Anthology Complex VII by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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I think there is a part of us all that is more drawn to the familiar than the unique.
Maybe it makes us comfortable because we know it, because the road we have traveled down is aided by memories on the lovemap.
I was going to say something but the elevator stopped and a pair of a man and a woman walked in. When we hit the bottom, we all four walked out and told one another to have a good day.
Lynne and I walked toward the large laundry room where we saw only a few other people. We chose a washer but after a while of looking at it, I gave up and let her try to figure out how to use these new technological machines. All of the others were of the 92 | KING DAVID
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older variety but were currently in use. When she got it, she did the same for another washer and placed all of the clothes between two of them.
Returning to the elevator, we saw a new face with whom we took the elevator with.
They got off at the 15th floor and then we at the 22nd. I wonder how many months it will take until I have seen everyone who currently lives in this building.
Entering her apartment we now heard music playing from their playlist and we saw Sara who was partaking in her artistic endeavors half of an hour earlier than requested by her mother. Sara chose cosmetics and fashion, and currently she was trying to apply mascara to her eyelashes. We also learned that David had started early too, and was in the courtyard taking pictures of the scenery with his camera.
Lynne went off somewhere and I went to her desk when I saw her flowerbook on the ledge. Flipping through to the last page that had a flower, I saw one that looked like an ordinary flower. I assumed maybe it wasn't a finished drawing, but when I saw her again I asked and she told me that it was indeed finished. I asked her what the fusion was for this one because it looked to be a normal flower, then she told me to look more closely.
I looked more closely and only shrugged. “You'll see it when you see it,” she said walking away. I continued to look at it but could see nothing past the design.
I flipped back one page to see another flower. This flower seemed to depict a real flowerhead but a plastic flowerstem. I flipped back another page. This flower seemed to be made of fire. When I flipped back to the mystery flower, that's when I finally saw it. I had to look at the designs of her other flowers to see what was different about this one.
The leaves on the other flowers lacked any detail, they were simple leaves with simple lines. But the leaves on the mystery flower were a bit more detailed and more realistic, and seemed to be lines of lightning. Indeed, leaves like lightning. And it was funny, that the reason this flower looked ordinary was because it was realistic, but when realizing that the leaves lines looked lightning-like, I saw that this flower was every bit as unique as the others.
When she came back I told her that I had gotten it. “These lightning leaves are hidden so well and so subtly because they are actually more realistic than the leaves on your others.” She told me good job. I swear to God if she “good jobs” me one more time I'm going to burn this entire flowerbook.
Closing the book meant the start of a new song. This was a rap song I had heard many times before, and I'm sure they had too, and it was perhaps by chance that Dave walked through the door, camera in hand. Walking past me I followed him with my eyes until it led me to Sara, who was now choosing between which lipstick color she wanted to put on.
Internally, we were all waiting for our favorite part of the song which assigned to 93 | KING DAVID
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each of us a role. And when it came, we could hear Lynne rapping from inside the bathroom, “Show me some love,” and I picked up where she left off, “I'ma show it right back,” then came Sara, “I know a tight track,” and David ended it, “So I throw it like that.”
A few minutes later David walk toward Sara and looked at her and the makeup kit on the table. “David chapter 2 verse 33, thou shalt choose the dark red lipstick over the bright red lipstick.” Sara looked up at him with a disrespected bright-red lipstick wearing face, “Sarah chapter 2 verse 33, shut your dumbass up.” I laughed out loud, and soon David walked away.
Staring at Sara during her artistic endeavor meant the end of an old song. Currently she was adorning her hair with an angel-wings designed tassel hair clip, but when I noticed that she was struggling to put it on, I went behind her to fix it for her. “Thank you, Spookie,” she said as I went to sit on the window ledge near her. I lifted my legs up onto the ledge and rested my back against the wall and looked out into the dark blue setting winter Sun of San Rashida.
Sarah was becoming her own little rose, who was now almost the same size of her mother rose. When I walked up to her to help her with the angel-wings, a lifted shirt allowed me to notice three small stretch-marks on her hip. They were almost identical to stretch-marks I have seen on Lynne's hips. Though she was in many ways similar to her mother, she was blossoming like a flower into her own identity, and every choice she made on this artistic endeavor forged her own unique beauty.
In the beginning, there were always so many powerful things I felt about Lynne but was always too shy to tell her. Things I wish I had said to her when I felt it in the moment. I've since made up for those moments, but I will not make the same mistake with Sarah.
“I think the bright-red lipstick was a good idear,” I told her. She laughed at the joke while putting on small earrings. “But in all seriousness, you look as pretty as the sunset.”
She laughed again and said thank you in an uncomfortable way. Then she got up, put her hands on the table, looked at me, and told me it was now time for her outfit. She walked into her room and I assumed the outfit was the final piece of the puzzle.
In her disappearance was the reappearance of the mother sunset. I asked her where Sarah got all these makeup things and jewelry and whatnot from, and she told me that she was paying her for cooking dinner. That made sense.
Lynne sat on the other end of the window ledge and placed her legs upon it like I did mine so that our feets were touching. When she did this, a new song came upon us, and it was a song of the classic rock variety.
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fallen trees after that thunderstorm,” she said excitingly. “I remember,” I told her.
She went to say that perhaps if the family had a vehicle, we could take those long rides in the night and it would be so lovely. Of course she said this in a sarcastic manner, then followed up with the idea that I should go running with her. “I always wanted to run at night, if you came with me it would be possible.” “So I could get robbed with you?,” I laughed. But I thought about it. At three in the morning, around here, there is basically no one outside. I wouldn't mind to run and walk in the night with her after half of the city has gone to sleep. “Let's try it,” I said.
“My knee has been bothering me a little bit for the past couple days, but as soon as it feels better, I swear I will let you know,” she finished.
As soon as she finished, Dave came out of his room, laptop in hand, and began walking toward us.
We end up looking over all of the photographs he had taken in the courtyard, most of which concerned Brian and Brigid Flanagan. He had taken shots from different angles, different zooms and incorporated different filters. “These are beautiful!,” Lynne exclaimed. Motherfucker wasn't that bad.
The styles of his pictures brought questions to my mind. You would think the king and queen would have exciting lives, but I wonder exactly how exciting their lives were.
Public moments extracted for all to see always overshadow the private moments with only a few eyes to observe. To life, there is rarely ever plot, just mundane moments one after another with deep thought.
This thought came along with Sarah, who now exited her room for us all to see her blouse and skirt. “Oh wow!,” Lynne walked toward her daughter. Sarah did the twirl and twirl so we could all see.
Dave told us to wait a moment and walked into his room and came back with his camera. As he started taking pictures of Sara, she began posing. “Smashing!,” Dave said aloud. He must have taken twenty photos by the time it was all done. And then suddenly he pointed the camera in the direction of Lynne and I. After the first snap, Lynne came closer to me and gave me a rough side-hug, and there went the second snap.
When he went to take the third snap, he paused, saying “Why don't you smile this time, tough guy.” I didn't smile but he took it anyway, and when he turned around I walked up to him and used my leg to gently push his body forward, saying “Remember when you hit me in the head with the flashlight, you thought I forgot about that shit?”, but he suddenly lost balance and landed face first into the floor, his buttocks sticking out.
I was surprised. I think everyone including David was. When he got up, he gave me a strange look, and then gave his mom a strange look, and ran into his room leaving his door opened.
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“You should probably run. Like right now,” Lynne suggested. I began walking for the door when I saw David running toward me with a metal baseball bat his in hands. I bolted out of their apartment and began running for the stairs but tripped over something and onto the ground.
Turning around, I put my arms up in defense as David walked over to me, angry as Hell that I had embarrassed him.
With his arms set up to swing the bat, he began speaking with a fury. “Bitch ass nigga! I don't care if you're retarded in the head! You touch me again I'll fuck you up! I will do some biblical shit to your ass!” He then turned around and began to walk back to the apartment, and before entering, he said one final thing to me. “If you come back on my floor, you better come strapped.”
As he walked into the apartment Lynne walked out laughing. I got up and asked her if that was my metal baseball bat. I thought I had lost it but somehow he must have found it during the move.
“Come on bitch ass nigga,” she said walking toward the elevator, “help me put the clothes in the dryers.”
We caught an elevator which had a teenage boy in it who got off on the 5th floor.
After he left and left us alone, Lynne said “I'm not as quiet as you, and I know I come off as colorful, but I'm shy as well. I'm quiet but believe me, my mind is loud.” “Well David called me retarded, so I guess we have two handicapped people in the family now.” As the elevator opened for the ground floor, she nearly smacked me, and as she walked out I slapped her bottom. Your disability is a tool for great ability.
As we walked to the laundry room, my mind wandered... When men are angry and become wrathful, many times it is a fury without mercy; too often we see this sort of fallible human anger, and not the anger of gods or kings.
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Chapter 39
REIGN IN HELL
3:1:4:39
ROCK hobbled into the city knowing that every hour that passed by, the sum of the bounty increased in price. As he began to walk across the street, a police vehicle drove past him, and then began to back up. Stopping, Rock awaited the vehicle, but suddenly a bullet whizzed past between himself and the police car. When he saw this he took cover behind the vehicle, and the next bullet went through the police car's windshield and into the police officer's head. A hail of bullets drove themselves into the police vehicle's windshield, but the assassin never saw Rock stealthy enter the car itself.
Rock began driving, his head down to avoid headshots, but the assassin suddenly began shooting at his tires, popping one, and in making a left turn, Rock drove the disabled vehicle down an alley. The time soon came when, much like his own disability, the vehicle could not continue. Abandoning the car, Rock had driven far enough to where he had planned to go before the interruption of the assassin. It was the apartment of an old friend; a male nurse who lived with his daughter in Ocidico and who had helped Rock once in the past, but because of Rock's lifestyle, had cut him out entirely and wanted nothing to do with him.
Seeing as the apartment was on the ground floor, Rock went to one of its windows and smashed it into pieces with his pistol and then unlocked it. Climbing inside, a child suddenly appeared before Rock, and then soon after her father.
Rock pointed the gun at the father and told him that he wasn't going to hurt them. He insisted he only needed a small bit of help and he would be gone soon. Seth complied completely when he heard what Rock requested. He was to go to his hospital and retrieve items which would allow him to tend to his leg and treat his wounds, and in the time he would take to retrieve these items, he would watch over Seth's daughter.
When Seth returned with the items, he himself tended to Rock's wounds, but also warned him that he needed rest and would not be able to continue this way. Now Rock had confessed to Seth, telling him of the bounty on his head, and asked him if he had relatives he could stay with, seeing as the current location was a danger to Seth and his daughter. Seth infact did have a place to stay, and seeing as his own life and his daughter's life was in danger, he left the apartment immediately, grabbing anything that was important to him, and knowing that he could never return.
Rock rested in the apartment for days, walking around with a single crutch and eating the small amount of food Seth had left behind.
One night it began to rain and thunder in Ocidico City as Rock lay wide awake on a bed. Every hour he was in Ocidico, it would be harder and harder to get out. The army of 97 | REIGN IN HELL
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bounty hunters grew every day that he wasted recovering. And so in the night, as a raging thunderstorm passed through the city which came from San Rashida, Rock exited the apartment and continued his journey out of the desolate city.
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Chapter 40
HELLRAIN
3:1:4:40
IN the beginning there was darkness; the darkness did not radiate like the light we would soon create, it was its opposition; where light conquered darkness siphoned, and this opposite was like a creator to all things; if there was no universe, then there was a universe, and if there was no universe, then there was a universe; it was a simple hypothetic construct that I and God devised; if it does, then it doesn't, if it doesn't, then it does; and in knowing that the darkness, that nothingness, was far greater than anything else we began the process of creating something, of bringing forth light, and this dynamic created the illusion of dualities; if there was purpose, then there was also non-purpose, if there was meaning, then there was non-meaning; and so while darkness came first, there was a tiny spec of light, but the imbalance was so great and it was up to I and God to restore this balance through intelligence as we were both carefully selected intelligent beings; we began with the simple frame of the universe and after many thousands of years we had created our marvelous almost-finished project, it was now not as greatly imbalanced, once the darkness was nearly all of existence but now had been reduced by a quarter; in this light there was life as opposed to death, there was good as opposed to evil, there was beauty as opposed to horror, there was truth as opposed to lies; and within this tiny universe we had constructed the plan for lifeforms, beings who would be programmed to continue the siphoning from the darkness even long after I and God had died, beings that they themselves would become intelligent and fatefully bring balance between the dark and light each ion; it was indeed to bring balance the project was perceived in the first place, a concept that the intelligent lifeforms will eventually see as thermodynamic equilibrium, and the more consciousness the lifeform gains the more complex the universe will become, and through this the more it will siphon from that dark world; the more aware they become of their existence, the weaker nothingness will become, for purpose fuels non-purpose and meaning fuels non-meaning; this to be said that one cannot exist without the other, for I could not exist without God, and God could not exist without me; but in our trials I and God saw that we had made errors in the project and one of the few solutions was to introduce freewill into that fateful conquering; I disagreed with God, explaining that a freewill given to the lifeforms could not guarantee existential development and a powerful need for the gaining of knowledge, which would be required for the lifeforce to bring balance between all things dark and light; and so God has played with dice and has put his faith in man, just as I have predicted that man will put his faith in God; the humans do not know that those who are above I and God are merely predictors themselves, they are them who have predicted the creation of I and 99 | HELLRAIN
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God, and to this vein has made I and God to seem as theories or hypotheticals to an unreal and unnatural world; the same predicators who must have created this city I am in now, a firery landscape endangered by lakes of fire, by hellrain that falls from uphigh, by hellthunder that strikes every minute, buildings that reach into the higher levels of death and who will help to take me where I am going; though I must rest now because of my injuries, I will continue my journey out of Acidica but soon; and when I escape I will bring sin and evil and darkness into the new world, and the place that I have left shall be become known as Hell.
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(3:1 / 7 / VII)
Part 5
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 41
STONER
3:1:5:41
AT one a.m. I awoke from a dream. It was one of those military dreams that included the deranged individual who I came to know as Harven. At this current juncture, I did not know that he was insane, or suffered from the dark triad, and this tells me that it had been the beginning of our friendship and possibly toward the beginning of the war. Harven and I had shared a bunkbed, he on bottom, and there were many times I would jump off the top of mine to find him gazing at the bottom of my bed. It was like a stoner's gaze; absent-minded, deep, dark, sometimes even genius.
His gaze reminded me of my own, more accurately of the wife I had back home who used to tell me she loved the way I would deeply stare into her. The thought of her made me sad, because I realized now that I was missing her deeply. I had come to war for a break from her, and now I was missing her and wanted to take a break from war.
When the dream shifted, Harven and I were in the back area of a military vehicle playing a game of cards with a few other soldiers. Sometime into the game, we came to a sudden stop, but we didn't think much of it. When we began to hear banging on perhaps a glass window, we all paused for a moment. After the pause, the metal window slider was opened and a grenade was thrown threw it. Panicking, Harven went for it but missed, and the explosion was enough to wake me up.
This was a dream that I knew I would eventually have because many years ago I pieced the dreams together and knew that this was the missing piece to one of my dreams. I knew that eventually, from the passenger's perspective, that while playing cards in the back of the vehicle, a grenade would come flying through to kill all of us. With so many years of dream tracking, these are some of the skills you build. If only dream investigation were a profession.
