
During the daytime, the lizard would leave the home, and almost at the same time, the scorpion would come home. Of course, when the scorpion left home in the night-time, the lizard would come home.
One day, however, when both residents were not home, a natural disaster would come by and fill up the hole in the ground with rocks.
The scorpion would be on its way home from a troubling night when it realizes that its home had been plugged up with rocks. Angry, yet needing sleep, the scorpion would begin to remove the rocks, one by one.
After some time passes by, the lizard would be on its way home when it would run into the angry scorpion. “What are you doing to my home?,” the lizard asks the scorpion.
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The scorpion is confused, then says “I live here.”
The two would begin to converse and they would eventually find out that they had both been living with each other for quite a while without knowing it.
“Well, what do we do now?,” the lizard asks. “I suppose we play a game, and the winner keeps the home,” the scorpion suggests.
The two play their game on a beach nearby, and as competitive as it is, the scorpion wins. The lizard then makes its way as the scorpion continues to remove the rocks from its home.
“Some of the dream has some truth to it,” the therapist tells me, “scorpions are nocturnal creatures while lizards are diurnal, but as for the other elements in the dream, I'm not sure what they mean.”
The therapist, because he finds the dream so interesting, decides to log onto his computer and searches about dream analysis. Somewhere, he finds information on what a particular animal may mean if you see them in your dreams.
He begins to read out loud, “Seeing a scorpion in your dreams may indicate self-destructive feelings.” He skims through the rest before saying it out loud, then tells me that it's pretty much irrelevant. He then goes on to read about the lizard, “Seeing a lizard in your dreams may indicate creativity.” Just like the scorpion, he skims the rest and also deems it irrelevant, then says, “A lot of this is just opinion.”
Instead, we decide to dissect the dream ourselves with our own “may indicates,” but we don't get too far. “Maybe you feel as if someone took something from you?,” he asks me. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, but you could give this dream to a thousand different people and get a thousand different interpretations.
I get up from off the ground and go to the window to lift up the blinds. Staring at the street light outside, a fury of ideas begin to swarm in my mind. This prompts me to go to the room that houses the composition notebooks and sit down at my desk.
In a drawer I find Notes, a spiral notebook that I had previously taken from the basement of my parents' home.
I open it up, and while I don't flip to a random page, I do however flip to the first blank page I can find. I begin to think of flies, and how they are attracted to light. How they get sucked right into it.
I turn on a nearby lamp and then start writing, this is when the mania truly starts. I begin to write about dissociative identity disorder, and how well it can be compared to a dissociative reality disorder.
Personalities split and your identity becomes lost, and with the complex, worlds split and your reality becomes shaken. If it can be touched, does it exist. If it can be seen, is it there. If it crosses your mind, can it influence.
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How easy is it to be absorbed by mental illness? By modern decay? By troubled times? Escape velocity is the direction and speed required to break free from the gravitational pull of a physical body. Say you're hurtling through space and you pass by Earth, if you're not going fast enough you'll be pulled in by Earth's gravity. If however, you are going fast enough, you'll simply pass by it, unaffected by its attraction.
When a fly flies and it is sucked in by the light, is it because its escape velocity is too low. Does this apply to the darker themes of life? Is it possible that we can be defined as human beings by how strong our escape velocity is? If yours is strong, when you fly past certain things such as depression and temptation, you are not drawn in by its force. If its weak, you'll find yourself troubled, or maybe in trouble.
Often times I'll wonder if there are things that we cannot escape in life. The gravitational pull of a black hole is so strong that even light has a hard time passing by without getting sucked in. The density that creeps.
You get sucked into the darkness, and unfortunately, sometimes you can't come back.
As time goes on, I feel more distant and more detached from the world and the people in it.
I finish writing and the put the notebook back in the drawer, laughing as I do it. I think so much that some of my thoughts end up spilling onto paper. A sort of experimental narration.
I leave the room and enter the living room, and this is when I begin to hear conversation. The couch, the door, the television, they are talking to eachother. I ask them what they're talking about, and to my surprise, it's about me. They are talking about how I need to move on. From this place, from these people. From these streets, maybe even from this city.
“This is getting old, leave already” the door days. “And you already know you won't last. How long can you just sit here like this?,” the couch says. “Just look at your life, it's so black and white. Add a little color!,” the television says.
“But I'm fine, I know I'm fine,” I reply, “this is my home.” The conversation ends when I hear keys walking through the apartment building hallway. I wait for a while, and soon enough can tell that the person went to Lynne's apartment. She probably just got home from work.
I decide to go into my bedroom and put on classical music in an effort to drown out the voices. Those three don't know what they're talking about. They're completely insane if you ask me.
I lay on my bed and think about how even though no chains surround my feet, I'm not free. You genetic apathetic. Prophetic prosthetic. Prosthesis negative? No, probably not.
Definitely not. Not in those words and not in that expression.
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I remember that one time when Sid waited for someone to sober up before killing them. He wanted them to understand that they were dying, so for a while we stuck around and played chess.
Later on someone would find the body and phone the police and they would send two detectives. “This is the sixth body,” the lady detective would say. The gentleman detective stares at the body while someone outlines it in white matter.
“Exsanguination,” a nearby doctor would say. At this point the two detectives would kneel down to further study the body and the clues around the body. They would realize that the victim had her veins literally plucked out of her body and died from blood loss.
The lady detective would notice something under the left leg of the victim and would have it delicately removed, and when she reads it, it'll say “She had it coming to her.” The lady detective would read it over and over again and would begin to suspect that the murderer was someone who was close to the victim, or at least knew her. After enough thinking, she would notice an unfinished chess game way back in the corner, and so this brings us back to the beginning.
Sid begins the game by moving his white pawn from E2 to E4. I move my black pawn from C7 to C5. He then moves his white knight from G1 to F3 and this leaves me thinking. I end up thinking for a while so Sid gets up to get food from the fridge. I tell him to check if she has chicken.
He comes back with food and by this time I have moved my black knight from B8 to C6. “She fell asleep,” he says as he moves another one of his white pawns from D2 to D4. I then move my black pawn from C5 to D4 to capture his white pawn, to which he captures my black pawn when he moves his white knight from F3 to D4. “Fearing death means you're alive,” he says to me while I think of my next move.
I move another one of my black pawns from G7 to G6. Sid thinks for a moment, then moves his other white knight from B1 to C3, so I move my black bishop from F8 to G7.
In response, he moves his white bishop from C1 to E3 and then begins to laugh. Why?
I'm not sure.
I move my unmoved black knight from G8 to F6 and then begin to laugh for no reason and this is when Syd gives me a straight face. His deception is lost on me.
After a long while, Sid decides to move his unmoved white bishop from F1 to C4, keeping his straight face, but now is scratching his nose. I think for just as long and then decide to castle my black king onto the kingside. I move my black rook from H8 to F8
and my black king from E8 to G8.
Not too long after, Sid moves his white bishop from C4 to B3, and then begins to smile. Exactly in those words. I think about what he has said, and then I move my black knight from C6 to A5.
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This is when we hear someone walking around in the other room. We leave our game and find the woman walking around, and when she sees the both of us she becomes frightened, and this is when we know it is time.
We would eventually restrain her and of course she would yell and yell until we duct taped her mouth shut. Afterwards, Sid would pluck out and cut many of her veins one by one with a small knife. He would then leave a note under her left leg in attempt to spread disinformation.
Sid and I would then leave the house and he would tell me about how in the chess game we played, he had lured me into a trap and that he had already won the game. “The first mistake in committing a murder is killing someone you know in a place that you live without any real plan,” he says to me. With each passing day, he was becoming more and more like a father to me.
“Hurry up, I'm tryin' to get outta here by midnight,” Raheim Johnson says to Marcus Mosley, an affiliate of Malcolm Carson. Marcus continues to count away the day's prosperity, but more importantly, its profit. He counts quickly and accurately as to show his recent promotion is well deserved, and then he finally leaves with other members of his crew.
Marcus, along with four friends, walk through the parking lot of a car dealership, but back inside the dealership's main offices, Raheim and his top officers remain, discussing both life and the needed solutions to their daily problems brought on by the law and those who enforce it.
Just a little while after the conversation begins, shots ring out and yelling ensues.
Raheim and his officers arm themselves but do not leave the office. Instead, they are soon greeted by their subordinates, but the difference is by one.
“They got Buckweed,” Marcus tells Raheim. Raheim asks who “they” is, to which one of the others replies, “Them west side dudes.” Outside, chilling more and more into the cold, is the body of Buckweed, and about a mile west of where we are now, Wallace and Travis make their getaway.
The next day, Raheim decides a forum must be held with his enemies in an attempt to resolve their conflicts. Raheim contacts other businessmen from the north side of the city who are like himself, and who will be able to act as mediators to bring peace between the west and east, and possibly, God willing, allow these parties to prosper together.
Miles away there is a sale going on for heroin. Get your “Earthquake,” buy one get one free. Derek works in the cold, supplying his customers and fulfilling their daily urges. At one moment, Derek yells out to an associate of his and flashes three of his fingers at him, then sends the customer off towards the associate to receive what they had purchased.
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Sometime into his shift, a friend of Jamal begins to speak to Derek, talking about how he is low on money now, but also about how he is good for it. That if Derek could just
“hook” him up, he would be eternally grateful. The problem is that Derek's not the one in charge, so as much as this man begs, as much as he pleads, Derek denies.
“Yo, who was that,” Wallace says to Derek as he walks up to him. “No one.” The two begin to talk about the weather and eventually find themselves thinking about food.
“Aight call it in the air,” Wallace says. He then flips a dime into the air, “Tails.” It's heads.
“Two out of three,” Derek insists. Wallace gives him a look, and then flips the dime once more. “Tails.” It's heads.
Wallace begins to laugh, then nods his head. He hands Derek a few bills, and then Derek begins to walk towards the closest fast food restaurant. When Derek returns with the food, he sees Wallace talking to an older man. Perhaps an addict, perhaps not, but when Derek reaches the two, he hears the older man talking about chalk lines. Telling him not to get caught up in the life, mainly because it is not a rewarding one.
I found myself picking at my thumb when the time came for me to select which brand of water to purchase. Chase Mart always had a nice variety.
I go to the register to pay and notice that the young man had recently favored himself a new tattoo. It seems to be a few characters, but I can't be certain of the language, so I ask him what it is a tattoo of. “The number forty-five in Korean,” this is what he tells me.
I wanted to ask him why that number specifically, but there was another customer behind me.
I walk home and when I get into my apartment building, I check my mail. Nothing unusual except for the fact that I had received mail that wasn't mine. This particular envelope belongs to 3E, a Ms. Amy Steinbrenner.
I go to her door and give it a knock. When it's opened, I realize that it's the large woman I had seen so many times before. I give her the mail and she gives me her thanks.
When I get in front of my door, I can hear the phone ringing, but I'm in no hurry. I walk inside and put the bags down and then walk over to the phone, walking more and more slowly hoping it'll die before I get there, but it doesn't. “Hello?” “Hey.” “Lynne?”
“Hi.”
Lynne begins to tell me about how she is visiting her mother for the weekend with the kids and about how Claire had been staying there for the past few weeks.
It turns out Claire had been dating someone who lived in the next state over, but of course when she realized that the man was not as pleasant as he appeared, she left. This is not one-sided, however, as Claire also wears duplicity. Don't we all.
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for her no matter what,” Lynne says.
The telephone call ends and on the television there is a documentary playing. I'd heard of black sheep before, but I never actually saw one. Here you have an animal in a herd with others who are of the same type, but not the same appearance. A black sheep traded among shepherds. To me, difference was always murder, and these were always my words.
They can lock you up and throw away the key, but in your dreams, you will always be free. They can put you in a cage, but they cannot imprison your mind.
You spend so much time trapped in that space, and then it gets to be so that when you dream, these abstract concepts such as passion and individuality, they start to grow, and then it gets to a certain point and you can actually hold them in your hand. In your dreams, you can literally hold your freedom.
Everyone has had a dream where they are flying, where they soar through the clouds and the image of the world below them becomes enchanting, but in the off chance that you have not, I'm sure some day you will.
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Chapter 63
DESENSITIZATION
1:2:7:63
EARLY one morning on a windy autumn's day, in an urban and peaceful town off the banks of the Mississippi River, the storyteller, who we'll refer to as “the carpenter” for all intents and purposes, wakes up to find a missing nine year-old half sister.
The carpenter had been taking care of the half-sister after their father had passed away. When the carpenter awoke and went to go check on the half-sister, the carpenter realized she was missing and called the police. By the time the police had arrived, the carpenter had already asked several neighbors to assist in the search.
“We all knew each other and it's a really small town, so we figured we would find her within twenty minutes at the very least, but when the search dragged on for an hour, we started to get worried,” Nicole Clements tells the interviewer.
Block by block, the peaceful town is searched with no avail. Several hours later, the search was concluded as it was too dark to continue searching. The carpenter was in disarray as the neighbors attempted to comfort, but this too, was to no avail.
The next morning the search continued, and despite the fact that it was a larger searching crew, there would be no success in finding the missing nine year-old. Shortly thereafter, an investigation was launched.
“It was a sad ordeal. I hated to see the carpenter go through that. The carpenter had already been through so much previously and had a difficult time talking about family, so this only made it worse,” Peter Thomas tells the interviewer. Would the nine year old ever be found? Or, was she already dead.
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Investigators walked through the carpenter's home searching for anything that might help them in finding the nine year-old. The first place they checked was the nine year-old's room, where they found nothing unusual or anything of any importance. They went on to check the rest of the house, but all attempts were futile.
Investigators then went on to survey the perimeter of the house, but there was nothing out of the ordinary here either.
“She was such a sweet girl, you know? Bright, always smiling. She was sunshine on a rainy day,” Sherry Woodland tells the interviewer.
Days went by and the peaceful town was beginning to lose hope of ever seeing their sunshine again. “Normally if a person is not found within the first couple of hours,”
analyst Roman Stroganov says, “there's a forty-five percent chance increase in the likelihood that the person will be found dead and a sixty-seven percent chance increase 127 | DESENSITIZATION
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that the person will simply never be found.”