Waking up, the same feeling of missing lingered within me. My erection did not hide the fact but highlighted it. I stayed awake for a long while, but I could never fall asleep and it never went away. I thought about watching a free movie called Somber Holiday but I didn't. I can partially see outside the large window in the living room from here; a highlighted blueness atmosphere of a dark Rashidian city night.
I took my phone and sent Lynne a message, seeing if she was awake. She was. I asked her if she would come downstairs. She did. Opening the door with her keys, walking through the living room, in the glowy blue darkness I saw her silhouette and the thick blanket she had caped around her body.
She came closer and laid on the bed next to me. “Oh, so you miss me, huh? So now you know how it feels.” “I am only missing you temporarily,” she said in a deep voice to 101 | STONER
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mimic me. But when she went to hug my body and raised her leg onto me, she felt it. She looked into my eyes and then asked, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” I grabbed her side and forced her body onto mine, and then forced part of my body into part of hers. As she wrapped her arms around my neck I wrapped my arms around her back. She drew her face nearer to mine and our tongues went with half the rhythm of our genitalia. When she took her tongue out of my mouth she began panting and moaning and staring deeply into me as her mouth gaped, and when she brought her face back down onto mine, our foreheads bonded, I went harder into her and she went harder into me until finally we painted poetry. Eight times later her head slid to the side of mine and I could see that same blue city in the night.
“I want to sleep with it in me,” she whispered to me. I didn't respond. I don't know what you would say to something like that. The next words came again after a minute and were again hers. “How come you never gave me a cute petname?” “What do you want one for? I hate when you guys call me Spookie.” She laughed. “What do you want me to call you?” “I don't decide that, that's the point of nicknames. You can't give yourself one.”
Deija was out. I thought about what else I could call her. “Rose?” “Is that seriously the best you could come up with?” “Princess?” “Come on, man. I thought you were more creative than that...”
“Honey? Sweetie? Babe?” “If you call me honey or sweetie or babe I will have to rethink our relationship. I might wonder if I married the wrong person.” “Good because if I had to call you any of those I would hang myself.” “Good, then,” she laughed and waited.
She still resting on me, my hand rested on her butt. For that moment I felt nothing else and the only thing that I knew for sure that was real was her booty.
I told her that I had thought of something. Suddenly she sat up a bit and looked at me, waiting impatiently. And then I finally said it outloud, hoping it would sound just as good as it did in my head. “Lashes.”
I could see her thinking but the gaze of her eyes into mine told me already that she loved it. “Use it in a sentence,” she said excitedly.
“Lashes, where'd you put the phone bill?” I could see heart shapes form above her head. “Do it again.” “...I'll be home soon lashes.” This time she showed excitement through a flushed chest. And very soon after she laid back down onto me and I felt her warm breasts against my chest. She wrapped her arms around my neck and put her face into my neck. “It probably won't stick, though, I'm too used to just calling you Lynne by now.” “It's fine,” she said happily. As she eventually fell asleep on me, I now again had the view of the blue city.
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Do you think barbers dislike people with long hair? Do they like people with short hair? A person with short hair might mean they visit the barber and are potential clients, but not at the present moment. A person with long hair perhaps doesn't visit the barber and is not a potential client, but they are more of a potential client than the person with short hair.
There's always that notion that people want what they can't have, and then as soon as they have it they don't want it anymore. Is Lynne more valuable to me when I don't have her? And when I do have more access to her whenever I want, is she less value? If I had called her for the twenty-second night in a row to come downstairs to please me, she would probably find it an annoyance and might even reject the idea, but this was the first night and she knows tomorrow night I may disappear for months, and this I'm sure is the reason she came running down.
And I know if I was ever restricted from seeing her for large moments at a time, when I came back and saw her, I know that I would show her some love.
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Chapter 42
SOMBER HOLIDAY
3:1:5:42
IT was in my reluctance to forgive that I was punished by the god of paradox. In consequence, I am now slow to judgement, and by this novel policy even slower to attach and accuse the recently damned to a mortal sin. And yet I've realized that this constant mode of sympathetic behavior can be a burden; much more a burden than the ease that comes with bestowing unmethodical blame onto whosoever and whatsoever whom not meet the sum equation and is not securely set in one's idealistic landscapes.
When I returned home from the city last autumn after receiving communication that the arrest, trial and execution was done in error, I felt that irony pierce through my hardened heart; the scathing heart which prior was impenetrable was now but an organ that played sad piano. Only a month later did my rigid stance on capital punishment overturn, and I felt that I wanted the world to configure toward the same novel policy of slow judgement that I had only just inherited; I wanted no one to endure that towering level of unrest, where I found myself frantically and manically searching for the first sunrise after one hundred dark days. That darkness was the figure I paid for my judgement, and I've deduced that when you imprison someone, you have only just begun the fast wheels of imprisoning yourself as one becomes condensed by the adumbrative becloudings of myopia.
Only he, the man who granted four years of his life, and then his life itself for this story, can be without judgement. He, who has both made my existence after that day wretched and purposeful, turbulent yet serene, shall never again be judged by me. He was the only truly innocent individual of this tribulation and the rest of us miserably guilty.
Guilty in morality, in science, in law, and most of all, guilty in character. And yet when this story burgeoned four years ago, it was in reverse. Perhaps he may have been guilty of a number of other charges, but he was not guilty of the charge that annexed his life.
Though it had been months after the discovery that he was indeed innocent, I had not yet summed up the valor to address his family. I had not the valor to re-examine the entirety of his life, for in doing so would prove the fallibility of my own judgement, but this was a debt I now owed to him for his missing years. And on a marked day in July, I paid what I could of that innumerable debt. I carried the figure which I owed to his name, carried it right up the front steps of his mother's home and solemnly knocked. And with a clemency I had not shown her son she allowed me to enter. And for the residual days of that month I learned of his life through photographs and letters. As a result, I came to the revelation that despite his murder, I use that word deliberately, he found progression in the end. It was the lot of us, and the rest of the world, beaming down upon him like the 104 | SOMBER HOLIDAY
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bright full Moon as a single scrutinizing eye through dark clouds, a watchful cataract in his unblinkable nightmare of confusion; it was we who were the culpable all along the inauguration of this unnatural account.
After four years I still recall the first time I saw him, that curious sighting, only as a rare and mysteriously enigmatic experience; he had been restrained and was steered out of the courthouse, along a crowd of spectators, and halted upon a police automobile.
There he stood, dreaming melancholy, he made contact with not one person in the eye and concentrated only in a slanted eastward direction. Dancing on the cement and in the corner of my eye was the silhouette of what may have been a feral creature, but my gaze was set solely on the prisoner, whose eyes seemed something visionary. Judging, through memory, by his indifference to everyone around him, and considering the fact that he was never once present at his own trial, I have it in my mind that he lived on the island of the exiles, but despite my distance from him I believe I saw him recoil from a reporter. Under the ruse of instinct I shifted through two onlookers and positioned myself to see what he saw, but found nothing more than an American flag waving in the distance, where upon my classifying eye it ceased to be proud as the wind died down and it fell wavering in cowardice. When I turned to look back for the prisoner, he was no longer there; the police automobile had begun transport, and I was restless again within the charged mob unbecoming.
However funereal might be his future as a convicted murderer, as I read through and became lost in time in the letters he sent home from death-row, I understood that he was at present an eccentric man without a past. Undeniably an individual without a perceptible tale, and in his heart was the ceaselessness of an almost inexplicable quality.
When he spoke of his time in the war as a pathfinder, it was evident that his current condition as a prisoner of negligence influenced his memory. And it was not just that time that was distorted in his mind, his entire universe, held together by crossroad strings of dementia, could never be accurately known to him as he sat decaying in a cage for a crime he did not commit. Each night, as the darkness immersed within his tangled thoughts upon the floor, he withdrew more and more into that confounding reality until it became irreality. And until his execution, his chamber was a syphon for these delusions and allowed him to endure the injustice that was being done to him until he entered that irreality permanently.
Among the final dissipating years spent at chamber, I have a suspicion that he himself believed freedom would never find him, or perhaps it was so that identical to everything else, he became indifferent to the hypothesis of freedom itself. Whether be true the former or the latter, that feeling must be one of the final and most powerful acts that can be performed by man, to wholly accept a future limited by restraints, comparable only to 105 | SOMBER HOLIDAY
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the indifference one might show in traversing between the bridge of life and death. And yet, this did not just concern a man's freedom, but indeed too his life, his very existence, and he, in all his apathy, paid the ultimate toll by existing indefinitely with the indifference that allowed others to control him. The moment occurring his callousness turned toward the world and himself must have been the moment he ceased to be a prisoner, and finding a freedom that none of us have and will never know, he must have thought heavily upon the light of stars and mourned as he came to understand how unbinary and spectral such a thing as liberty is. A new concept forming in his mind, relevant yet menacingly vague, drew itself to challenge his faiths, and whisperly, languidly, hauntingly, it detailed to him the final tragedy in all mortal dreams.
Reading over what I have written so far I see I may have given the impression that this is much a tale about him but in fact it is no less a tale about me and my ongoing transformation. In those disconcerting years most of the time I spent traveling. During the morning the skyscrapers blocked out the early Sun as I motioned with pretentious gestures for taxis in lifting twilight to carry me toward the airport. When I landed, usually it was night, and I searched for a man holding a sign that read "Jonathon Crimshaw," I felt the first intimation of superiority. Being chauffeured around by a person whose children by class were less than mine brought with it a wholesome sentiment, and I found the same wholesome sentiment peering out of the window to see the same underclass walking about, and this scene absolutely gave a sort of satisfaction to the disapproving eye.
For myself, I had accrued the habit of always assuming inattention. When I walked the crowded cities I imagined myself as a scholar sent to document the inattention, the inability, the inadequacy of common man; and casting my condemnatory eyes upon the passerbys I watched them as they vanished from my insight and into the sheltered night, escaping the tyranny of my evaluations. In public places with prodigious gatherings I felt a despotative criticism sometimes, of who was to be there and who wasn't, of who belonged to whom and what and who did not belong at all and why, of this and that and here and there of more or less, and the feeling was shared and mutual throughout the crowd as we all indulged on the cursory and misspent the potential of freedom for the portentous nature of repression.
Again at dusk, when the streetlamps of North Boulevard insequentially dominoed, I felt my own inattention. People became to me only silhouettes in a darkening world. In my hollowed narcissism, I saw something base and terrible in the observations I failed to transcribe. And so it happened that on a decided day in June when I was mostly least qualified to judge at all, I was given a letter by the government to assist as a juror in his trial.
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I spent my wakeful nights outside San Rashida because after his posthumously overturned conviction, I could feel his presence, vague and spectral, returning to the city.
On the final night, and of a time in which I have not returned, I went and visited his phantasmal dejection of a gravesite. On his eternal iron someone had abraded his name, and departing to the funeral director I requested they had his name replaced. The time-frame they had given told me I would no longer be living in the city, so I know not whether his name was ever actually restored. Then I went downtown and with a tepid leisure I walked through the memorial. There was little activity except for every now and then over the horizon a lonely car sped along the avenue. And as the night cleverly became darker, the lights of the city began to disintegrate until I was aware of the monumental list that presented names of men who had given their lives in the name of liberty. And I stood there, ruminating in the exhaustive darkness.
In the end he himself did not have a name to present; he was only a shadowy reflection of the judiciary process, and we conducted onto him swiftly the very transgression he was charged of; a categorically premeditated senseless killing. When he was officially pronounced dead, that day there were riotous celebrations of cheerfulness as if the event was marked on a calendar by one of those excited holidays, but upon the reversal of his deed and the declaration of his innocence, I remember the thirteenth of July only as a somber holiday. A day characterized by human boundary. It is with right a day to be waited upon each year, and as the thought of that day enters my mind like lightning, there is nothing left to do afterwards but wait for thunder.
And as I stood there, dreaming melancholy on the immortal irreality, I dreamed of him and the first day I saw him standing quietly in front of the police automobile in restraints, his eyes focused on the proudly waving flag of America. In fine cloth, its sight once spoke for life, for liberty and for the pursuit of happiness, and to it non-Americans gave great passions to what dreams were stored in their imaginative hearts, driven from their homeland by heedless and negligent law, only to find and unearth a path that led to something disparately unequal to their fervent imaginations.
His letters proved to me in words because he was a man without action of his desire for freedom, but he was undone by the one mistake you cannot undo. In his chamber at night he must have dreamed of experiences had prior his arrest, reliving them in that immortal irreality as if he were free, then woke to a cruel reality unable to fathom those days were not this day but moments lost in the immeasurable expanse beyond dreams, where the dead and the living know nothing whatever of innocence or guilt. But for his name, and for his sake, I will believe he was not only innocent, but genuine. An elusive temperament that can only be found in the solitary prison of mind, or in the oxymorons of religion and science, or in the transformative mercy of penitence...
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So it is in my irredeemable debt to his life, that I remain here alone in contrition, endlessly ominous of judgement day.
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Chapter 43
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
3:1:5:43
THE passing of Elway was taken hard by his granddaughter, Lisa, who on a cold Thanksgiving night walked through a quiet country-like road in New Paris on her way to San Rashida city where she was to occupy her now deceased grandfather's apartment.
The walk to the city through the quiet road was, while not taken for dark and lovely reasons, was dark and lovely in of itself. For one it was so silent, as if one were to be deaf, and there was very little light, not so much as if one were to be blind but the small lights used to guide driver's in the darkness were not as bright as those found in the city.
The already waning lights decreased in luminosity as she walked further through the road, not entirely unlike the increasing passivity of her heart, who like many other people her age, which was twenty-three, wondered where she was going in life. Now that the only person she was even remotely close to had crossed over, she wondered what it was she had to be thankful for on this holiday.
Not too long ago, I had this dream. I was working on my bionic forearm and bionic hand when from the cage he was trapped in, Bloodclot began speaking to me. He made mention of the fact that I would have to kill him, because letting him go meant more guilty people were going to die. He made even mention of the fact that he enjoyed killing the people who were responsible for the death of his family, and that killing now was something he lusted after. His psychotic brain led him to the cruel details of the people he had murdered and how he murdered them. He told me of slamming a man's face into a stove and holding it there as it burned off his flesh into death. He told me of cutting open a woman's back and ripping out her spine. He told me that those weren't even the worst ways he had killed people, and that he enjoyed the pain he inflicted on his victims. And he told me that if I were to let him go, the chaos would continue.
As I could hear Sara moving about the apartment I wondered; what drives desire?
What drives lust? And I don't just mean for example the lust a man can have for a woman. What would drive Bloodclot's need for blood?
The phenomenon of diversity, which is when something is duplicated and there is a mutation it creates something new, is a theory that perhaps indicates why the universe we live in has so many unique things in it. And I have been inclined to believe, at least this morning, that this phenomenon has a role to play in lust.
Think about it... I'll start with the idea behind lust we are all most familiar with; the man's desire for women. There is an unimaginable diversity in the collection of women on this planet. If you, unlike me, ever actually go out into the world, you will see something you have never seen before every day, maybe even every hour if you are brave 109 | THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
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enough to stay out there that long. You will see women who look different, who dress different, behave different and have different interests and different desires. There is so much diversity in the matter that I think this creates the concept of lust, as opposed to perhaps the world where women are very much alike and differ very little; in this supposed world one might become bored with the lack of diversity.