Were investigators already too late? Was too much time already wasted? Weeks went by and still there was no sign of the nine year-old. Streets all over town were plastered with the little girl's photo and neighbors continued to do whatever they could in their spare time to help find her, but it wasn't until a jogging couple came across a shallow grave that the investigation truly went underway.
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“Me and my husband were running along a jogging path when we saw something unusual in a patch of dirt. We didn't know what it was exactly until we walked over to it and began to dig a little,” Rosie Winchester tells the interviewer.
Rosie and James had found the answer that the peaceful town was looking for; the nine year-old had been killed and buried in a shallow grave a few miles south of where she lived. The raining during the night before had revealed this gruesome and unthinkable murder.
Panicking, the two notify the authorities, and this information is relayed to the carpenter. The carpenter, who is shocked by the revelation, has a difficult time accepting the findings and is unable to digest completely what has happened.
“The death of a child is always a hard obstacle,” psychologist Renee Perreault says,
“and is so much more impactful because it's always unexpected. It's not right when a guardian has to bury a child.”
The body was dug up and sent to a laboratory for examination. There were no signs of struggle or any markings on the body to indicate foul play, but a closer look revealed that the nine year-old had been suffocated.
“Asphyxiation kills over 9,500 people each year; strangulation, autoerotic asphyxia, hanging, smothering, drowning, these are just some of the types,” Roman Stroganov tells the interviewer.
During the examination, the examiner found what looked to be like a piece of fiber inside the nine year-old's mouth and hoped that this would be vital in solving the murder of the nine year-old.
A day after the examination, investigators question the carpenter, asking the carpenter if there was anyone who may have had ill will directed towards the nine year-old, but there was no one. The questions continued for about half of an hour, and investigators became increasingly suspicious of the carpenter's presentation.
For days, there were no suspects to this heinous crime. It wasn't until investigators began to question the neighbors of the carpenter that they realized the carpenter may not 128 | DESENSITIZATION
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have been the grieving guardian that the carpenter set out to be. It was at this point, that the carpenter became the prime suspect.
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“She wouldn't hurt a fly. I never saw her angry. She just really loved to smile and play with the other children,” neighbor Susan Fleece tells the interviewer, “The carpenter had a tendency to neglect her, so much that there were times when she came home from school there was no one home and she had to come over to our home until the carpenter came back.”
Investigators quickly learned that the carpenter seemed to feel as if the nine year-old was more of a burden than a blessing. According to stories from the neighbors, the carpenter would often neglect the nine year-old, often to the point that she would be left with neighbors for several days.
Investigators brought in the carpenter for questioning, but the carpenter vehemently rejected any notion stating involvement in the death of the nine year-old. A few days later, however, investigators received a chilling phone call.
Rhaelyn Harris, who was somewhat of an acquaintance of the carpenter, called investigators and told them that she believed that the carpenter was responsible for the death of the nine year-old. When investigators probed for further information, Ms. Harris revealed that herself and the carpenter were romantically involved for some time, but when she broke it off, and told the carpenter that she couldn't be tied down to a child, the carpenter threatened to commit suicide. It was only a couple of weeks afterwards, that the nine year-old went missing.
What is even more bizarre, however, is the fact that the carpenter, only one week after the nine year-old went missing, would phone Harris and ask if they could get back together.
With a red moon high overhead, investigators continue relentlessly to solve the crime, but meet a brick wall in their efforts.
Investigators ask to speak with the carpenter once more, but the carpenter refuses and threatens to file harassment charges against the police department. At this point, investigators attempt to get a search warrant believing that, with the information provided by Harris and the neighbors, as well as the unwillingness to cooperate by the carpenter, and finally the piece of fiber found in the nine year-old's mouth, would be enough to grant one as the item that killed the girl could be in the household.
After a search warrant is granted, investigators and a search crew search the entire house and leave with a number of items. Among the items is a pillow that matches the 129 | DESENSITIZATION
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color of the fiber found in the nine year-old's mouth, and this becomes the prime item. Is it possible, that this could be the very item that killed her?
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After testing is complete, examiners conclude that the fiber found in the nine year-old's mouth matched exactly a fiber taken from the pillow. But, how could investigators prove that the carpenter did the killing? What was the motive?
“You can have a lot of circumstantial evidence, but it's very difficult to convict on it alone. You need forensic evidence,” one of the investigators, Donald Salinger, tells the interviewer.
Doctor Akira Yamaguchi had determined the time of death, but due to the rain, the estimate was broad, but the best possible time table was that the girl was killed sometime after midnight and buried shortly thereafter.
After several failed attempts to speak to the carpenter, investigators visit the carpenter's home and arrest the carpenter under the suspicion of murder. The carpenter is held for thirty-five hours and questioned intensely, but no confession is made.
Though the investigation stalled and ultimately went no further, investigators believe this is what happened:
The carpenter had become met with heartbreak after Rhaelyn decided that she wanted to break up to the point that the carpenter would threaten suicide. After seeing that Harris was unaffected by these words, the carpenter then sought to eliminate the one obstacle in the way; the nine year-old.
Harris had told the carpenter that she couldn't be “tied down” to a child, so the carpenter, cold-heartedly, planned to murder the nine year-old and bury her miles from the crime.
The evening would past, then the night, then midnight, and this is when the carpenter went into the nine year-old's room as she layed asleep. The carpenter takes the pillow she sleeps on and presses it against her face, waking her. The nine year-old fights back but is unable to remove the pillow from her face.
Panicking, she scratches the carpenter and bites into the pillow, extracting a piece of fiber from the pillow into her mouth, but it is not too soon until she is dead, lifeless, and without breath.
The carpenter then removes the pillow from her face and takes the body outside and into the carpenter's car, where the carpenter drives several miles south of the carpenter's home. There, the carpenter buries the nine year-old, unaware that she has a piece of fiber in her mouth that came from the pillow.
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that the nine year-old was missing in an attempt to cover the crime that had been committed in desensitized brutality.
“You know, I think it was Hitler who said 'The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it,' and that applies here. No one wants to even think that a person could do something like this. Kill a child over love, it's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” the other investigator, Daniel Springer, tells the interviewer.
The carpenter was never tried nor the case pursued, but somewhere along the Mississippi River, in a peaceful town filled with truth, a lie lays dormant in decay.
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Chapter 64
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
1:2:7:64
SOMETIMES dreams splinter, sometimes they connect. More often than not, I've had dreams that seem to stand alone as if they were single short stories that never go beyond their end or never preface before their beginning. However, enough time passes and I find that this dream does not in fact stand alone, that it has a sequel, or a prequel, and suddenly connections can be made.
In the same regard, there are times when a trilogy seems to be going one way and without warning, it diverts. It splinters in a new direction and you find yourself in a place you've never been, around people you've never known.
Many times I've come across people I'd never seen, and after waking and thinking for a moment, I wonder if that person exists somewhere in the real world. Even if the person isn't exactly the person in my dreams, I wonder if there is at least someone like them somewhere in the world. Someone who resembles their appearance, someone who mimics their voice, someone who reiterates their beliefs. A duplication of some sort, hidden away in reality.