So I would gather that part of lust, which in of itself has a degree of possession, is to see something new in something that is old. And in seeing that new thing, it is also in part to own it. These desires, or this way to desire, expands to all the ways the universe is unique. We have lusts for material things; think of anything you desire which might label you a materialistic person, how many different variations are there of that product? We have even lust for things that make us more knowledgeable; imagine all there is to know about the universe, about ourselves, about anything, wanting to know and understand and obtain all these things is a lust most of us have. I definitely have it.
And so for Bloodclot, his lust for violence made sense to me now. There were so many ways to kill. And each time he found a victim, he found a new way to do something old.
I got up out of bed and went to use the bathroom. After flushing, the damn handle broke off. I ended up spending an hour jerry-rigging it so that I could at least still flush in a convenient way instead of having to take the top off and pull the dang chain upwards.
God dang it. Twenty years in solitary confinement and my only crime was empathy.
It makes me think of wounds or bones who healed in strange ways. Politicians have all these complex moral ideologies but ninety percent of the populations they politicize don't understand these things. People don't really care about politics. They say they do and talk about it so that they don't appear uninformed or misinformed, but people don't really care about politics. People care about justice. People care about music, film. People care about stories and religion. They care about crime. These are the things they understand. Why?
Because people care about people.
When I got into the living room my guard told me there were eggs in the kitchen. I got them and walked back out and stood near her. She was wearing a colorful shirt filled with flowers and on her chest the words “A Little Bit Crazy.”
When she saw me looking at it, she pointed to it and said “Universe predicted it.” I asked, “The shirt or that you would be a little bit crazy?” “Both.”
I laughed and sat down next to her to see what she was doing on the computer. It looked like she was reading fiction created by fanatics, this one about a girl who falls in love with a ghost. I wonder, if the universe predicted Lynne, when predicting a child spawn if it would keep a base set of truths for the new prediction of Sara.
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harder until she started laughing. I eventually won the battle when I basically laid on top of her and she kept yelling out “You win, you win!” I got up and picked her up from off the couch, she kicking and screaming and laughing as I carried her on my shoulder around the apartment. When I let her down she lunged forward and hugged my body. For a while she stayed attached to me and it was almost like we were awkwardly dancing.
Girls and women, inside, truly they are all the same.
There was a part of me that wanted to ask her if she was doing well mentally, but I didn't know how to ask a young person that question. It's like, if I needed to ask Lynne if she was doing well mentally, I could just say “Are you fucking crazy?,” but it doesn't seem right asking a younger person that. Nonetheless, Sara let go and went back to her reading.
A few hours later, Sara told me that she received a message from Lynne telling her that Emily had arrived and she was going to go upstairs. Emily wanted to spend Thanksgiving with her child and grandchildren, which was really the first time she ever requested it in a while. We were to go to the outdoor mall which was only a few miles away. Dinner. Ew.
Nonetheless I agreed that I would go with them, but I told Lynne that I didn't have to enjoy it.
In the evening I was ready and went up to their apartment. Going up the stairs I thought of Elway and was hoping to Hell I would not run into him. When I got near his door I started walking faster and made it past to Lynne's apartment.
When I went for the doorknob, the door suddenly opened. “Emily,” I nodded. “I'll be waiting downstairs for you guys,” she said as she exited their apartment, “I'm parked right in front of the building... Spooker,” she joked.
Going into the apartment I half laughed and wondered who told her about the inside joke. There I saw David, ready as usual and waiting for the two females. “Bathroom,” he told me, and this was basically male-code for they are both in the bathroom and it will probably be another century until they are done.
Going towards Lynne's desk I flipped through her flowerbook like I had done before.
There were some new flowers and she was beginning to title them. One was “The Princess of Darkness.”
Sometimes the smallest of things can annoy me. Whenever I title my dreams, I opt for all capitals because I hate having to decide whether something like a conjunction word should be capitalized or not. “The Princess of Darkness” or “The Princess Of Darkness?”
I don't really like either.
And oh my, speak of the Devil. Lynne walked out of the bathroom with lashes on.
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want to eat first.
We all took the elevator down and got into Emily's car. It was only a matter of time until I had to partake in the dreaded custom. I don't get it. Dinner. Especially dinner in a public setting. One of the most popular things humans like to do is sit down to talk and eat. I guess humans like to use their mouths. At least most of them know not to talk and eat at the same time.
When we got to the mall we began walking toward the restaurant. Dave lagged behind because he was constantly checking store windows and at one moment Emily shouted out his name. When he reached us he told his grandmother to chill, and to not use his government name in public settings.
On our way to the restaurant Dick Handler pointed out an arcade and we all took a glance into it as we walked by. When we finally made it to the restaurant, we saw that it was moderately populated and that a table would be easily accessible, but for some reason we all paused in front of the door. Emily looked at Lynne, Lynne looked at me, I looked at Emily. Then we started looking at the kids who also looked at us.
In some kind of mystic telepathic agreeance, we all nodded our heads and started walking back toward the arcade, and at some point Lynne said aloud that this was a good idear. I was so happy.
I got to the door to the arcade before them all and held the door open for them, and as Dave passed by we slapped hands. Perhaps we were on good terms again.
Emily and Dave went for a set of racing cars as soon as we entered. Before Sara went with them, she turned around and asked me if I would be okay without her. “I'll take care of him,” Lynne cut in. Sara looked at me, and then Lynne, finally saying “Okay but be gentle, he's sensitive.” “I'm not sensitive,” I retorted. “See?,” Sara said walking to join Emily and Dave.
As Lynne and I walked around the arcade we came across a cabinet that had a multitude of prizes in it. Her eyes were set on a pink heart which had white lettering that read “Forever” on it. She looked at it and then at me, batting her eyelashes, and then pointed at it. “What? Do you need coins or something to play it?” Her face became straight. When she stopped pointing at it, she spoke, “It will be more romantic if you win it for me.”
I put the coin in and began moving the mechanical hand that was to be used to grab prizes. While moving I noticed a college-brand football in the corner. When I looked at Lynne I know that she noticed that I had seen it and the look on her face dared me to go for the football instead of the heart.
I joked around with her by hovering over the football, but soon went back to the heart. My first attempt at seizing it failed, but I put in another coin to try again. All in all, 112 | THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
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a dollar and fifty cents later I finally won it, and she was pleased to have it when I handed it to her.
But the moment after I gave it to her, I asked her if she understood what accepting such a gift entailed.
“Forever is romantically translated from Latin from 'Forevious', who was the Greek god of promises. Him and his fated lover were sitting near a lake one day when he began fishing with his fishing rod for food in the lake.” “They had fishing rods way back then?”
“Yes, they were just not as advanced. After some time he fished out a human heart and gave it to his lover, and this gesture bounded them forever as it was a promise that could not be unbroken.”
She searched for a pen in her purse and then walked up to me and took my hand, opening it and beginning to draw on it. This time she drew a wholed heart with the letter
'F' in the center. “What you don't know about the story,” she began, “is that Forevious, when first acquiring the human heart, saw that it was nearly torn in half, and one of the reasons he gave it to his lover was so that she could fix it.”
About an hour later the arcade was beginning to empty and I found myself standing in front of a basketball hoop machine with Sara. I was on Player 1 and she was on Player 2, and we had decided to play against eachother, and this game came with a wager. If she won, I would give her one hundred dollars. If I won, she would give me the bracelet off her wrist.
“Where I come from, we play for keeps. It's all or nothing. Ain't no half-measures.”
She did not stand a chance at all and soon after she handed me the bracelet. Lynne, in seeing her daughter give me her bracelet, wondered what was going on and inquired.
After Sarah told her that she had lost her bracelet to me, Lynne proposed a gamble of her own. If I won, I would receive the angel-wings designed tassel hair clip that was currently fixed into her hair. If she won, I would give Sara back her piece of jewelry.
Once again I repeated, “Where I come from, we play for keeps. It's all or nothing.
Ain't no half-measures.” Lynne did not fare much better than Sarah, and so I received another piece of jewelry. In taking this, Dave saw what was happening and too understood the ordeal. Like his mother, he challenged me in this game of hoops.
Now, if I won, I would receive the belt on his waist with the skull design he so revered. If I lost, I would give back the items I had taken from Lynne and Sara. David fared much better than his mother and his sister, but ultimately came up short in the endeavor. As he took off his belt to give it to me, Emily saw this and just like the others, she too learned of what was going on and of my winnings. Of course, like the rest of her family, she challenged me in an effort to get back her family's valuables, putting up her earrings for the wager.
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I looked at Emily and told her, just as I had told the others, “Where I come from, we play for keeps. It's all or nothing. Ain't no half-measures.” With now a crowd, the heat was on. The game began and balls came rolling down the pseud-court. We both picked up a ball at the same time and both made our first shot. I could tell from the very beginning, she at least had the skill of David. Fifteen seconds in, I saw that she was better than David. Though I had the lead twenty seconds in, it was a bare lead, and I could hear her family members cheering her on because the match was so close; in competitiveness and in ending.
When the timer hit twenty-eight, she had tied the game, and there was only enough time for one more shot as the game would end at thirty. I picked up a ball first, but in hearing those damn kids and that damn woman, I missed it. With only milliseconds left, Emily took her shot for the lead, and the silence allowed her to concentrate as she sunk the ball in.
There were cheers that were so loud they gained the attentions of the employees and other arcade enthusiasts. I eventually gave them back all of their possessions and while doing this, Emily said something to me. “I'm not like my daughter. Never liked flowers, never wore dresses. Played for my high-school's basketball team and we never lost.” I always had the feeling she was a tomboy growing up. Shoulda quit while I was ahead.
Grandmother and grandchildren continued playing the games of the arcade for a bit more while Lynne and I left the arcade to get food since the arcade was about to close and food service was shut down.
As Lynne and I walked through the outdoor mall we saw the lessening number of people throughout and the darkening sky within. As we walked she didn't say anything and I observed both of her hands in her coat pockets. I don't call it an observation because it was something new or something I hadn't noticed before; whenever I walk with Lynne in the cold they are always in her pockets because I suppose tiny women like herself who have tiny hands must also have hands that get cold easily. But I especially observed it now because I've realized she's gotten used to the idea that in public I am a cold person.
I put my forearm around hers and then forced her hand out of her pocket and put it into mine. She was surprised, and for a small amount of time I was okay with embarrassing myself in public by holding her hand. A heart who bleeds at dawn she thinks of death.
I could feel the strength of her grip become firmer and then loosen and then become firmer again, telling me in pressure she was happy. “It's so wonderful to have a big strong man take charge,” she joked. I looked at her and didn't laugh. She didn't laugh either. In walking a few more yards she stayed silent until she began speaking again, “You know what else I like about you that's big and strong?” I cut in coldly, “If you keep talking to 114 | THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
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me like that I'm going to have to take you into a bathroom and rape you.” I thought saying this might throw her off of her game but she only took the other hand out of her pocket and brought it to her neck and made a choking gesture. I must admit this threw me off mine and actually made me laugh out loud.
“Lashes you crack me up.” I could see from the expression on her face when I called her lashes that it was her who wanted to sexually assault me.
Arriving at the place where we could order food, we waited behind a small group of people who were already in line. While waiting Lynne didn't speak to me and I had time to think about what I wanted to eat, and the thought of food led to the thought of the holiday of Thanksgiving, and the thought of the holiday led to the idea of being thankful.
Was never a fan of the holiday, and sometimes I wonder if there are strange families who instead tell everyone what they are not thankful for and would like changed. I tend to think about negative things on this day, and this time I am thinking about why my mother spared me. Why she spared both me and my father. It wouldn't have been difficult to feed us all poison come dinner time, and for style points she could have done it on Thanksgiving day itself. I guess maybe she thought my father and I were beyond saving and she could spare my younger brother of the human condition.
Looking at Lynne as she looks up and ahead at the menu, I don't know what to be; thankful that Irene let me live, or unthankful that she didn't take me with her.
After we received the food, Lynne and I walked through the parking lot and to Emily's car and soon after she texted one of them that we were set and ready to go.
We stood at the side of the car and just looked at each other, but Lynne always has a way of breaking the nice silent stares, “Look at you,” she said in her identifiable joking voice and gently slapping her hand on my chest, “so big and so strong. Can you help me move my television?,” she batted her eyelashes again. I laughed out loud again as she brought back an ancient memory.
I put my hand in her hair and stroke through it gently many times, and then bring the same hand to her chin, putting my index finger under her chin and petting her chin itself with my thumb. She is silent again with eyes burning like acidica, and her eyes must have mirrored mine because I felt the same power that comes from combining love and lust.
My misanthropy has lessened, not because the world has become better or because I am in love and have completely given my heart to Lynne forever, but because I am thankful that I no longer expect anything from humans anymore.
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Chapter 44
TALK THAT JAZZ
3:1:5:44
THE incidence of rare events goes both ways. You have sudden events that occur once every 100 years but you can also have longer events that last 100 years. Statistics and prediction analysis are some of the most fascinating things you can study because they are so firmly rooted in the universe and in being. Why does something happen once and never again? Why does something happen twice every four years? Why does this particular event last 100 years until it changes?
To be brief, a data drought is the cousin to a rare event. Where a rare event could be a certain team winning a game, a data drought could be that team not winning for a hundred years. Let us start first by giving a more in-depth example before we give the definition of a data drought and what it actually means.
The Chicago Cubs went 108 years without winning a World Series. It is a statistic in sport that is more or less an anomaly. Thinking of this as an anomaly, or some gross miscalculated prediction by the universe, leads us directly into the line of thinking we need to be in to see it instead not as an error but a data drought.
Imagine instead the history of the Chicago Cubs went as this: Every other year, they would win a World Series. This means on year one, they do not make it to the World Series or they lose the World series, but on year two, they both make it to the World Series and also win it. And this pattern alternates indefinitely. Every other year, they win a World Series.
Imagine now that after 100 years of baseball seasons, the Chicago Cubs have won 50
World Series championships and have had 50 non-winning World Series seasons. It is enough data for any system, even the human brain, to predict that the Chicago Cubs have a 50% chance of winning the World Series the next year. Except, what if suddenly and inexplicably, all of the data about them winning is lost, deleted, or simply unavailable to the system? The only data the system can interpret is data about them losing. A logical system will then predict that the Chicago Cubs have a 0% chance of winning. With the sudden disappearance of all of the winning data, or winning seasons that resulted in a World Series championship, a system can only predict a losing season, and this is a perfect recipe to create the strange and long event of the Chicago Cubs not winning a World Series for 108 years.
Some other interesting things about this topic: In a universe where civilizations tend to collapse after 1000 years, what would happen if 10,000 years of civilization data became unavailable when a current civilization was in its 500th year and the system was given no choice but to assume the current civilization had been in rule for 10,500 years?
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Or, what if data that was previously unavailable for a period of time suddenly became available again?
Last night, I had a dream. “Damn Ja, you haven't won a hand in like an hour.” “Don't jinx it, man, now he's gonna start winnin.'” Ja laughed and hoped that Damion was correct, but the truth was none of them would play another hand and they would each leave empty handed.
“Up, up, up,” my partner yelled as we both walked into the hidden room with shotguns. All of the stock brokers raised their hands into the air and their dignity rose to the ceiling like the smoke of their cigarettes. They each worked for a different firm, but every single firm was corrupted and fraudulent at the highest level.
A world with no poverty is the world every one wants. Even the people who are working so hard to make their own wealth. The only people who don't want it are the ones who have worked hard to earn their millions and billions, because this would render their hardships meaningless, and this is completely reasonable. If I worked hard for decades for my wealth, I suppose I wouldn't want to just give it away. But this will eventually become the old way of thinking, and when the old way of thinking dies, the old world will die. If we have less data thought about acquiring riches, can we create a manual data drought on poverty?