I'm standing in The Basement of my parents' home, putting up new lists of words next to old ones, all the while thinking of the concept of randomness, about how each night when we lay down to rest, we never know what we will end up dreaming about.
I look to my right and see a long set of words that I had put up six years ago. All the words are in different colors, appearing as a rainbow, ranging from black to white.
Written in black is the word “alpha,” followed by words written in red, “beta,”
“gamma” and “delta.” Next are words written in orange, “epsilon,” “zeta,” “eta,” and
“theta,” followed by words written in yellow, “iota,” “kappa,” “lambda” and “mu.”
Succeeding are words written in green, “nu,” “xi,” “omicron” and “pi,” followed by words written in blue, “rho,” “sigma,” “tau” and “upsilon.” These words are then followed by the color purple, “phi,” “chi” and “psi,” and finally, white, “omega.”
Just under this list is another, dated back four years ago. This one moreso seems to resemble most of the other lists; only three colors which seemingly represent negative, positive and neutral connotations. “Jannah,” green, “Manhaj,” green, “Wudu,” green,
“Iblis,” red, “Zalimun,” red, “Manzil,” yellow.
Now I'm putting up a list of words to the left of them, words that we see throughout the year. These words, like the other many lists, are also written in colors, however they are all the same color, the only difference is that some of them are in darker shades of blue while others are in lighter shades of blue. “Winter,” darkest, “Spring,” lightest,
“Summer,” second lightest, “Autumn,” second darkest.
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Just two hours ago, I had a dream. I was in a small room where the walls were painted a type of “mystic” blue, and on one of the four walls, there was a dial with four options.
The dial was somewhere in between Winter and Spring, but more so towards Winter.
When I walked closer to attempt to turn the dial, I found that it was immovable, and that instead, my index finger and my thumb had become mildly frozen.
The somewhat tilting and diagonal-ness of the indecisive dial reminds me of how the Earth rotates on a tilt, and how this is the reason why we have these seasons.
Exactly why the Earth rotates on a tilt remains a mystery, but these thoughts again remind me of another dream I've had where I'm looking down at our universe, and in the middle of it all is a huge gray sphere. Calling it a star would be a gross understatement, but I'm honestly not sure what it should be called. Either way, all of the galaxies in the universe revolve around this gray sphere, of course ours included.
As I look down at this intelligent design, I notice that the universe has two halves; a side where space is black and a side where space is white. From what I have gathered, I've assumed that our galaxy currently resides in the space that is black, but I am sure that given enough time, maybe a few hundred trillion years, that our galaxy will continue to revolve around the gray sphere until it crosses over into the space that is white.
What I've written down somewhere in my notes is the theory that our galaxy had already once passed through the white space phase long ago, and from that passing, Earth's positioning was affected by that white space, as well as some other celestial bodies in our solar system, some more than others, some less, possibly depending on their composition. From that white phase, due to matter reactions, perhaps each body in any system underwent tilt settings, among many other settings. Perhaps in a few dreamyears I will go back there once more to explore with more ambition.
After I finish putting up the piece of paper, I take one last look at Sanctuary and then I decide to leave. While leaving, I catch a glimpse of sheet music. A theme from a film I had seen long ago. The notes, of course, remind me of the film, but moreso a certain transition that I've had in my mind for a long time. An old man laying on a bed which soon fades into a scene shot way out in the country side. In this shot, we see the old man's son traveling with two other men as a farmer directs his herd in the distance.
Eventually I leave my parents' home and walk out into the dying daytime. There I see a neighbor across the road and he waves at me. I wave back, and make my way back home.
During the walk I come to a crosswalk and patiently wait as a bus drives past. A bus that has an advertisement on the side of it that says “Everything will be all right,” and is accompanied by several children.
Perhaps a note. Something telling me not to worry about the troubles found in life.
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About the grief found in death. The pain found in abuse and the injustice found in nature.
About the lacking found in youth, and of course the dissatisfaction found in old age.
Before I enter the apartment building, I take time to look at the dead Peace Lilies, and I also take time to think about the zinnias that also used to roam this region. Is it better to have dead flowers than no flowers at all? If dreams can turn into nightmares, do we take that risk?
I enter the building and check my mail and soon see that I have another letter from Derek. I am pleased that he is keeping up appearances.
I take my mail and walk up the flight of stairs, and similar to before, I take the time to look at Lynne's door. I wonder about Silvio and his actions. I've seen the effect it has had on Lynne, but I wonder more about what effect it has had on their children. On Sarah, David and the people they will grow to become. Children tend to dream shorter dreams, and almost forty percent of their dreams are nightmares. If the world you live in is nightmarish already, how much does that increase? Decrease?
Does David attract and get his night terrors because of his father? Is this why he is so reserved? Does Sarah repel and have enchanting dreams because of her father? Is this why she is so sweet?
I enter my apartment and find something to eat in the refrigerator. After the search I walk into my bedroom and sit down to eat. As my teeth serve their purpose I notice a half Moon between the window blinds.
On August 13th, 1947, a total solar eclipse had been recorded and was of course quite a show for observers from Earth. Total solar eclipses occur when the Moon appears to be larger than the Sun and blocks all of its light, effectively turning day into night. Tonight, this is not the case, however as time passes by and as my plate loses more and more food, I notice how as the half Moon sets and gets closer and closer to the horizon, its glow increases as it changes from white to yellow. Though the Sun itself is not visible, it has many ways of telling me it is still there.
I sit here watching as the Paper Moon itches closer to the Paper Sun, but eventually I find myself back on the Sculpture Earth when I begin to stare down the street. I see footsteps in the snow, but who they belong to I do not know. This is when I begin to daydream about a flood coming down this very street, taking the trees and the cars and buildings along with it. Natural disasters, they become a part of life.
After my plate is empty I get up to turn on the radio. Soft rhythmatic music that you could only find in dreams. Melodies that remind you that you could hear something over and over again, but still not hear it for what it really is. That you can see something, but never see it for what it really is. You can stare at a homeless man sleeping on a piece of cardboard for hours, but ultimately your eyes never capture the meaning of the image.
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You can spend centuries watching moons turn into different colors and never realize what it all means. Muscicide.
A man who seemed to always forget to comb his hair once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. That the echoes from the Moon, no matter how inaccurate or illogical they appeared to be, would ultimately stand their ground because they removed the shackles from our ankles and gave sight to those of us who could not see. Those of us who spent our days wandering through a forest, lost, with no place or purpose.
The yellow Moon is gone now, but I cannot stop thinking about it. This is when I begin to remember a dream I had two years ago. In the dream I am standing on the Moon, watching as a full Earth begins to rise.
I had been tasked with observing and recording the many phases of the earth for a period of four months, five if I enjoyed the pleasantry so much that I could not leave.
Every day I would see earthrise, and then earthset. There were days when I saw a full earth or a quarter earth, but most of the days I would see an earth in which one half was not visible. You could call it the dark side of the earth, if you were so inclined.
Rarest were the days in which the earth did not appear at all, hiding in complete darkness, void of all colors. I'd known it was there, somewhere out there, but the image failed me. On the days when the earth had gone fishing, I instead saw a smaller body that we had named Mercurie.
When we first found Mercurie, we believed that it and the Sun had a tidal locking, or a bond of some sort. We had theorized that Mercurie's rotational speed had matched exactly that of its orbital speed around the Sun, causing any observer who is standing on the Sun to always see the same side of Mercurie. In the 1960s, however, a scientist here debunked that theory. Those on the Sun who wished to see the dark side of Mercurie had been looking at it all along.
When my four months were up I would be assigned a new task, a much more interesting task. I was to be part of a crew that would dig into the the core of the moon to see what was hidden away so far below. As I am looking at my schedule, I see that it is Eviana who will be taking my place as the observer of the earth. I give her advice and tell her to pay attention to the far Mercurie, because it is more than it appears to be.
Now I am on the dark side of the room, looking through yet another set of blinds into a dark blue setting. I select a composition notebook at random and flip to a random page to find a dream titled “The Midnight Train To Baltimore.”
This one you could consider a classic as it is dated from eight years ago. For a reason that I have still not yet discovered, I had been struck with grief when I found myself awakened in the middle of the night on a train headed to Maryland. To the left and right 135 | THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
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of me were town buildings showing off their town's lights.
The train eventually reaches its destination and there I had decided, due to pure impulse, to get on a ship. A ship with a captain who had a fascination with humor, but more on that later.
The ship sails the Atlantic Ocean, and this is when I am met with the black silence I had spoken of so long ago. When I came to, I saw that I was traveling through a desert, searching for a chaotic place that I had yet to find. In my hand, I continually rotate two dice as I seek my fortune, but often times we mistake fortune for doom.
Part of the chaos theory will tell you that small changes in initial conditions can completely change an outcome. A person is born in an unnamed town and later in life becomes a cartoonist. The same exact person is born under the same exact circumstances, except for the fact that they are instead born in the next town over, and later in life, they become a real estate agent.
I've sometimes wondered if as we age and as we develop our identity, if this identity information is stored anywhere. Say, mainly through experiences and the external forces that affect us through out our lives, a person develops; a paranoid personality, becomes extremely athletic, is unusually prone to mental illness, prefers a certain kind of music, has a distaste for authority and has a tendency to keep their hair long, will all these properties be stored somewhere biologically as identity information?
As time goes by and we change through the years, is this same information constantly being overwritten? Updated? Can this same information, from a specific save, be copied to sperm or egg cells so that when fertilization is in process it considers all traits? Is there such a thing as an identity cell?
Sometimes chaos was the only thing that calmed me down. Knowing that there was no order in the universe, that everything was meaningless and without purpose, that in itself brought a kind of peace to my being.
Days had passed and eventually I came across a forbidden city that seemed to be closed off to the entire world. I entered through the gates, asking for bread and water as I had none remaining. They allowed me to enter, then they fed me. Not too long after, they brought me to the person who was in charge. They called his chamber a holy chamber, and that I was to never look at him directly.
For a while I stayed with him as he enjoyed my company, but in all that time I was prohibited from ever seeing who he really was. He asked me many things about the world from which I had come, but what seemed to interest him most was the idea of anarchy.
“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” I would say to him almost every day.
Initial hour; Mr. Freyman walks into a city police station for the second time in almost as many months. A uniformed officer, Tobey Garrison, brings him to a room 136 | THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
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where he awaits detectives Wilson and Rousseau.
Before Mr. Freyman can get comfortable, Rousseau walks in and greets him, then thanks him for finding the time to sit down with them. Freyman asks Rousseau where the other detective is, and Rousseau lets him know that Wilson will be with them shortly.
Rousseau offers Freyman a cigarette, however Freyman had quit years before and politely denies. As Rousseau attempts to create small talk, Wilson enters the room with a box of paperwork and closes the door behind him.
“Alright Freyman, we just want to get the facts straight so we can eliminate you as a suspect. That's all there is to it today,” Wilson says.
Freyman nods his head and this is when Wilson asks him to reiterate his account of the day when his vehicle died in the abandoned part of town.
The details remain the same, and while this is mostly good, it poses a problem according to the findings of detective Wilson. “You said someone came out and repaired your vehicle, but I have paperwork here that suggests otherwise. Not one person from the roadside assistance company has worked that area. Not in four years.” Wilson says.
“Maybe they have poor documenting skills,” Freyman replies. For the sake of the argument, Wilson accepts the possibility that they may indeed have sub-par documenting skills, but then tells Freyman that he looked deeper and found that not a single phone call was made from that area for the past sixteen months. That the last call that was actually made from way out there was recorded eight months prior to June 23rd, which was around the time that Freyman says he called the company.
“I don't know what to tell you, other than technology is not the most reliable of things,” Freyman says. Rousseau cuts in, “We actually went out there and tried to make a phone call, but we couldn't even get service.” Freyman shifts his focus to Rousseau and tells him that perhaps it was time to change his service.
Second hour; “Mr. Freyman, you saw what we found in that apartment. Why do you think those boys were killed?,” Rousseau asks. “Your guess is as good as mine,” Freyman replies.
Rousseau speaks, “Maybe it is. One guess that I do find interesting though is my partner's guess. He seems to think that this is more than just gang violence. More than just drug violence. He actually believes that there's a person out there going around trying to clean our streets. I laughed when I first heard the idea, and I told him that this city is a lot more simple than that. We aren't unique. Our sewers smell just as bad as any other city and we all pay taxes just the same, right? You're not a killer and this is all just a big waste of my time, his time and more importantly, your time. We want this to be over, but the problem is that it won't be until you start making sense.”
“Every thing that I have said has been truth, and I simply cannot account for 137 | THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
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technological errors or poor job skills,” Freyman replies.
Wilson interrupts, “What do you think God might do to the person who killed all those people?” he asks Freyman. Freyman shifts his focus to Wilson, “I don't know, you'd have to ask him.”
Third hour; time passes and more questions about both the crime scene and personal questions about Freyman are asked. Eventually both detectives leave Freyman in the room alone and converse outside. Wilson asks Rousseau if he noticed Freyman's fingers.
How he had his right thumb going back and forth between his right index finger and his right middle finger while he talked.
Wilson tells Rousseau that Freyman is compulsive, and that the movement of his fingers probably have something to do with the broken toothpicks he found.
A few minutes later Garrison brings take-out to Rousseau and tells him that he owes him twenty-four dollars and fifty cents.
Rousseau brings the food into the room and places it on the table and splits it between himself, Wilson and Freyman.
Final hour; “Did you kill them?,” Wilson asks Freyman. Freyman does not reply, so Wilson asks him a second time. Then a third time. “You suddenly don't want to talk?
Okay, I get it. You didn't kill them, but you're glad somebody did right? They were drug dealers, murderers, scumbags, and you're glad that someone washed off the streets even if it was only for a day. You're glad someone showed them that they weren't the only ones with guns, and there were consequences to be paid. Right? Look, we don't want a dog and pony show, we just want answers that don't collide with logic.”
Freyman remains silent for a while, but eventually asks detective Wilson if he is under arrest, or if he was free to leave. Wilson tells him that he is free to leave whenever he pleases, but that he has more questions to ask him. Wilson takes out several photos of identified victims and shows them to Freyman. At first, Freyman does not react, but when he sees a picture of Rondo Mac, he scratches his nose.