Emptying all of the briefcases full of money, we were suddenly interrupted by three gunmen who were hired to protect the game. As they opened fire, the stock brokers scattered and ran away from the room. Behind them, after many bullets were exchanged, four more gunmen arrived and we had become severely outnumbered.
I looked to my left to see a large window pane, and in looking back at my partner who was already looking at me, we both nodded, and I ran toward it and threw myself through it, shattering the glass and landing five stories down on the hood of a vehicle.
In the evening, Lynne, Sara, Dave and I were preoccupied with our cellular devices and playing Uno on them, each in our own living spaces. The game came with the feature to talk with other players so that was good of it. A Yellow 8 began the game and Lynne truly started it with a Green 8. Sara put down a Green Plus 2. Dave laughed, putting down a Red Plus 2. I put down a Yellow Plus 2 and Sara began complaining, saying that if this came back around she was going to punch someone in the face. After Lynne put down a Yellow Plus 2, Sara was forced to draw eight cards. Dave made numerous comments on how she deserved it for starting it.
Dave put down a Yellow Skip, skipping me, and Lynne then placed down a Draw 4
and changed the color to Green. Dave began yelling hysterically, saying again she deserved it for trying to screw him over earlier, but suddenly Sara placed her own Draw 4
and Dave became silent. “Dirty,” I said. “Well, he was talkin' that jazz,” Sara finished.
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She kept the color Green and after Dave drew eight cards I placed down a Green 0.
As the game went on my mind went into tangents and I mostly spoke when I was addressed and played a card when it was my turn. Most of the talking were jokes or insults by Sara and Dave. Lynne did more talking than me but not much more. Somehow I could tell she talked less because I wasn't the usual social-butterfly I always was.
When Lynne put down her final card to win the round, I think they all suspected that I no longer wanted to play, which was a bad assumption, but nonetheless we all exited the game. And I knew one of them, most probably either Sara or Lynne, would be down soon to console me. I swear this was not my intention. If you want someone to do something for you, you can be either one of two things; manipulative or honest. You absolutely cannot be both.
As I assumed, ten minutes later I heard someone knock on my door. This told me it was Lynne as Sara would not have knocked. “Mind if I stay down here for a bit?,” she said with her laptop and toothbrush in hand. She knew that I knew that she knew why she was down here.
Entering the apartment she went and sat down at the table and opened her laptop. I went to the window near to her and stared out into San Rashida. I was going to play the game with her.
After about a minute of staring, she finally asked. “...Is it an episode?” “Yes,” I said solemnly and staring out of the window.
She got up and came up behind me and hugged me from behind, and with a stern depressing voice, I began speaking.
“Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I never met you. I went three decades without ever meeting anyone like you, and if you had just been a passerby in my life I wonder how many decades I would have to live to meet you again. I know that if I never met you, I wouldn't have ever met anyone like you, and I do really think that meeting you was the one chance I had for love, or else I would have never found it.
Everything prior to meeting you told me I would be alone forever, and meeting you must have been a rare event.”
“Don't stop,” she said into my back. Two things that move best slow are love and wisdom. Depending on how fast you were running and where you are, you will either have to slow down, completely stop, or actually go backwards. To be aligned with either of them, I mean. It makes me wonder how fast or slow the Flanagan's relationship was.
When they first met did they move too fast? Did they have to slow down? Stop, even?
Lynne and I's relationship never went fast and I think that is why it is so potent today, but man, did we still go through our issues.
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summon a red rose out of thin air for my amor-she.
“Does it help if I hug you?” “What do you mean?” “Does it help with the episodes if I touch you?” “Duh.” She walked us both backwards until we landed on my couch and my back stayed against her front.
“What are you, Sara now? Soon David will start coming down here too, trying to make me laugh with his Dick name jokes. 'The name's Handler, Dick Handler.'” She began laughing loudly. She loves those jokes. “I'm looking for a man named Richard Holder,” she said in Dave's voice. This made me laugh.
“You know, since you brought up, Sara and I always being down here, I wanted to tell you something.” “Tell me what?” “I don't think she's always down here because she's looking after you. That could be part of it, but a few months ago she was spending time with a boy named Zach. I think she considered him her boyfriend, but it ended very nasty and he called her names and said she was ugly and that other girls were prettier than her and I think that turned her off to boys for a while. I think she is using you as a father figure but also as a male companion who won't hurt her.” “Isn't that what you do, too?”
She didn't answer and stayed silent. And then. “That's not all I do,” she said under her breath.
“What was that?” “Ever since you said you were going to rape me I've been fantasizing about being stalked.” “There's something wrong with you.”
“Remember Chloe?” “I don't want to, but yes, I do.” “I fantasize about her and Silvio watching you chase me through the dark woods and tackle me and then pin me down.
You put your hand over my mouth and I try to bite you but you're too strong. You rip off my shirt and I can feel you force yourself into me and there is nothing I can do about it because I'm a tiny mom.”
“Okay!,” I got up from off the couch. “That is way too specific. Stop. I'm not having an episode anymore. In fact I'm completely cured of my OCD now.” She started laughing. I walked into my bedroom and she followed me after I told her not to follow me.
Minutes later I had been laying down on my bed as she stood in my bathroom brushing her teeth. All I could think about was that rape scene the entire time until she came and laid down next to me. How she wanted Silvio and Chloe to watch me force myself into her.
“You know you don't have to worry about me ever actually raping you, right?” “Yeah I know, because you would never hurt me like that and you would never let anyone else hurt me like that.” “No, because you wouldn't be alive to experience it.” The face she gave me was incredible, as if she was both appalled but excited that I was playing her game.
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She was already on, but something brought it up a degree as she hugged me in bed.
“Do you want to make flowers with me?” “Make what?” “If touching you helps with the episodes, would making love help?” “That would make it worse.” “How?” “Part of it is guilt from pleasure.”
“...Funny you say that.” “Why?” “I created a flower yesterday and the name of its story is called 'Guilty Pleasure.'” “What's the story?” “There's a flower, any kind, and it is often visited by the same butterfly. The flower allows the butterfly to indulge in its guilty pleasures, but after a year the flower wilts and dies. The butterfly is saddened, but never visits any other flower even though there are many around, because the pleasure of visiting another flower would bring it guilt.”
“Is this your way of telling me to never have sex with another woman?,” I laughed.
She didn't. She gave me the same look she gave me in the arcade when I hovered over the football instead of the heart, except this one was actually serious, more cold. She then got up out of the bed and walked out of the room, slamming the door shut. I waited to see if I was going to hear another door shut, and when I didn't I knew that she went to sleep on the couch in the living room. I was a bit shocked. Talk about a swing and a miss.
I eventually got up and went out to the living room and stood before her. I was going to say “It was just a joke,” but thought heavily against that. “I didn't mean it.” After I said this, I realized that I should have just said “That was a stupid thing to say.”
“That was a stupid thing to say.” “Why would you put that image in my head.” It was a statement and not a question. “I'm telling you about my art and you think it's funny to say something like that.” “I'm sorry.”
I can barely remember the last time Lynne and I had a bad day. An argument. A fight.
I think it was a couple years ago, which I would say is a long time for two people who are so involved to not quarrel. That one was bad but since then it has been pretty decent. It's been so long and it's been so peaceful that to actually fight seems like it would be something rare. And honestly, I don't want to fight with her, it's something that I would like to keep rare.
I dropped down to my knees so she could see me better and so I could hold her hand, and in a sorrowfully questioning way I said to her, “...Lashes?” She was gazing the whole time into my kitchen but for a second she looked at me, and then back into the kitchen.
When she showed no signs of saying anything, I got up and walked to the bedroom.
About to enter, I heard her say something. “Hey Spookie... Remember when you kissed my ass?” I began laughing and so did she. “Come on,” she gestured for me to come sleep with her. I got behind her and turned on the television. “Maybe there is a romantic comedy on,” I said. “Yeah,” she replied, “with how mad you just made me talkin' that jazz, you better hope there is.”
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Chapter 45
IN VAIN BURDEN
3:1:5:45
IN the dead of a winter night, mister and misses Kosek walked home from church after a midnight mass. It felt as if it were somewhere inbetween Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Olsztyn, Poland, 1989. In the near distance they both saw the green strip of light that traveled along their apartment building from ground to roof, and misses Kosek made a comment about how the green seemed to have a tint of baby blue under a cloudy sky.
Mister Kosek, his wife's arm in his, guided the pair as they turned into an alley that would take them to the back entrance of their destination. Along the alley was the image of landed snow, apartment buildings and cars, smoke from chimneys and softly glowing lights that lit the way.
Nothing was out of the ordinary in the snow smoked alley, but after mister Kosek followed his wife into the building, he thought he had heard something. It was faint, and at that moment of thought, it echoed into non-existence, so he closed the door behind him. And yet, there it was again, that faint echo that he knew did not exist just inside his mind despite his wife's failed efforts to hear it as well.
He walked back out into the alley but his wife only stood at the door, and looking around as he walked, he seemed to look up and down and around behind corners of snow.
And there it was again, the sound, which now the wife had heard as well.
She pointed him in an eastward direction toward a dumpster and they both began to walk in that same direction, and when they both got to the dumpster mister Kosek put his hand on the lid of the dumpster. They waited for a brief moment, and finally the sound came again, and they were sure that what they were hearing was the unmistakably faint cries of a baby.
When they opened the dumpster, they were simultaneously shocked and prepared for what they saw, as if they were desensitized to the behaviors of man yet still carried a small amount of hope for it.
Misses Kosek quickly leaned over the rim of the dumpster and reached inside, taking hold of the well-bundled baby, and noticed that the baby itself was very much cold to the touch. Once in her arms, she softly recited, "Hail Mary wings of angels, shield us from the cruelty of nature's green."
Mister Kosek lead the way back into the apartment, acting as host and removing each obstacle that stood in their way to getting home. He opened the doors, and each time she passed him he gazed at the baby as if it weren't real. Then he jogged in front of her, opened another door, and repeated the gaze once again. When they got to the elevator, he 121 | IN VAIN BURDEN
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held the door open as she walked inside with the baby, and then entered himself and pressed for their floor. The baby had stopped crying, which was a relief, because in a building that housed more than one hundred residents, the baby was sure to wake someone in the middle of the night if it was.
For one last time, mister Kosek opened the door to their apartment and guided her in, again staring at the baby as if he were unsure whether he was dreaming or not. The moment misses Kosek sat down, it popped into her mind that the baby must have been hungry, and she told her husband that they should seek food.
Seeing as husband and wife had never had children of their own, though they had tried in their younger years, there was nothing to accommodate the presence of a newborn, and so mister Kosek rounded up the very few amount of wages which he and his wife had earned to spend it on the baby, and never once did either of them feel as if this was a burden.
Mister Kosek walked three quarters of a mile to the store, then returned to find his wife and the baby in the same positioning. "Not one sound," misses Kosek said to her husband commenting on the calm and quiet nature of the baby, "not one sound while you were gone."
Mister Kosek entered the small kitchen and began making the milk for the baby to drink. He had bought baby formula and one baby bottle. Mister Kosek had produced the nourishment for the baby as best he could, as if it were a performance to save the baby, and misses Kosek had administered the nourishment as best she could, as if it too were a performance to save the baby.
The baby indeed had been hungry; he finished an entire bottle and was ready for seconds. Mister Kosek again went to produce for the baby, and misses Kosek again fed the baby.
As she fed the baby, mister Kosek saw happiness in his wife's eyes, and when she looked back up at him, they looked at eachother knowing what the other was thinking.
"What will we say if someone asks where we got it?," mister Kosek asked his wife. This question indicated to her that he knew she wanted to keep it. She simply shrugged as an answer, and while mister Kosek wanted to keep the baby as much as his wife, he gave a fairly less obvious indication. But it was obvious to anyone else, that both the mister and the misses were deeply alone in their old age.
Mister Kosek began to walk toward his wife and the baby and passed by a box on the coffee table. It was a box, filled with mailed letters from both the side of misses Kosek and mister Kosek's respective families, urging them both to return to Zakopane and to cease the estranged alienation and the strain they were putting on their respective relatives.
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As he continued on by, he passed the box completely and went to sit on the couch next to his feeding wife, but only a moment after he sat, the baby began to cough. The coughing forced misses Kosek to remove the bottle from the baby's mouth, and came another cough that placed milk onto misses Kosek's lap. The final cough brought milk out of the baby's nose, and suddenly the Kosek's began to panic.
Misses Kosek stood up with the baby, causing mister Kosek to do the same, but the baby suddenly made a face as if it were suffocating. The baby's face at first turned red, then pale, and soon became blue. Misses Kosek was in a state of shock, and this forced mister Kosek to grab the baby from her arms and begin digging with his bare fingers into the baby's mouth. He went up and down and from side to side, attempting to remove anything that perhaps may have been obstructing the baby's breathing, and when he found nothing, he turned the baby around and began thrusting at its abdomen. Misses Kosek could only watch on in intense horror, and that intense horror became something unspeakable when mister Kosek had ceased the thrusting, and the look on his face told her that the baby was no more of this world.
Misses Kosek wanted to do nothing but scream. She wanted to do nothing but cry at a loudness that gave credence to the tragedy which had just occured. But she could not as this would bring forward the neighbors and perhaps the police.
Mister Kosek, also in a state of shock, laid the baby to rest on the couch beside him, and finally seeing the face of his wife, he retreated into the bathroom. Misses Kosek was at present seated on the floor of her apartment, silent tears streaming down her face as she made repeated movements back and forth, and when she summed up the courage to look at the deceased baby who was lying on her couch, she suddenly felt as if it weren't real.
A long stretch of time passed by, an amount of time that neither the mister nor the misses could account for, but eventually the door to the bathroom opened and mister Kosek walked out to find his wife the same way he had left her. Without a soul, without a spirit, wretched with a burden of vanity.
"I must bury it, or we could go to prison," mister Kosek said to his wife. After a moment, misses Kosek nodded her head in agreement, and he could see the tears dripping from her chin. She turned completely to her side so she did not have to see him or the baby as they left the apartment.
It was too cold and the ground too hard to bury the baby, and after mister Kosek thought for a long time on how to conceal it, he realized there was no other way.
Anything less would risk possible exposure to the authorities, and having once aided in a criminal investigation, mister Kosek understood forensic elements could come back to haunt him and his wife.
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pack which in it contained a container of boiled water and the deceased newborn. He walked with it through the dead of winter with a shovel he had borrowed from the storage of another apartment building and fastened towards the deep woods.
When he felt he was far enough out of site, he first began by removing two feet of snow from where he would bury the baby. When the snow was removed, he forced the tip of the shovel into the ground to find it was immovable. Looking around, he took out the container of boiled water and poured it onto the frozen ground. He waited a moment and then took the shovel once more, and once more he forced the tip into the ground and the earth beneath him began to crack.
After one foot of frozen ground, it was easier to dig five more, and before he laid the baby into its eternal resting place, he softly recited, "Hail Mary the deep blue sea, forgive our weakness that make us sin." In one night they had gone from good samaritans to criminals. And when all was done, mister Kosek began to go his way and traveled through the cursed winter night.
It was only a little while later while walking that mister Kosek picked up his grim face and looked upward, finally noticing the dead of the cold trees. The leafless branches were not a new sight to him, but the feeling of knowing that this particular night would haunt both him and his wife forever seemed to change the nature of the sight.