Rousseau notices this and asks him if he's ever met Rondo. Freyman grabs his long coat and says if he is not obligated by law to be here, and if he is not under arrest, that he would like to leave. “Wait wait, wait a minute,” Rousseau says, “look at the picture.”
Freyman does not look at the picture, but instead attempts to get up from his chair. “You leave now and think about how bad that will make you look,” Wilson says, “so how about we stay here and talk so we don't have any future trouble.”
Freyman looks at Wilson and then sits back down, “You want to talk? Alright, let's talk. Let's talk about your job. Both of your jobs. Let's talk about those red names on the whiteboard. Let's talk about your clearance rate. About the shit that smears the sidewalks.
The smell in the air that almost prevents you from breathing. Let's talk about racist cops.
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The games that go on in here and the politics that enforce them. Let's talk about Cody Cooper. Yeah, you remember him. That young kid who shot up that city school last year.
Let's talk about him and his dependence on drugs and your inability as enforcers of the law to keep those drugs off the streets. I didn't kill those boys, but you're right, I'm glad someone did and I wouldn't mind if the government sent them your paycheck.”
“Everybody saying he left town,” Omar's right hand man tells him. The long search for Rock continues but seems to be one of futility.
“That motherfucker. First thing anyone tells you is that you never rat. You never play sides,” Omar says, but before he can continue someone walks into the room and tells him about how Raheim wants a forum. He is surprised at first, but his better judgment prevails as he does not immediately deny the request.
The intruder leaves and Omar begins to speak to his right hand man again, “You been watchin' Spider?,” he asks. Right Hand lets him know that nothing is out of the ordinary, but even so, Omar insists that he watches both Spider and Derek closely, considering they were both friends of Rock, and that Rock's main motive may have been the unfortunate demise of Jamal.
“I like Spider, you know, he has his problems but he's okay. If it comes down to loyalty though, you ain't gonna find me in the defendant's chair. I'm not about to let someone else spin that little wheel they be spinning at the casinos, you know,” Omar Says.
The passage of time refrains and we find ourselves thrown into the middle of a discussion between the westerners and easterners, who are monitored by northerners. The two opposing parties, mainly Omar and Raheim, argue about dead soldiers and lost currency. Eventually the discussion ends with bridges left unbuilt and both men knowing that either or is lying about thirteen bodies.
My door sings soft notes and it doesn't take long to realize that the singer is Lynne. I don't bother to get up and simply tell her to come in.
When I see her I notice that she has a pink shirt on that I've never seen her wear before and a type of card in her hand. I ask her what it is and she tells me that it's for me.
I stand up and she hands it to me, and this of course is accompanied with one of her smiles, but it is also accompanied with yet another little feather in her eye.
The card is actually an envelope and it seems to have something drawn on it.
“Ladybugs?,” I ask her. “Ladybugs?,” she replies. “These little insects,” I say pointing to one of the drawings.
“Ladybirds,” she responds. What the hell is a ladybird? I'm pretty sure these things are ladybugs. Then again how many things actually have only one name.
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me a hug. Unfortunately for me, this is no normal hug; it seems to be a bit extended in time. After a while I put my arm around her and this is when she begins to thank me for being who I am. She thanks me for doing the things that I've done. Still in hug mode, this is when I lose the tunnel vision and for the first time actually see what she's gone through.
The sincerity of her gratitude can only be matched by her actions. She could have spent money on me, given me a gift or taken me somewhere, but instead she gives me a piece of her soul; little doodles and a small paragraph of writing. The sound of her closing my door reminds me of something a woman said over a century ago. How she said when you laugh, the world laughs with you, and when you weep, you weep alone.
I sat down and opened the envelope and found a page that seemed to be torn out of a diary. Such neat handwriting. Maybe I should ask her for lessons.
The letter is about how I stood up for her when she had no one else to. Not physically or mentally. And even though the action was fruitless, it said volumes. Much of the letter is to the effect that even though she went through hell, without it we would have never met. In a way, depending on what you believe I guess, that's true.
After reading the letter, tears begin to flow from my eyes and my heart begins to ache. I flail around the apartment until I reach the curtains of the window and I grab them, asking why. Why must I feel such intense emotion! I go to my kitchen and I take two cups and hold them against my cheeks so the tears don't soak the ground. After the tears stop, I put the cups in the fridge so I have something to drink later.
Lynne is an incredibly strange person, but I suppose you know that by now. I've never had anyone who lived a few feet from me write me a letter and then personally hand-deliver it to me, but I guess you could argue that the world is a more interesting place with people like her in it.
Holism is an idea that states that it is very difficult to explain a system by observing the parts of the system individually. That we should attempt to bounce parts off of one another and see the system for its entirety, and through this we can understand why a particular part of the system works a particular way.
Lynne has a part of her that is artificial, but the fake foot is as real to me as any other part of her. Maybe it's the foot that makes her who she is, or maybe it's who she is that gives the foot life.
I remember she had told me that a pink rose symbolized appreciation, gratefulness; it only made sense that this was the color she decided to wear when giving me the letter. At the end of the letter, it is signed your friend, L.J.P.
The letter reminds me of the purpose rose she had given me not too long ago. The enchantment she felt. It also reminds me of the time when her mother was visiting, and 140 | THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
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how Emily told me that even as a child, Lynne smiled all the time.
Although this rose is out of place, in an apartment where no type of flower would ever be found, I've come to realize that both this rose and Lynne herself are like a train that passes by in the night while you try to sleep. It's annoying for a long time, but eventually you get used to the sound and can sleep simply because it's constant. It may even become that trying to sleep without it is what's the hard part. You get so used to a life that was based on a true dream.
We have dictionaries so we can all agree on what a word means, and if you burn up the dictionary we get confused. The same thing applies to character, personality, identity, whatever you want to call it. If you set fire to who you are, or even if you just simply allow yourself to remain a mystery, other people will have a hard time agreeing on what makes you, you. When you don't open up and let people in, it causes confusion and this benefits no one. These are the words of a therapist I was suggested to see many years ago.
"You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the Grim Reaper."
Those are the last words of a murderer.
I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years. I've been over the edge for yonks. I guess I've always been mad, and I know that I've been mad, like the most of us, and it's very hard to explain why you're mad even if you're not mad. This is why I ended up asking the therapist about beauty. Perception. Subjectivity. Insanity.
I asked him why a man who did not have leprosy would always find a woman who did so unattractive; why after years have passed and after the very same man has contracted leprosy himself, why he now finds that same woman now bearable to look at, perhaps even possible to fall in love with. I ask him what part of the human psychology is at work.
He tells me that it doesn't have so much to do with psychology as it does sociology.
Maybe it's a stretch, but I don't think astronomy is too far from the discussion, either.
Pluto and Charon, two small bodies in our solar system, orbit around each other with the same rotating speed. This causes them to be tidally locked to one another and therefore the same side of either planet always faces the same side of the other planet.
It's like two thieves who don't trust one another; they constantly face each other with their hands on the top of their guns, circling around waiting for the other to make the first move.
In ways people are tidally locked to each other, showing only one astronomical fragment to those around us. If this astronomical fragment falls short of its glory, it of course will be reclassified.
“yo thanks for writing back. i wrote another quick story. i had northern novas (under space) in mind so you might see some same stuff. also i think i might be able to crash at 141 | THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
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my uncle's for a while. lives in the next state over. he used to write stuff too, just have to get in contact with him. anyway, busy days. ima let you get to it, peace.”
I begin reading Derek's tale and find that like so many other space exploratives, it is set in the distant future. A painter, a piper and a prisoner who have now been exiled from their nation are cursed with triple vision. In addition to their own sight, they have the sights of the other two they were banned with. This curse is done primarily to confuse the victim as to which sight is really theirs.
The curse, as annoying as it is, becomes a bit more interesting after the piper dies.
The painter and prisoner assumed the visions would subtract to two, however this was not the case. The painter and prisoner retained the same amount of visions and instead were gifted the ability to see the afterlife. Of course this was only the afterlife of a piper, and of course it was still his story, but the painter and the prisoner would find inspiration and freedom through it.
It is not a story of Heaven or Hell, or even Purgatory or Hades, but instead a story of roam. The piper flies like a spirit through all of the universe, discovering galaxies and planets, and portals to the unknown.
Derek's literature is captivating to say the least; I write down my dreams so my stories aren't exactly my stories. These things, he comes up with by himself. He has no one to teach him how to write, or even how to be creative, but if you asked me, I'd tell you that these were things that mostly came from within.
Detective Fields and detective Samson walk onto a shoreline that has temporarily been turned into a burial ground. Out from the waters washed out the body of Wayne Bradshaw, known mostly to his peers as Buckweed.
The two detectives walk closer to the crime scene and find the body surrounded by litter that others had left behind. Samson takes a final sip from his cup of coffee and tosses the cup alongside all the other garbage and waste that populate the shoreline.
“What's one more cup?,” Fields asks.
Samson takes out a carton of cigarettes and Fields tells him to “pass him a square.”
Samson lights both cigarettes and it's not too long until both detectives begin scanning the nearby area. They find nothing and eventually sergeant Chavez calls them back to the car.
“Get shot, wash up with all the other garbage,” Samson says on the way back to the car. Detective Fields flicks his cigarette onto the pavement, “It's an unfriendly game Michael.”
On the other side of town, Maya Jackson stares at a board full of individuals who may be players in this said game. Terrell, otherwise known as Rock, has been declared “MIA.”
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as deceased. Wallace has been re-ranked as an underaged gunman. Deion Jennings is now known to be second in command and does not have nearly as blank a criminal record as Omar Robinson.
Mya now removes Derek's current photograph from the board and replaces it with an updated photograph. A photograph depicting Derek standing outside a six-story apartment building, as he waits for an associate to drop new product from a fifth-floor window.
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Chapter 65
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1:2:7:65
SILVIO Parker comes home to find his mother-in-law, Emily, deep asleep while his newly wedded wife and high school sweetheart, Lynnette, gets ready for their night out.
“How'd it go?,” Silvio asks her. Earlier in the day Lynnette was to interview for a job at a local flower shop. Despite her lack of knowledge, the interviewer would recognize her love for plants and would eventually tell her she was hired.
After some time, the couple leave the apartment and drive to a restaurant not too far from where they are now. Lynnette admires the scenery and the lights as they drive pass, and even though she's seen the vision a thousand times before, she can't help but want to go back home and paint the memory.
A couple of hours later, the pair return home and Silvio tells her about how excited he is that they will be having a baby, and sooner or later they lay down to sleep.
Days pass and now Lynnette is headed to her first day of work. She runs through a harsh and bitter snowstorm assuming she will be late, but strangely finds that she is early.
She stomps both feet on the mat before she enters and finally begins her first day.
When the time comes for her break, she goes into the backroom and eats her lunch, but also takes a few minutes to scribble something into her current diary notebook, humorously nicknamed by her, “Diaria.”
12/9 - Today is my first day working a job I think I might actually like. My trainer is very nice and is teaching me all sorts of things. Maybe I can teach you when your old enough. Today was especially special to me because I also got to plant my first flower.
They are anthurium flowers and I can't wait to see how they grow. Before this I only read about how to do it, and its so different when you actually get to do it yourself... Your so small right now but I can't tell you how much I love you. Sometimes I get overwhelmed just by the thought of you, and it scares me a little bit. I don't know if I'm the only one, but sometimes I feel like I'm too sensitive. People have no idea how much a small simple smile can change my day. They are so small, but I feel changes in my body when someone says hi to me, or gives me a hug. I feel so much, sometimes I don't know if its a good or a bad thing. Your father and I have already decided on your name. Sara, for a girl, and Daniel, for a boy. I can't wait to show you the world. Love, your mom, Lynnette Jones Parker.
Today, I am a mailman. Not only have I received mail for one Tao Cheng, I have also received mail for someone in the next fucking building.
I open the front door to the apartment building and head over to the adjacent property and make my way in. About twenty-four surnames total, but I only have to look through 144 | ANTHOLOGY COMPLEX, THE
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several of them before I find Gary Miller's buzzer.
I press the buzzer for about a second because you never know with these things.
Sometimes they work like a doorbell with a single chime, other times they ring in your ear for as long as you hold it down. I hate that sound, and I'm sure Gary does as well.
I wait for a while, but Mr. Miller never responds. Who is it never comes. Who does come, however, is Lynn's friend. A neighbor I had seen many times before but never took the time to talk to. Last I heard, she had lost her car, but every now and then Lynne was able to give her a ride to work.
When she gets closer I recognize her two children, the little rascals who actually believed they could defeat me in a snowball fight.
She introduces herself to me, telling me her name was Olya and how she had heard so much about me. You could guess from who. They'd become friends and very often Lynne would take herself and her children over to their place of residence.
I tell her about Gary Miller and she does me the favor of taking the mail and letting me know that she will make sure it gets to him. “Tell Lynne I said hi.” A messenger of words, I am.
When I get back to my apartment building I head for Tao's apartment to see if anyone's home. Tao's cousin, Tian, eventually answers and I tell him about the mix-up.
His words stumble a little, but he finds the sentence that thanks me. That's one thing I always liked about Tian. Maybe it was because his English wasn't as good as Tao's, or maybe it was because he was always busy, but he always seemed to keep to himself, and he kept his words short and sweet and to the point.
After working for the postal service I find myself finally back in my own apartment searching for the remote. I look everywhere but it isn't until I look under the couch that I find a remnant of my past. A receipt from Chase Mart with Julia as the cashier.
One thing she always seemed to stress in her writing was not to use big words, but to use big ideas. To forgo complex sentence structures and to simplify anything she could.
Maybe the composition would seem bland, and sometimes even underwhelming, but I suppose “every book is wrong for someone.” Some words I had seen way back when on a poster while in her apartment.
I wonder what she's doing now. What she did yesterday. I wonder if she has relapsed.
Made her way around the circle to find that she is back where she started. Or, I wonder if instead, she has found her escape velocity and is far away from where she used to call home. Gone and far away from this place.