When mister Kosek finally found himself out of the woods, he looked into the distance and saw the green strip of light that decorated the side of his apartment building.
Staring into it long enough, he finally noticed that it indeed seemed to appear somewhat sky blue as his wife suggested only hours before.
Finally back at his home, mister Kosek opened the door to find his wife laying on the ground. This startled him at first, and he soon called out to her, "Klara," but she did not answer. He called out once more, moving a bit closer, and her eyes suddenly opened. She raised up her head and looked towards her husband, and in dire twilight they both saw the reflection of a greenish-blue light in eachother's eyes.
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Chapter 46
OLD MATTERS
3:1:5:46
NAVIGATING the dream world is sometimes an art. Waking up after dreaming and analyzing the dream is like painting your own psychology with fine brushes of wisdom and thick brushes of intellect.
It wasn't that long ago that I had a horrible dream of David going missing and the entire neighborhood helping us to find him. Lynne was frantic, Sarah was scared, and I was determined. The dream itself was so memorable because it was powered by emotion, and that seems to be a feature of emotional dreams; even people who have a hard time remembering their dreams easily remember the emotional ones.
Many things happened in the dream, and in the end we never found him, but the dream did not end badly. When I was tired of looking for him because I could search no longer, not mentally or physically, I was on my way back home. I entered the apartment building and began walking up the stairs. This was when I had a startling realization. I noticed that the apartment building I had entered was not the one I currently live at now, the one that I have moved to with Lynne and her children, it was the one preceding this one, the one where I met her.
This realization caused me to become lucid, and suddenly I smiled and was happy because I knew it was just a dream and David was not actually lost. I woke myself up to be sure, and when I awoke I was completely relieved.
In that dream life, I was able to access a memory from this real life, which revealed a great revelation to me; if we are able to access parts of our subconscious, they may reveal certain truths about the real world. Accessing the memory of moving to this apartment while in that life told me that I was dreaming, and I wonder what the same could do for me in this real life if I were to be able to access, say, a past life, if past lives are a true occurrence.
There are so many things that lay hidden in dreams. Things we don't think to ask because we would never ask them in waking life. There is this one specific dream story I have where I am trying to solve a puzzle, and that puzzle is the identity of the dream itself. When I become lucid in those dreams I look for clues that tell me what the current year in the dream is. I sometimes travel in the area that I am dreamborned into and try to look for clues that tell me what country I am in, or what state or what city or town. There are even times in this dream story when my own identity is unknown, and to know myself I must find a mirror so that I may see what I look like. Usually I am a man, but there are times when I am a woman. The color of my hair and my eyes and other facial features sometimes change, and so I know that each time I have that dream I may be 125 | OLD MATTERS
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someone else.
Algebra is a system in which how many things in the universe are determined when many things are also uncertain. The simple fact of the existence of algebra gives credence to the idea that there is rule and order in the universe. First in rule and order is the concept of true and false statements. When a statement is true it will be easily verifiable.
And there will be instances when a statement is false and perhaps during the validation process it is denied validity to affect our universe. And this makes me wonder if things are formed with variables in place first and then gain values later, perhaps through validation.
An example of variable formation would be: an explosion causes a man to move position with great intensity. Just before the man's position is changed, we are given this certain information: he will be moved from his current position but we do not know in which direction. When this process is being validated, the only information it is given is that the man's position in space will change, but not where he will end up. Once the validation is complete and it is a true statement, the process is granted the ability to have values which before were only variables. Once the values are set, the direction the man moves in is defined and set and becomes known.
In the dream world, however, algebra may not be a mainstay. It may be possible to allow false statements to be verified, or validated, and therefore can become a “reality” in that dream. This would be why dreams and the dream world sometimes makes absolutely no sense when compared to its real life counterpart.
A universe that does not require validity is governed solely by imagination. And its only limit is imagination itself. But these places have another thing in common outside of imagination; they seem to only operate under what could be the “old” form of matter.
If our current matter version properties, that is a matter that requires validation and is set by rules, that is the laws of physics, is a newer version of matter, then the old matter could be a garbage version of matter itself. It could be old code like old dreams that when having them at the time made sense, but upon waking became enigmatic. When you think of things like virtual reality, digital screens, even dreams, none of them are bound by any rules. Again, in those realms, the only limit is your own imagination.
If each time we lay down to sleep and the dreamworld we enter is what currently we believe in our unconscious brain, who is to say that at the moment of our death, if the mind is eternal, that we don't simply enter the realm of what is believed at the current time in our unconscious brain? And who is to say further that in a past life, when we died, we didn't have our current reality in mind and this is what caused us to be born into the reality we live in now? If this were true, it would certainly tell us a lot about the world and life we came from and would definitely tell us a lot about our own psychology. I said 126 | OLD MATTERS
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before that navigating the dream world is an art, and I guess now I'm saying experiencing the real world is the canvas itself. It is almost like a psychological painting from a place we used to know. And who knows what we brought along with us from that old world.
Parts of people? Parts of stories? Parts of thoughts? And who knows where we will go and what we will bring along with us when it is time to paint something new.
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Chapter 47
31 OR 2 TO 3
3:1:5:47
AFTER putting on my shoes I met Lynne at the elevator. She had her headphones around her neck, and when we both entered the elevator I asked her why she was copying me. Going down the elevator we both readied our devices to play music. On her prosthetic foot she had on her orange shoe, a color she wore very little I observed.
We walked through the lobby and past midnight into San Rashida. Again, I'm sure because of the weather, there was practically no one outside, but there was the occasional driving vehicle.
Lynne pointed down a sidewalk and said to me that it would be a straight-shot. We run directly south for about forty-five minutes, and then we walk the way back home.
“Sounds good.”
She put on her headphones which prompted me to do the same and she soon asked why I was copying her. After going through our devices to pick a starting track, she asked me if I was ready. I said yes. And as she started past me she suddenly slapped my behind, telling me to try and keep up. I know how fit she is and how well in shape she is by many reasons, but running behind her was never one of them until now. I could tell she wasn't running her fastest for my sake, but I still had to try my best to keep up with her. I spent too much damn time sitting in that storage unit.
Running under the subway tracks while the subway train sped by for some reason brought back a memory I knew I never had. But I had it now. I first saw her in a series of dreams. In the night, in the night... And I know, I'm sure, because the feminine is sometimes void of light.
I for one cannot think deeply when I am running. Especially if I'm outside. I have to worry about traffic. I have to worry about moving my legs. It's just not a good idea to add any amount of deep thinking to that mix. But the sight of Lynne running before me, checking left for any cars when passing lanes, it is something that I can easily concentrate on while listening to music and running. But she was like a ghost, I lost sight of her. She disappeared, she disappeared... But she can't be too far, I know, she must still be here.
Up ahead when passing a crosswalk there was one car that stopped her and allowed me to catch up to her as she turned around to see how I was doing. By the time I got to her side, it was time to run again. And I followed. Like a dream. She is fading. Like a dream. She is hidden. Like a dream. She is cryptic. Like a dream. She is mystic.
Her symbols and her presence still they haunt me. Beautifully, beautifully... In the end, when it is she that I have, I'll be free. And so the days continue, and I lay here. And I dream, and I dream... And I try to find her in a distant fading memory.
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Who was the puzzling woman that I followed. That day, that day... Where was she trying to lead me when she went that way. Dreams seem random but her every action had reason to mystery. I am sure, I am sure... But her message cryptic, she was mystic, and this I cannot see.
In my greatest imagination. She was a dream, she was a dream... But she must be here in this world, I believe. Like a dream. She is cryptic. Like a dream. She is mystic.
My trance on Lynne was interrupted when a few yards before me she tripped on something and fell to the ground. Her body went one way and her prosthetic was disconnected from her and went another way. I ran up to her and could hear her cursing in pain as she clutched her leg.
I kneel down and take hold of her leg and then examine her stump to find that it has been cut in at least two places. After spotting a row of benches, I grabbed her and helped her to stand and guided her as she hopped to the bench and she sat down.
“It doesn't look good,” I told her, “we need to go back now and clean it and make sure it doesn't get infected or anything.” While saying this a train very far in the distance took hold of my attention, and in this attention I spotted the orange shoe in the same direction. I went over and picked it up and returned to Lynne.
Still in pain, I told her to get on my back. Instead, she extended her hand for her prosthetic foot and in many ways told me she would rather walk. I didn't think it would be possible for her to walk miles back the way we came on such an injury, but I handed her the shoe anyway.
She put it on and got up, and the very first step she took forced her to sit back down.
“Hold on, I just need a second,” she requested. She got up again, and this time was able to take two steps, but soon cursed again and sat back down.
“Lynne, come on,” I gestured sternly for her to climb my back. “No!,” she lashed out at me in acute anger. I turned around, looked at the closed store across the street, and then turned back toward her. “You're handicapped, what are you trying to prove?”
She said something unintelligible under breath and got up again, and this time heavily limped away from me. She was able to walk all the way to the end of the sidewalk where she had tripped before, and then finally she fell to the ground.
When I walked up to her I saw a nail sticking out of the ground. I tried to stomp it back down into the ground but it wouldn't budge, so I gave up. Then I went back to Lynne and started talking to her again.
“I'm handicapped, too, just in a different way. You think I'd be here right now if it wasn't for you? I would have blown out my brains years ago. I wake up every morning and get through the day because of you and for you. Maybe you fail to see it because my handicap is mental, but I allow you to help me every day. Stop being a little fucking 129 | 31 OR 2 TO 3
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insecure baby so we can go home.”
After a moment, she began taking off her foot and eventually handed it to me. She stood up and I turned around and she climbed onto my back and I began running in the direction of our building.
Through the lobby, up the elevator and then through her door she got off me and laid down on her bed. “Do you have any hydrogen-peroxide?” After she said yes I went into the bathroom and found it and applied it on her stump. They didn't have any bandages so I found a clean white shirt and wrapped it around the stump. “How is the pain?” “Six.”
Sleepy-eyed, David walked out of his room and asked what was going on when he saw his mother. “She tripped.” He took a closer look and saw that her foot had been wrapped in white cloth. “Are you okay?,” he asked. “I'm fine, just go back to sleep.”
After David returned to his room I went to the side of Lynne and told her that the next time we go running we're going in the opposite direction to run across the Paradise Port bridge. She didn't respond so I ask her if she has to go in for work anytime soon, and she says she is working from home the entire week.
“Do you want me to sleep here tonight?” “You can sleep wherever you want, I'm not your mother,” she said half-jokingly. I laid beside her and put my arm in between her arm and her rib-cage. “Tell yourself any lie you want. I'm not so insecure that I can't admit that you've always had a power over me.” After a moment she finally said “Well, if I'm not here, who's going to stop you from blowing your brains out.”
As I pressed my face softly into the back of her head, I asked myself a question. If I could choose to have a Lynne with two real feet, would I choose that Lynne? Strangely or selfishly, I don't think I would. Crippled Lynne is all I've ever known for the past six or seven years. I would gladly take her the way she is now. And that is not to say had I met her before her amputation, that I would like her to lose a foot. The point is loving her for who she is, because I know she has accepted me the way I am even though I have put her through Hell sometimes.
One of the most noble things you can do as a human being is to serve others, but it is equally noble to allow others to serve you.
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Chapter 48
KIRBY OF MIDDLETOWN
3:1:5:48
IT'S been a week and half since Lynne's fall and she is still unable to walk on it.
Often she must hop on one leg to move about the apartment. This situation has led me to her physical work location because there are monthly documents that need to be signed by a “supervisor.”
One option would have been to tell Junior, her boss, that she had injured herself and that she wouldn't be able to sign them, but this would mean Junior would have to take time out of his day to wait in the two-hour window to sign the documents. He would have had no choice but to do it, but Lynne as you know is the type of person who would feel like she may be putting her job in jeopardy not being reliable. I'm sure she feels that any company who hires her is already taking a risk because of her disability.
I guess another option would have been to have Logan forge them, but that would put Logan in a compromising position if Junior ever found out.
So that leaves me, Special Agent Spooker, the forger of a thousand lives and a thousand lies.
When I got to the dining area I saw Logan and introduced myself as Lynne's partner and he let me know that she let him know that I was coming to sign the papers when the personnel had arrived.
After the introduction he inquired of Lynne's injury, in which I told him we had been running in the night when her prosthetic foot hit a nail in the ground and she fell. I told him that without her prosthetic in place, her stump must have hit the concrete terribly hard causing the wounds. He could only make a face that told me he imagined the pain happening to he himself. “She's tough as nails, though,” I assure him, “she actually tried to walk back home but couldn't.” “How did she get home?” “We called a taxi and it drove us back.”
An hour later, the person finally showed up with the papers I had to initial. I placed them on the counter and began initialing them, LP, LP, LP, etc. Then came the date I had to pen in on several pages. As I wrote the dates, I could see Logan take interest in the matter. “What?” He looked at me puzzingly. “You write backwards,” he told me. The personnel took the documents and gave me her thanks and left, and then Logan continued.
“You write some numbers starting at the end and then toward the beginning.” “I do?”
“Yeah, look,” he took a piece of paper and a pen out and then proceeded to write a nine on it. I noticed that he started from the middle of the eventual nine, looped upwards, and then came down with the line. He gave me the pen and when I wrote my own nine, I 131 | KIRBY OF MIDDLETOWN
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started from the bottom, created the line upward, and then finished with the loop. “You did it again, you did it backwards.” We went through several more numbers and many letters of the alphabet and for many of the characters I did it opposite the way he did and he taught me something about myself I never knew.
When I got home I found Lynne in my apartment laying in bed. For the last couple of days, there has been a newborn in Elway's apartment that will not shut up. It cries all hours of the day with relentlessness. Dave and Sara are lucky to be in school in the day, but in the evening and night they have to listen to music to function and sleep. Lynne finds that difficult so she just comes down here. I felt bad for her; she is in pain, couldn't sleep up there, and has to work.
I tell her that everything went fine, and then I give her a piece of paper and a pen and ask her to write an “s” on it. She writes it, though confused, the same way Logan wrote it; from the top to the bottom. When I showed her my own “s,” she found it strange that I wrote mine from bottom to top.
She looked at me suspectingly, and then asked, “Do you fold or crumple toilet paper?” “...Fold,” I answered. She let out a sigh of relief, “Just making sure me and my kids are safe around you.” I laughed. They are safe, but you aren't. I'm in your head as much as you're in mine.
I ask her how her leg is and she tells me the pain is almost completely gone. I put my hand through the blanket and feel her stump, “Does it hurt?” She nods her head negatively. “Did you try walking on it?” She nods her head negatively again. I asked her to see how it felt.
She paced back and forth with the prosthetic on but she walked with a slight limp which told us she needed more time. When she got back in bed I stayed with her and thought on the past, specifically, the way she limped. It was one of the first things I ever noticed about her and it definitely brought back memories of just watching her walk.
Sometimes to me, sometimes away from me.
Laying there I thought more on handwriting. I went through each number and each letter in my mind, visualizing of first the way I wrote it, and then second the way Lynne or Logan would have written it. And in this mental observation I realized something.
There were two major components that dictated the way I write; forward momentum and estimation.
Forward momentum was the simple fact that in English speaking countries we read and write from left to right. This notion surely will affect my writing and surely has an effect perhaps on my writing's legibility, because I gotta tell you man, sometimes even I can't read my own handwriting.
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has made sense of making this the most important factor when I write. Say I am writing an “s,” the reason I start from the bottom is because my forward momentum when I end at the top will lead me into the next letter, as opposed to starting from the top and essentially writing the letter “s” from right to left and losing my momentum.
The second condition, which is estimation, comes from the fact that in a notebook we write on a line. It must have made sense to my child-brain when I was learning how to write to start on the line, which is why I would write “s” the way that I do. I must have felt that if I started from the top, however slight the estimation would be, I would have to work on landing the bottom of the “s” on the line, as opposed to just starting from the bottom which would give me the freedom of ending it anywhere I pleased.
Now I think of the number two and the fact that I start my twos from the top. This makes sense to me because forward momentum is more valuable to my mind that estimation. And think of the letter “c,” though I start them from the bottom, forward momentum is irrelevant here because it is equal despite where I may start that letter from.
In this case, estimation is most important.
I started to then think of the number eight and my mind went on into another tangent when I saw Lynne turn on her side and mumble “You can never underestimate the value of good sleep.”
Values in numbers are so contextual. Can a number have truly objective value? Even though numbers are an objective concept, I feel like they sometimes rely on subjective context. Most people will agree that living eighty years is a relatively long life, but you can't even buy a roll of toilet paper for eighty cents. The death of one ant means absolutely nothing to the Earth, but the death of one king could start a war.
When applying numbers to a circumstance it seems one must be aware of context for a more appropriate understanding of the matter. When Lynne turned toward me in her sleep she shifted the tangent in my mind after saying “I love babies but Jesus fucking Christ that baby is a nightmare.”
She made me think of a baby's birth, that person's life and their eventual death. Still thinking about the contextual value of numbers, we tend to give more weight to the beginning and ending of things than we do their middles. This might be because the beginning and ending of something is always more brief when compared to its middle, which tends to hold the most quantity. Like the first time you see a house that you like, you fall in love with it. Then you live it for a really long time. You don't really get a powerful feeling of sentimentality from it ever again until you permanently move out of the house and look at it for the last time. When we ponder on the many mysteries of the universe we seem to think most on how it began and how it will end, and while we do appreciate it, we think less of its time in existence.
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When I first met Lynne, I became obsessed with her. She would argue that I still have a hard-on for her, and she would be mostly correct, but if our relationship were to ever end I think it would have to be something absolutely terrible. The beginning and ending of anything is always disproportionately revered as to its middle counterpart. Is it because the middle segment is always greatest in quantity?
I also feel like middles always get the short end of the stick just because they are the middle. Think about a trilogy and how the second chapter is always the bridge from the beginning to the end. This could mean the middle tale won't have a complete story. Think about middle children, midday, people who have to sit in the middle seats on an airplane.
The middle fucking sucks.
“I need to go upstairs,” Lynne startled me. “...Why are you telling me? I'm not your father.” She laughed. “I need a ride,” she said softly. She could have easily walked upstairs to her own apartment but she still asked me to help her. I asked her why she wasn't as hard-pressed about it as she was that night when she fell.
“I always got upset when Silvio told me I couldn't do things. Not even just because I was handicapped, but because I was a woman. Even before my amputation he would always let me know that I was incapable of doing certain things. As a woman you take the joke and laugh at it even if it hurts you because that's your man. So when you said it I was mad, and giving you my shoe made me mad. But I also know that you believe in me.
I know that you were just being realistic, not an asshole, and didn't want me to get an infection. That's why I'm over it.”
On the way to her apartment she continued, telling me that the stark contrast between me and Silvio was that I am obsessive, but not possessive. “But I bet you'd like it if I was possessive.” “If you were possessive you would at least know how to make it funny,” she laughed.
Going up the stairs I could begin to hear the sounds of the baby crying, and this annoyed Lynne so much that she told me to give her her shoe and then she got off my back and knocked on Elway's door.
A young woman answered the door, perhaps early twenties and with dark fading eyes as if she hadn't slept in days. Lynne and I were both confused and wondered if Elway had moved out and she in with a baby. We later learned that Elway had passed and that she was his granddaughter, and because Elway owned this apartment, he left it for her in his will. The baby was hers, just born only a few months ago. I just realized I had a dream about Elway a few days ago. I will tell you about it in a moment.
The young woman, her name was Lisa, was desperate. She begged Lynne to try to calm the baby down. She was so desperate she probably would have paid a complete stranger to try this.
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Like a miracle, as soon as Lynne picked up the baby, it shut up. Lisa told us she had tried holding it many times but it never worked. “Can you please take it so I can get some rest?,” Lisa asked. Lynne and I both looked at eachother. “No, I mean, just for a few hours, I need to sleep so badly.”
We left Lisa to rest and took the baby to Lynne's apartment where she sat the baby down on her lap as she worked on her laptop. The baby barely made any sounds. To see if it was just her, she handed the baby to me. The baby was still silent. “Maybe it just doesn't like her,” I joked, handing it back to Lynne.
After she was done with her work, Lynne limped with the baby in arms to her bed and laid there with it. She began singing a song about her and I as parents to a newborn, and I know that she was making it up as she went because it didn't rhyme. She's a poet, but she can't freestyle.
The song was kind of weird, because in only so many verses she revealed to me of her fantasy to have a child with me. I would have to ask her later if that was really how she felt, but for the time being this is how it felt.
The baby eventually fell asleep and I told her that she must have been practicing because she got much better at singing. A few more months and she'll be putting me to bed.
Lynne and the baby soon fell asleep and when Dave and Sara came through the door, they asked me excitingly if the baby had left, but they soon saw it sleeping with their mother and were startled.
The dream I had of Elway took place in the land of the Bridge Garden Islands. There were three islands off of where the other islands were, and they were lined up in a row.
Lynne and I were crossing a bridge, leaving the first island to get to the second island.
Getting on the second island, we entered a temple and found Elway standing there.
The first thing he said when we got to him was “Everyone who passes through these islands will eventually meet me,” and then he stuck out his hand. Lynne and I went through our packs and removed our astrological rocks. When he took mine, he looked at it and said “Capricorn.” When he took Lynne's, he looked at it and said “Taurus.”
“In the context of male-female, this is a relationship that is very simple, yet very complex. It is simple because at the core, Capricorn and Taurus are 99% similar, but the 1% is an opposition so vast it changes their very natures when together. Capricorn has a backward understanding that is mitigated and made more creatively powerful by Taurus's artistic passion. But when Taurus's passion is elevated to an unruly degree, it is grounded by Capricorn's logic. Both Capricorn and Taurus are given to quiet natures, but when together, their twin worlds become one and are only distinguishable by the contrasts of light and dark. Taurus will rule the day and all the objects of it; Sun, flowers, animals, 135 | KIRBY OF MIDDLETOWN
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romance, creation, strength, water and the sky. Capricorn will rule the night and all the objects of it; Passion, journey, courage, protection, stars, insects and the wild. And in the middle where Taurus and Capricorn will meet, they will rule together one object that was once split into two.
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Chapter 49
RAISE HELL
3:1:5:49
THERE are two ways to pronounce Ocidico. The residents say it depending on which area they live in and often argue over the correct pronunciation. It can be said where the second “c” is hard, sounding like “Ocidiko,” or where the second “c” is soft, sounding like “Ocidiso.”
The pronunciation of the city's name was of no concern to Rock, his only concern was escaping the city as the bounty for his life had grown larger since he came out of hiding.
Rock's injuries had healed completely and he now stalked through the city at night in stealth. The time came when Rock reached a river which ran through Ocidico City, and along the bridge which ran crossed to it Rock saw that the area was heavily patrolled by bounty hunters.
Rock was not at all surprised that they would have patrolled this area, and soon he noticed a group of men playing poker in a tent. He waited for one of them to leave the tent in search of an area in the nearby woods to urinate, and sneaking up behind him, Rock told him not to move and to hand him the handgun on his waist.
Taking his handgun, and then the man's bullet-proof vest, Rock demanded the man to take him to the place they stored their weapons. There, Rock saw a mass of Composition 5 explosives and a detonator.
Putting a bullet-proof vest onto the man which also contained a small cut of the C5, he told the man to walk across the bridge, which had several patrollers on it, and secretly place cuts of C5 all along it, and then the man would have exactly ten seconds to remove the C5 and run for his life. This was not true, however, as Rock knew letting the man live would only come back to haunt him.
Rock watched the man with a pair of binoculars as he traversed the bridge, planting C5 every ten yards. When the man walked past the final patroller, and then planted the final piece of C5, Rock said a prayer and then pressed the activation code.
It was an explosion unlike any Rock had ever seen before with his own eyes. Debris and dust settled into the air and the bridge collapsed completely. Suddenly the remaining poker players ran out of their tent to see what had caused the loud noise. One by one, Rock executed each of them and everyone patrolling the bridge was deceased.
Rock walked up to one of the patrolmen and took his cellphone, and then preceded to drop down on the debris of the bridge so that he may walk across it. As Rock walked, often he would leave behind muddied footprints, and once soon, he would be free of Ocidico.
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Chapter 50
HELL RISING
3:1:5:50
SATAN'S injuries had gracefully healed since his fall. He had traveled out of the ruined city in Hell and at once entered a cave swallowed in ice. This ice cave eventually led him to Eichef, which was a lake of fire that slept between him and the exit to the new world.
This lake of fire was known to Satan, though he never had to traverse it during the creation of the universe, for he was always transported one level above it. This level was the level he would reach provided he could figure out some way to get past the lake of fire.
In his deep thinking he came up with the strategy to pray. Standing directly before the lake of fire, he began speaking:
Hyacintho amet mora framboise, bleue xiav, pos sinine vaarikas zmeura albastra.
Hyacintho amet mora framboise, bleue xiav, pos sinine vaarikas zmeura albastra.
Hyacintho amet mora framboise, bleue xiav, pos sinine vaarikas zmeura albastra.
Satan now began to raise his arms:
Hyacintho amet mora framboise, bleue xiav, pos sinine vaarikas zmeura albastra. It is in the power they have taken from me that I will find the strength to raise the fire before me.
And suddenly, the fire and its lava slowly shifted, the cave walls began to make sounds and pieces of rock fell from them. When Satan saw that his strength was affecting the lake of fire, he continued ten fold:
Hyacintho amet mora framboise, bleue xiav, pos sinine vaarikas zmeura albastra! He has given will to his creation but he shall not overcome mine!
And with a final movement of his arms, that which he raised into the air completely, the lake of fire began to part in its middle. Satan remained his arms into the air as the process continued, and soon there was a narrow pathway he could walk to venture onto the other side. Lowering his arms, the lake of fire remained parted at the middle, and Satan dropped down onto the floor of the lake. With this success Satan believed he was more or less freed from Acidica.
As Satan began walking toward the world to come, he noticed footprints on the ground that walked the same way he walked. But this was of no concern to him, because he was free, and soon, he was to accomplish an achievement no being had ever accomplished before.
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Chapter 51
MORAL ROYAL
3:1:6:51
ISN'T it weird that all nightmares are dreams, but not all dreams are nightmares? This seems to be a general concept for many things. All human beings are living things, but not all living things are human beings. Not all flowers are roses, but all roses are flowers.
Not all humans are women, but all women are humans. Not all women are prostitutes, but all prostitutes are women. Wait, no, that's not true. There are male prostitutes. And, well, even if you were born a woman you can transform into a man and become a male prostitute. I suppose the same thing could happen hypothetically to a flower; if one was born a rose and over an extended period of time its genes mutated its line could possibly become a daisy. This would mean too, hypothetically, that a nightmare could turn into a dream. It's been said that “a man can make a Heaven of Hell and a Hell of Heaven,” and truly, a person who pays no attention to their dreams is like a person who pays no attention to their life, and that in of itself is like a living nightmare.
Lynne and I were going downward in the elevator, wearing old backpacks and on our way to Publiks, the local super-department store near our building.
When we hit the lobby and the elevator doors opened, we saw that we were not looking at the lobby floor but instead at an underground parking garage we didn't even know existed as we were not issued any parking spaces.
When I looked at the elevator's panel, I saw that she pressed “G” instead of “L”.
Lynne walked out anyway, I'm sure because she thought it was cool to find a place about the building she didn't know about.
We walked through the dimly lit parking garage and noticed a vanity plate on one of the cars. “ILL SUE.” This made us both laugh. Someone in this building has a sense of humor.
As we walked through it we learned we had more than one comedian in the building.
We saw “3JOH22A,” “OMG MOVE,” and while this one wasn't funny, someone also had “JUSTTRY.” I guess just trying could be comical if you believe we live in an absurd and ultimately meaningless world. I wonder how many people have a proxy purpose. A writer writes about a person but that person never knows it and they die thinking they meant nothing to the world.
We made it outside and then made it to Publiks. “Did you get any sleep last night?” “I don't sleep, I just dream.” The annoying baby now spent most of its time in Lynne's apartment because if it's awake and she isn't there, it cries. It's sleeping right now, and if it's not, then it's definitely crying and I'm sure Lisa is having a meltdown.
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plastic bags and walked back home.
“Ten years ago I would have never thought or even dreamed of my life turning out the way it has.” When I didn't reply she looked at me and I guess the look on my face asked a question. “Walking home with groceries in a backpack and two plastic bags in my hands.”
“You know what Sara asked me the other night?,” I laughed. “What?” “If we're poor.” Lynne laughed herself. “What did you tell her?” “I said no.”
What I actually said was “no, but whether we were rich or poor, we would be the same people.”
Often we mistake principles and morals for synonyms. But principles are void of connotations and morality is a collective average. Let me explain. A person's principles do not have to be good and just, they are simply a set of standards. Morality is an agreement on what is, at average, considered to be good or evil.
Character A can be moral without principles. A was in a situation which left them rich but also their clothes bloodied and needed new attire. They come across a group of people who offer them a coat. They take it and have no intention of paying for it. Even though character A does not feel bad about not paying for the coat despite having recently become rich, character A did display a trait of morality by going back to the site where the money was found to bring a dying man water, who earlier in the day they had seen dying of thirst.
Character B can be immoral with principles. B was also in a situation which left their clothes bloodied, but was not rich. They came across a group of people who offered them a coat. They take it, but insist on payment because it is principle. Despite the people not wanting anything in exchange for the coat, they are paid by character B anyway. But in the same day, character B made good on their promise to murder an enemy's wife because they said they would, and it was their principle to carry out actions they promised.
These examples indicate there is a very real possibility to be moral without principle and immoral with principle, and this possibility shows the strong distinction between the two concepts of morality and principles. One person can have a morality that, on average, is considered good, but have no foundation on what makes them do good things, while another person can have a morality that on average is considered evil, but have a strong foundation on what makes them do evil things.
Lynne and I walked into the underground garage and parted from eachother on the twenty-first floor. I went into my apartment to stock my refrigerator with the things I purchased and heard that I left the television on. Someone told me that the president was nearing the end of his presidency as I walked up to shut it off.
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Going through my backpack, I noticed that I had something that was meant for them.
I walked up the flight of stairs, passed Lisa's door and went through Lynne's. I saw that the baby was still sound asleep. Imagine all the lives in dreams you've ever had.
I handed Lynne the item and noticed that she made some changes to her apartment to make it more feminine; then she told me that Lisa said the baby never woke up, then she told me that she would be down there in a moment. In a moment, she came down to my apartment with the baby and placed it in my bed.