I stare at her name, thinking of the letters that print the paper. We all know how powerful words can be, but sometimes you don't truly realize something about yourself until after you've written it down or said it out loud. I crumple the receipt and throw it 145 | ANTHOLOGY COMPLEX, THE
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into the garbage. That void black space. Years pass, and even now, all the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.
An hour goes by and the anthologist finds a documentary on the television about color blindness. Another hour goes by and it isn't too long until I hear something outside.
Sarah and David playing with Olya's two sons. With an unusual green day-moon high over head, I watch as the four play with what snow remains from the winter which was fast ascending.
Schools, workplaces, prisons, divisions, institutions like these all call for socialization. In school, Sarah and David are surely receiving an education, but even moreso they are developing the ability to socialize. Teachers, classmates and the homework to be done. I think of Lynne, of David, of Sarah, and then I think of their new friends.
We socialize to better understand the world we live in and the people around us, and through this, we can become contributing members to society, whether the contribution be finding a cure to a disease or giving a struggling neighbor a ride to work. Of course, contribution to society has a flip side; a bump in the night. Socializing that leads to disillusionment. Dream wonders that turn into night terrors. This corrosion that rots and smells something wicked just beneath my bed.
It seems there are no simple answers. Do right and only good can be withdrawn, but I'm not sure if this is truth. Do wrong and only bad can be withdrawn, but I'm not sure if this is untruth.
When you try to watch the snow fall, you sit back and watch all the little pieces, but you've found that when you watch one little piece, every thing around it seems to slow down. Nothing has really changed, not speed or direction, not anything except perspective, but that alone can make all the difference.
Because of the complexity of a snowfall and all the pieces that make it, each one you watch will be different in some way or another. This seems to pair with the human genome. A countless amount of things that identify us. Pieces that alone, may leave clues, but when winded together to see in its entirety, tell a story.
Imagine all the different windows that view this snowfall; all the different angles, the different levels of blindness, even color blindness, the varying degrees of a person's ability of perceive depth, the rods and cones and their ability to convert light, all these different things that will make an already unique snowfall even more subjective to his or her senses. Relativity is as real as the knife that stabs you in the back.
Dreams ago I found myself in a place where only the privileged wore shoes. In the dream I woke up to find that I had given away my shoes so I would be able to walk more freely. I was not one to die someone else's death.
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Kathy and Runa traverse through the mall and sometime later enter a bookshop. Or bookstore. Whatever. They enter the store with a plan to buy at least two novels to continue their reading.
Runa tells her that she wants to browse the fantasy section of the store, but Kathy says she was never one for magicians and wizards. They end up parting ways and Kathy soon finds herself in the contemporary fiction department.
Runa looks through a few novels but doesn't find anything she likes so it's not too long until she ends up in the horror section, but we soon pass again from horror to humor.
On the other side of the store, Kathy walks through an aisle and notices a non-fiction book about the past of the Chicago White Sox, a baseball team. She walks up to it and looks at the price then decides to purchase it, at the same time wondering if her son would be interested in it.
Back to the other side, Runa walks across an aisle and enters the land of poetry. While she did love the subject itself, she figures it would be wiser to stick to prose and continues further down into a place of short stories.
Kathy leaves the sports section and bumps into Runa and asks her if she's found anything. Runa says no, then asks her what she has in her hand, to which Kathy explains that it was to be a gift for Joe when he wakes up.
Kathy then continues on and eventually reaches romance. She looks through several novels and comes across “The 27 Thanksgivings,” and begins to read through.
Chapter One; Page 1: Thanksgivings weren't always hard for the Holloways, in fact, in the early years they often embraced relatives they would only see once or twice that year. The home was lively, lovely even, and all around, lacey. Twenty-seven thanksgivings, but with each Thanksgiving times got harder. Hurtful. Hasty even. Mister and Misses Holloway would collect their damaging vocabulary throughout the year only to express them during Thanksgivings, or at the very least days surrounding the holiday.
It wasn't always like this, though, there was indeed a time when times were swell. This, of course, brings us to the very first Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving that started it all...
Runa passes mythology and turns into audiobooks, but spends absolutely no time and soon leaves to find mystery. The first novel she picks up, “The Lady Misdress,” sounds interesting as she reads through.
Episode One; Page 1: In a super dark attic located in a forgotten home on a crackly street there is a gown in a golden chest. But, no one has been to the house, in years, so no one knows it exists. But, one year, a young couple buys the house and the wife wanders into the attic and sees the gown. She takes it out of the big golden chest and tries it on, then takes it off and returns to her husband and tells him about it. The next day, when she goes to work, she notices her male co-workers acting strange when around her. She 147 | ANTHOLOGY COMPLEX, THE
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senses a type of lust from them. At the same time, when she comes back home, she senses that her husband is no longer attracted to her. But, things get even weirder when she is walking down the street and notices that every man can't stop looking at her...
Not too long after, the two find each other and walk to the checkout to purchase a total of three books. Finally they enter back into the mall and before time knows it, they spot a food court.
The anthology complex. It plagues your thoughts like a viral infection. Sure, there are some who have a natural immunity to certain viruses, and there are others who eventually build and develop an immunity, but for all of the others, this same virus enters your being through your thoughts and makes it its home.
You're walking home from school one day and you see a child get hit by a car and die instantly. In your mind, you replay the video over and over again, to the point where there is even a version of the footage where you are able to save the child. You rearrange it 'till you're sane.
On the news today there is a story about corruption. A company franchise that has been taking advantage of its entry level employees. Call it capitalistic intuition, sophisticated slavery, it doesn't matter, at the end of the day it's the same thing and it's always been here. It reminds you that slavery has nothing to do with race and every thing to do with class.
People often lose their most fundamental rights to life, but I'm wondering if these rights actually exist. Are there any truly immutable laws? We declare these laws knowing that over time, they may change, which is almost a direct insult to the nature of laws themselves. I guess it's always good caution to remember that you are not entitled to anything.
A year and fifteen days ago, I had this dream. My partner and I park our van in the New York City Hall parking lot. Our plan was to employ reconnaissance to the entire building to gain a better understanding of its infrastructure, but more importantly, to figure out how to get into the mayor's office.
We put on our electrician suits and walk through a crowd of protesters. Dissatisfied with the work of the mayor, they voice their concerns, but how often does this method actually work. “Socialism Is Evolution,” one of the many signs I'd seen.
We get to the front desk of City Hall and explain to the receptionist that we were here to repair a power failure. Maybe in those words.
We gain access into the building and begin our logging for a future revisit. Poster paper is never enough. Words are never enough. How can you beat someone at chess if you allow them to move your pieces for you. We never held picket signs, we held shotguns. We never waved words in the air, we fired rounds into ceilings. We found that 148 | ANTHOLOGY COMPLEX, THE
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these methods were the ones that were most effective at gaining someone's attention.
I had just finished taking David to Chase Mart to buy some supplies he needed for school when we'd see Lynne drive into the parking lot. We wait for her to exit the car, still in uniform and still attached to her name tag, my mind begs me to ask her how her day went when I see an uncommon straight face.
We walk into the building and enter her home where we find Sarah, Alondra and Anthony. Lynne attempts to relieve Alondra of her duties, but Alondra requests to stay, claiming she was close to beating David's high score in a game of puzzles and blocks.