Leaving the room to go into the kitchen, she passed me by as I stared at the baby from the frame of the door. It was basically a newborn. And a part of me wondered what Lynne and Lisa were planning. They probably had not even communicated the plan verbally, everything was probably instinctual, and I had the terrible feeling that I was going to be caught in the insufferable middle of their conspiracy.
When I wandered out of my thoughts, I became aware of the sound coming from behind me. I did a one-eighty turn, remained in the doorway, and watched Lynne as she cooked and as she sang. It was loud enough to wake the baby but so pretty that it would put it in a deeper state of dreaming. I know this not because I'm a baby, but because her singing placed me in a fantasy. Ten years ago I would have never thought or even dreamed of my life turning out the way it has.
Now I'm not a critic or anyone who knows anything about vocals, but I told Lynne she wasn't good when she wasn't good and I would be damned if I didn't tell her she was good when she was good. All she needed now was a white dress with a white shoe and a white rose so that a white Heaven could fall.
“I see what you're doing,” I interrupted her. She stopped singing and turned around to look at me innocently, “What am I doing?” “You're making my dreams come true... I'm on to you,” I pointed at her.
A few hours later Dave and Sara came down to retrieve their dinner and then retreated back to their rooms. The baby was fed as well by something Lisa eventually brought down, and then she too retreated back into her apartment and left the baby with us. I would have called her dense in my mind had she not tried to pick up the baby and take it home, but she did, and the baby immediately began crying when it saw that it was leaving behind Lynne and I. Lisa placed the baby back down onto the bed and vanished.
It was night now and I could see the dark blue city outside throw fades of blue light into my living room. The baby lied in between Lynne and I, awake, but not making a sound. When I turned my body toward them, I first caught Lynne staring down at the baby, and then her eyes quickly lifted to see mine... In her eyes, I saw the reflection of a bluish-green light.
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while their newborn laid in between them. The baby was only three months old but to them it felt like it had been three years. Indeed, the baby was a combination of their genetics, and indeed it showed to the world of what beautiful makings the pair could produce; in romance, in royalty, in refinement, but what the baby did not show was what the pair could not produce in reflection.
And so it was not totally coincidental that after Brigid rose from the bed and began walking toward the other room that Brian spoke out to her, stopping her in short journey, that Brigid did not turn around fully and spoke to her husband from the mirror, where she could see him but not herself, and he could see her, but not himself.
The baby, who would grow to be exactly like its parents, would later learn that those who do not reflect, or even self-reflect, are like unconscious animals, and that the world it would inherit would be a result of putting knowledge and power in the hands of these people.
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Chapter 52
THE BOOK OF SARAH
3:1:6:52
A super rare can be extremely hard to distinguish without the use of proper surrounding data. They can guise themselves as uncommon or even common events until you read the surrounding data and realize the event was extremely unlikely.
An example: a data drought being experienced by two distinct individuals causes them both to take a route to work they normally do not take, and then they crash into eachother. This may not be a rare event with regard to general crash statistics, but it is a super rare event with regard to the surrounding statistics; that is these two people do not normally take these routes to work.
In effect, a super rare is achievable only when there are at least two current data droughts occurring to distinct entities. In simple terms, a super rare is the combination of at least two rare events caused via data drought. Again, they are difficult to identify because of the relative implications; car crashes are common, but this particular car crash was a rarity.
What was also a rarity was David going to sleep at an appropriate time on a school-night. This night of nights was no exception.
There was something tantalizing, David felt, of having your own room; the privacy, the quietness, the solitude. It was in its own way having your own private universe where for a moment or two no one else existed and there was only you and the small vastness of the great mystery.
Many nights David found himself playing games or visiting websites, but recently he learned of a movie marathon about a boxer and his story. Every night this station would broadcast the films, and David would sit and watch for hours as he ate bagels and cheese and chocolates. Every time commercials would come on, he would switch the channel to a music station in anticipation of hearing a song that this station too would play every night, and then he would switch back the films.
In running out of chocolates, David left his room and entered the quiet darkness of the living room, where he could see a dark shade of his mother and a baby sleeping. This current situation of David leaving his room past one in the morning was not common, and he gave thought to this at the first glimpse of the dark living room. There was a dim light that barely outlined the two who were sleeping, perhaps that of the Moon, and walking further he suddenly saw Sara's door open.
Sara leaving her room past one in the morning was equally unusual. Nevertheless, the two crossed paths in the moonlit living room and then vanished.
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through the final pages of a book that would be categorized under romance, royalty and science fiction. Sitting back on her bed and picking back up the book, she read some more just near the window where she could see the view of the dark city.
She watched intently as her mother walked down the isle, her arm in her father's and wearing a beautiful whitish gown. The pretty gown was the highlight of the entire aesthetic of their location, where over one hundred people sat to watch her marry the greatest love of her life. Up above were banners of digital red roses, on the people's attires were formations of plastic red roses, and for the bride and the groom, real red roses, for today their lovebond was written into reality in their lovebook.
Sara looked up and out of the window into the city, her mind wondering about the most recent passage. She thought about the phrase “real red roses” and also of the concept of true love. Sara thought too of her mother and the fact that in her short span of life, she could only recollect her mother ever being affectionate with one other man. And yet she knew that this man was not her biological father, which meant that her mother must have been affectionate at one time in her life with another. The thought of her mother loving another man was foreign to her, almost even unsettling, because this notion worked against the concept she conceived as soulmates.
When the ceremony was over, the lovebirds went on honeymoon. They traveled to the most beautiful moon of Crvor, which was the only moon that could match the fever in their hearts. There, they found the wildflower that was prophecised to them in Ganigen's dream, and this was what proved to them that they were destined for eachother for all of eternity.
Closing the book, Sara looked out of the window again at the dark city. She was crying but only crying slightly. She wondered who she would meet someday in San Rashida. Or, anywhere, really. And she wondered, if one day, she would get to write her own lovebook with someone she loved, someone who she was destined to meet. And she wondered, too, what would prove that he was one out of billions. When she finally met him, would it be a straight-shot of history into his arms, or could she find him even out of order in the chaos of her life?
In regard to linear and non-linear conditions, a super rare may occur when a linear group of rare conditions are met. It is debatable as to whether a group of rare non-linear conditions being met can result in a super rare, but for this essay, we will assume you cannot achieve a super rare through a group of non-linear conditions.
With that said, when a linear group of rare conditions are met, you are left with a super rare, which is basically a rare event with an extremely low possibility of occurring.
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super rare, which in order to achieve, all rare events can be in any order and the same super rare event will still be achieved, which is probably unlikely.
A simple example is a common arrest that ends up in an uncommon death. A police officer goes to arrest an individual, but within the duration of this arrest we are presented with; a group of bystanders recording the ordeal, traffic, multiple police officers, ambulance dispatch, time of day, and a host of other events. If we assume the super rare to be the ending of this ordeal to result in the death of the individual being arrested, you perhaps cannot just simply include all of these elements in the batch and it will always result in the super rare event of death. Instead, they must each be presented linearly, in a certain way, and this will result in the unlikely death of the individual being arrested.
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Chapter 53
SING OF MIDEENA
3:1:6:53
ON a Christmas morning filled with snowfall, Lisa sat in Lynne's apartment, observing how happy her baby was when it sat in Lynne's lap. The two had been talking about their pasts, and more prominently, Lisa of her relationships and her hobbies.
“Do you guys not celebrate Christmas?,” Lisa asked, noticing they had not any trees up or even decorations hinting at the holiday. “When they were smaller we kind of did, but as of late not really. I really don't even think they're interested in it anymore.”
A moment later Lisa stood over Lynne as Lynne showed her various flowers from her flowerbook. Lisa, having not an artistic bone her body, was thoroughly impressed at Lynne's creativity, though she did not completely understand or see all of the riddles in her designs.
Lynne now flipped to her newest design, which Lynne had named “The Ring of Mideena,” which featured a red rose with a ring of gold rocks orbiting around the middle of the stem. On the same page was a small paragraph which detailed the story of the ring of Mideena. Apparently, all spirits of any living thing that is considered motherly, or of the female guardian range, came from Saturn, and every one of these living things has a lifeforce, though unseen, that orbits around them and gives them the motherly force.
Lisa, after reading this, thought Lynne to be somewhat of the artistic pretentious type, but seeing as she was helping to take care of her baby, she did not think much more on it.
Lisa eventually left Lynne's apartment, and soon after, the baby fell asleep on Lynne's bed. Lynne told her children that she would be downstairs should the baby wake up, and traveled her way down a flight of stairs to the home of the narrator.
It's really hard for a person to change once past a certain age. Older people especially, because by then your values are most likely set. Your morals and your principles have already been trained and conditioned into you by your society. If you're fortunate, you will have adopted your own values, but the concept remains the same; whenever I think of this I think about the time when someone said you live the first third of your life developing who you are and the last two thirds trying to reverse it.
Every second that you spend alive you are being programmed to do more of what you are already doing, whether by physics or psociety, to the point that as you grow older you are less likely to become new. To say and act with new actions and words. Brain plasticity almost proves this at a biological level. Whatever you chose to do in your youth, I hope you chose wisely. Whatever you choose to do today, I hope you choose wisely. And whatever you choose to do tomorrow, it's probably already been scripted.
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worlds and eventually you just have to wait for them to die off. It's sad to say or even think, but it's true. What if some of these old spirits refuse to die off? What if they will not let go of their power? If I was given the chance to kill someone I thought was evil and was in the way of world peace, I would kill them. I would put that blood on my hands.
Maybe that makes me immoral or evil myself, but it is a principle I have lived by for a long time now, in this world and in the other. It bothers me to think that I might actually even enjoy it, and I don't know what that makes me then, but it is what it is. I wonder, if you begin to enjoy killing evil people, does enjoyment warp any moral standing you initially had?
When I had a dream a few nights ago, it concerned Bloodclot. He was so angry with me for keeping him locked inside a cage that he tried to use one of his most damaging moves, Bloodshot, to escape my imprisoning of him. He failed. But I knew that with a few more attempts, he would escape, and I would not be able to kill him. This led me to making a bargain with him.
I explained to Bloodclot some things he did not know about Operation Duskfall, but I revealed to him the thing he sought most; the unknown whereabouts of the man behind it all, Senator Dusk. I explained to him that I had sent him to another dimension called NETZERO. For a long time Bloodclot laughed, didn't believe such a place existed and said I was toying with him. So I proved it to him.
I returned to him with a wild rabbit and told him that eventually, one of these dominoes that I drop on the rabbit would transport it and it would disappear. Bloodclot watched intently. Finally, the rabbit disappeared, creating a ring of matter before dissipating into another dimension.
Now that I had Bloodclot's attention, I spoke of the bargain. I told him that because I could not convince him to stop all of the killing in this world, I would send him to NETZERO, where he could find and torture the one man who was the cause of all of his pain. And I told him that if I sent him there, he would not be able to return. If he died here, perhaps he would have a chance of being reunited with his family despite all of his murders, but if he went to NETZERO, he would not be able to die there, and the rest of his existence would be a battle with Dusk. I saw that in his mind and in his dreams he held the weight of Heaven and then the weight of Hell.
“I have thought well on your bargain,” he told me, “and in my mind I cannot bear the weight of Hell.”
“Happy New Year.” “Happy New Year yourself,” I said back to Lynne as she entered my apartment. I was seated with my laptop at the table near my windows where I could overlook the city, and Lynne came and sat down next to me and placed her laptop on the table as well.
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I traveled to the website where I could find vocalized songs and then the same songs without vocals. They asked me to accept some terms. Whatever, I accept all of the terms.
You can have both of my kidneys.
When Lynne saw the list, she asked me, “Is that the list?” It was the list. A list I told her I would create so that she could sing to so I could hear her sing. Every song I picked she already knew, so all she really needed to do was to find the lyrics. Once she found the lyrics for this particular song, I began playing the track. She cleared her throat. This song had a bit of an introduction, so it would be a moment until she began singing. This prologue caused me to stare out into the city before me. Strange thing was I didn't really have any thoughts other than what my eyes were seeing, but once Lynne began to sing, I could see moments as thoughts in my mind.
I spoke long ago on the idea that what we see in waking life can influence the dreams we can unlock in our sleep, but I never took into account that what we hear could do the same. There are ways to see your other lives even when awake with open eyes, and I suppose this is something I have always known at an intuitive level, through daydreaming, but Lynne's singing has made me truly aware of the phenomenon.
The inner theatre she has induced in me display a number of weathered dreams. I see her leading me, in a yellow dress and through a dark hallway, one of which when we reach the end, it leads out to the roof of the building we live in now. Gazing upon the city we see rainfall and splashes against many windows. I feel her hugging me from behind as we ride a horse through medieval times, lightning flashing often in the distance in obscure ways. I smell her as we lay side by side in an eternal field, snow falling on us lightly. And I taste her as I bury my forehead into her neck, windstorms being heard outside very near.
All of these moments as she sang were like feelings of nostalgia, even though I had not any idea whether it took place in the future or in the past. But I know for a fact that she has allowed me to see the many tales together of our many lives.
We went through a few more songs and she showed me more, up until the point that I realized that depth was in the eye of the beholder. When she was done I was taken out of my trance. “Lashes, you are wonderful.”
She threw out her arms and then hugged me, thanking me, and I told her that next time I might need to bring my saxophone. I could feel her laugh into me. “You called me Lashes,” she sounded like a little girl.
Many years ago Lynne had told me that red roses symbolize love and romance. This is obviously not a fact and is more in the realm of aesthetics and meaning, but it's something I've remembered specifically because she was the one who told it to me.
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for knowledge, but it is something I will always remember because it came from her mouth.
When Lynne unhugged me she went back to look at her computer screen smiling.
“Whoa,” I exclaimed, “What is that?” She looked at me and saw me pointing at the side of her face. She touched the side of her face but felt nothing, and asked me “What is what?” I told her that there was something on her ear and it looked like it was kind of moving, but I told her immediately afterward not to touch it or to make any sudden movements. And slowly, I inched my hand closer and closer toward her right ear until I was touching it. “Did you get it?,” she asked. “I think so.”
I brought my hand quickly away from her ear with it in my hand. “What's this?,” I said in complete amazement. She looked at it blankly, and then at me blankly. “Where did this gold ring with a flattened red rosehead and two golden leaves come from?!” She continued to look at me blankly, almost unplayfully. I tried to fit the ring onto one of my fingers but it stopped short of being comfortable, “Oh no, it doesn't fit me... If only someone's hands were tiny enough to bear this ring.” She started pressing her lips together as if she was going to murder me or at the very least as if she wanted to do violent things to my face. “Oh wait! I know! Sara has small hands, I wonder if she would like this fine piece of jewelry.”
Finally she said something, “I guess that mouth of yours is going to have to learn to sing itself.” She continued to look at me, blankly and unplayfully. “Okay, okay, let's make a deal,” I laughed, “Since you sing, you get the ring.” She layed out her hand and I placed it in her hand. “Wait, what am I doing?,” she said as she gave me the ring back and then extended all of her fingers as if to high-five. “Which one?,” I asked since she already had a ring on her ring finger. “Index.” I slowly placed it on.
When it was on she grabbed me and forced my body into hers, guiding my face to slam into her bosom. Tightly squeezing and caressing me, I could tell this was her mother's instinct. I don't mean Emily, I mean, like, a motherly instinct. I don't think Emily has ever hugged anyone in her entire life. That coupled with the fact that Lynne never really had a father could be why she is doing this to me now.
“I love you so much,” she sounded like a little girl again. She kissed my forehead, and suddenly it was past midnight. She went up to check on the baby, and then came back down in her running clothes, wearing a red shoe in celebration of her red rose.
We left my apartment and went down the elevator and then through the lobby. We had plans to do everything exactly as the night we ran before; music, straight shot; except we went opposite the way we ran last time as to end on the Paradise Port bridge.
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something on Lynne's left ear. “Wait, don't move,” I told her there was something on her ear, and I let her know that I was being serious this time but she didn't believe me. “Oh, I hope it's not another pretty little thing,” she said girlishly, and as I went to put my hand behind her ear, I began running for the end of the street.
I had a decent lead on her but at the half-mark she was closing the gap. My lead lead even toward the end of the race, but she was no more than a couple of feet behind me.
And then she was only a tiny foot behind me when I was a giant foot away from the finish line.
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Chapter 54
DO IT AGAIN
3:1:6:54
THE morning Sun was rising in the desert valley when Eight Jack awoke. His throat was completely dry as he had not had a drop of water for hours. Nor did his horse, Mickie, who when he looked at seemed to be suffering from the same condition. "Come on, girl," he said as he prepared her for travel. It was his sole intention to catch up with Red Rex, the man who had robbed him of every thing only a day prior.
Though she had barely an ounce of energy, Eight Jack was able to rattle her into speed, almost as if he were able to infer onto her the idea of revenge, and that if she galloped fast enough, they could take back what was theirs, and that that, amongst other things, meant food and water.
A seam of doubt came about when the two saw that in the distance they would have to travel up a slope. Mickie was hesitant, but Eight Jack was persistent. Slowly she climbed up as well she could, but at the half mark Eight Jack knew that he had to get off of her were they to succeed to the top. After he had done so, Mickie was able to travel better, but just as they approached the top, she suddenly collapsed.
Eight Jack had seen this before and knew that she was on the verge of death.
Knowing there was nothing he could do, he stayed by her side until she perished. And seeing her die, he knew he was not far from death in the valley as well.
Eight Jack continued to the top of the slope, where finally he had decided to not pursue justice but to pursue help, and when he looked out from the top of the slope, it was not help that he saw, but revenge. Red Rex had been not too far from the bottom of the slope, getting his horse ready for departure.
Eight Jack detoured and in effect was able to evade detection from Red Rex as he progressed down the slope, though suddenly another rider began to approach Red Rex.
Adjusting his vision, Eight Jack saw that it was Felony Penelope, who was to him many years ago not just a past partner in crime, but also a passionate lover. She rode up to Red Rex, and they seemed to embrace. You could hear her laughter from miles away as she began to undress for Red Rex, and it wasn't too long until Red Rex took his body into hers. And with a wild ferocity, a compelling force, Eight Jack came out shooting at the pair, making his mark on Red Rex but missing Felony Penelope as she got on her horse in the nude to ride away.
Eight Jack did not pursue her, as he knew someone else would, eventually, put her out of her own misery. Recovering his items from Red Rex, Eight Jack finally ate and drank, but because Red Rex's horse had vanished during the shooting, he was to make his way on foot and only took as much as he could carry.
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Eight Jack decided to wander toward the border, knowing full well that Felony Penelope would take the information of Red Rex's death to the law as a form of currency.
As he approached the border, he found out that he was correct, as he was wanted and arrested by the law.
The following day, Eight Jack was taken into the town of Versai, where he was to be hung. The family and friends of Red Rex all followed as he was dragged by his feet through the mud. They sang and they danced, knowing justice was nigh. But when they got to the gallows, the hangman was not present. Several times throughout the hour attempts were made to contact the hangman, but he was simply unavailable and unreachable. As the crowd of spectators diminished, the law became disinterested, and so they released Eight Jack, throwing him out into the street with the rest of the disreputable where he belonged.
Without a penny to his name or a sip of water to drink, Eight Jack wandered the town of Versai. Many men who had come that close to death surely would have dropped to their knees and thanked God and the heavens, or at least thanked something divine, but Eight Jack was not many men. He was instead a man who gambled. This is why he eventually entered a place of cards that same night.
Playing at whatever games he knew and gambling with whatever items he had left, Eight Jack seemed to be a man back on the rise. This was actually how he had received his nickname, as a man of fortune. One of the most talked about stories included our protagonist himself; he had been able to win the largest pot in the history of Deino by bluffing with an eight and a jack. This victory put his name on the map, but not in all the ways that were good. And while Eight Jack could bluff his way to kingdom come, he could not bluff his way through Felony Penelope, perhaps the one person on the planet who truly knew him. For a long time she was his only friend.
"Hey there," Felony Penelope said, sitting down at his table. Eight Jack was surprised. The killing of Red Rex, though no longer a secret now, was not the only secret Felony Penelope vaulted for her past lover, Eight Jack. She knew everything. She knew he was the one who robbed Silly Bill. She knew he was the one who killed Smoky Moe.
She knew he was the one who raped Dirty Selma. And most pressing of all, because he was in that room that night too playing cards, she knew he was the one who ratted out Pistolwhip Dan and his gang.
Seeing as he was a lucky man tonight, she whispered in his ear, making a deal with him. Hand over everything now, and she won't reveal the fact that Eight Jack was the one who snitched on Pistolwhip Dan and his gang. Eight Jack was appalled. Not because of the ridiculous threat, but because there was a part of him, despite her deceptive nature, that still loved her.
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"Why do you bring me only sorrow?," Eight Jack asked her. And when she saw that he was not going to pay, she got up and made her way to Pistolwhip Dan and his gang.
Not willing to believe that she would have him killed, despite the fact that she had already proved this the day before, he sat there and waited until she pointed him out, and at that moment Eight Jack knew it was time to run.
Into the confusing night ran Eight Jack, stealing a horse and riding until he was out of the town of Versai. But Pistolwhip Dan and his gang were not people to let their prey escape so easily. This was no exception as they easily caught up to Eight Jack and began firing at him, small flickers of light in the night. The first bullets did miss, but a final one caught his horse and Eight Jack came tumbling down.
As Pistolwhip Dan and his gang circled around Eight Jack, he began to plead for his life, but Pistolwhip Dan wanted to hear nothing of it. He wanted only to murder the man who had him and his gang put away for three years.
"Shut up! ...Now listen up, Felony Penelope told me everything," Pistolwhip Dan said, "and I think it's in your best interest to tell me what I need to know." "I'll tell you anything." "I said shut up! ... Now, who is this Eight Jack feller? And whereabouts is he situated now?" Eight Jack was infinitely confused, but after a moment found a way out of his current predicament.
"She said he's the one who ratted me out, and she said you know where he is." "I know exactly where he is, he's in Vegas," Eight Jack said quickly. Pistolwhip Dan began laughing, "Vegas?!" Eight Jack laughed, "Yeah, Vegas." "Well then!," Pistolwhip Dan yelled, "We're going to Vegas boys!"
Without a pot to piss in and living on borrowed time, Eight Jack wandered into the city of Vegas. Many men who had come that close to death surely would have dropped to their knees and thanked God and the heavens, or at least thanked something divine, but Eight Jack was not many men. He was instead a man who gambled. This is why he eventually entered a place of cards that same night.
He had the option of staying at a brothel with Pistolwhip Dan and his gang, but the casino's lights caught his eyes. "My sin is the flesh, yours must be the risk," Pistolwhip Dan said to him just before he left, but Eight Jack only answered, "I'm not a gambling man."
But Eight Jack as we know him was indeed a gambling man. He gambled with Mickie's life when he pushed her to her limits. He gambled with the law when he murdered Red Rex in front of a witness. He gambled with his life when he refused to see that the woman he loved did not love him in return. Not only was Eight Jack a gambling man, he seemed to lose more than he'd win.
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handle in his hand, he pulled down and waited at the prospect of winning. And as he awaited his destiny, he thought of Pistolwhip Dan and the fact that he would eventually discover his true identity. But evenso, to gamble and along with it the risk was his greatest desire.
Eight Jack's pull at the handle ended in a lost, but he had just enough earnings to pull it one more time. And who among us wouldn't do what Eight Jack did? It is behavior as old as Lucifer and a line of thinking as old as the gods of Greek mythology, to believe that even with a bad hand one may still win it all. It is in the stuff of visions, in the prospect of dreams, that the universe can be persuaded. That an eight and a jack can be the masterhand. But let us call a jack a jack, for a good fortune is just that; a good fortune. It has nothing to do with merit and winning will not conceal your true nature.
Whatever cards you draw in the land of milk and honey, you must put them on the table.
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Chapter 55
AMORTOWN
3:1:6:55
ON a Valentine's Day night filled with windfall, Lynne and I ran our usual nightly run to the Paradise Port bridge. When we made it there we sat on our usual benches that were located on the bridge and looked out to our sometimes moonlit body of water. At intervals a train passed by and blocked our view, and each time it disappeared it felt as if the white-light streak on the water moved just a little bit.
Each night that we sit here nothing is ever really communicated because we both still have our headphones on, but staring at the same thing I'm sure brought similar thoughts.
What does one think of staring out into moonlit water? The beauty of life? How amazing it is that all of this came to be? I patted her knee and told her to take off her headphones, and when she did, I asked what she was thinking of. “The half-eaten cheeseburger I still have in the fridge,” she replied.
She put her headphones back on and I guess went back to thinking about her hunger.
That was kind of random, to be thinking about cheeseburgers, but it is true that sometimes I will be doing something and I will randomly remember a dream I had. I can't even begin to understand why that particular dream would be remembered, and it just feels so random.
Pursuant to the data simulator essay, the concept of true randomness cannot co-exist under that circumstance. In a plane governed by data simulation, the aggregation of data is collected from the onset of that plane, meaning data is gathered from the very beginning.
Also pursuant to the data simulator, subsequent operations are influenced by these pieces of data. From these inevitably unique pieces of data, predictions are formed and operations are executed. But once any operation is executed in this form, the concept of randomness is eliminated. This is because once a piece of data is formed, the system is biased toward that piece of data and true randomness cannot be applied.
The only way for a system to be truly random is if it meets one of two criteria: 1/There is no data at all OR 2/All data is equal.
Through the phenomenon of diversity, it is extremely unlikely for all the data in a system to ever be equal, which leads us to the more probable criteria of there being absolutely no data in the system at all. When there is no data in the system, a truly random operation can be performed. But of course, when there is no data to be extracted for a subsequent operation, no operation will be performed in the first place. Thus, nothing can be random, nor no world can be chaos.
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again. Looking up, Lynne and I both realized it had begun to rain. Soon after we realized that it was actually sleet, but sleet that was mostly rain and little pieces of ice. We both got up and began walking home, but with each step the sleetfall got worse and worse until being out in the world was not an option.
We run off the bridge and back into town and I yelled at Lynne to check the buildings for unlocked doors. We must have went through about ten of them individually until we found one with a busted lock. We entered the small building that seemed to house a few residents and stayed put in it. We had no plans of leaving until it was actually safe to be back out in the world.
When ten minutes passed and the storm was either stronger or the same, she told me that she lied earlier about the cheeseburger.
“You said you feel guilt from pleasure. Do you feel guilty when you give me things that obviously give me pleasure?” “Are you talking about the ring?” “Yes.” “Would you feel guilty if you knew it made me feel guilty?” “That's why I'm asking.” “If I said it made me feel guilty what would you do with the ring?” “Give it back to you so you can return it.” “It's past two weeks.” “Can you just answer the question?” “...You're missing a body part. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you don't piss me off, you can have whatever you want.” “So that's a no.” “Yes.”
She came closer to me and hugged my body, “I'm glad I get to keep it.” “If it makes any sense, I feel guilty when I'm not feeling guilty. It's one of the reasons why I have to leave sometimes. Just know that when I leave it's never about you.” “I know everything is not about me,” she laughed.
The storm passed through us and finally we were able to walk back home. Getting to the building we rose up through the floors and then entered my apartment still a little bit wet. Any sweat we had from running was now just water.
I began taking off my wet clothes and saw Lynne do the same near my couch. It was a pretty sight to see her wearing blue undergarments with a blue shoe. When we were both fully naked and even her amputation exposed by removing her shoe, I went over to her and she hopped onto my back to which I took us both to the bathroom.
When the tub was filled with water I went first and then she after me. Just like on the bench on the bridge we did not say much to eachother and this gave me time to remember the Moon over the water, to remember cheeseburgers, and to remember guilt.
All these things I've always loved about her; her poverty, her domestic violence, her amputation. She is no longer violenced domestically, she could one day become rich, but she will always be a prostitute. I mean an amputee. My brain couldn't decide on whether to think prosthetic foot or amputee. Her foot will never grow back, and for that, I will always love her. Though conditionally, she has had my heart.
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I gave her a new foot and she no longer physically limps, in the same way she has given me love and I no longer psychologically limp. But these things are only treatments, not cures. She will always have a missing foot and I a missing mind. I try to imagine what falling in love with another woman would be like, but Lynne's missing foot is irreplaceable. What is ugly is beautiful and what is beauty is ugliness.
When we got out of the tub we went into my bedroom but I told her not to get dressed yet. I went under my bed and took out a shoebox, then placed it on the bed. She hovered over me, wondering what was inside.
When I opened it, she saw that it was indeed another shoe. But this was not like her current prosthetic foot which was designed for function, this was a prosthetic foot that was designed more for fashion, style and display, and tonight she was going to put on a show for me.
I told her that one of the first things I ever noticed about her was her slight limp. This foot, so realistic and so pretty, was going to bring that back. She took off the functional shoe and put on the fashionable shoe, and then put on black heels, and I watched as she walked with a slight limp to my door and then turned around. I put both of my arms into the air and waved her toward me, and she began walking with that slight limp back to me until she fell womanly sitting into my lap. “You're sick, you know that?” She was my fake prostitute.
I forcefully laid her out on my legs so that her stomach and chest were pressed against them and I placed my hand on her bottom. “Say I'm sick again.” “You're sick.” I spanked her once. “You're so sick.” I spanked her even harder. “You belong in some kind of psych ward or mental asylum.” I spanked her the hardest I had done and her cheeks were turning red. After that she didn't say anymore. “Am I still sick?” “No, you're all better now.” “That's right, stupid bitch.” I gave her one last spanking.
I helped her back up into sitting in my lap. “You're the goat,” I told her. “Excuse me?
I'm a what?,” she asked. “Nothing, nevermind.” She suddenly took off the prosthetic foot and hit me on the top of my head with it, but it only bounced off. She had no idea that I was only gloating for her, because she was the greatest love of all time.
She didn't put the shoe back on and so I looked at her stump, and then asked her if she had ever put it into anyone's butthole. She laughed hysterically but refrained from calling me sick again. Instead she took hold of my penis and began squeezing it and rubbing it back and forth until it was solid. She maneuvered around me all while taking her with me onto the bed where she laid on her back.
She spread her legs and guided my penis into her vagina as I leaned toward her face.
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the penetration. I looked downward too and could see the shadows of stretches of her skin wrapped around me. I became more solid and she tighter and I began penetrating her deeper and with more force. She began making grunting sounds that were fused with moans and the placement of hearing these sounds told me she was no longer looking downward but upward. When I looked back up I saw her staring at me with empty dull eyes that were simultaneously filled with pain and wonder. I must have been the biggest and most solid I had ever been in my life and I was banging against her with a force I knew she had never felt before.
Once I ejaculated that force stopped and breathing took over. I slumped onto her body and remained there and I could hear her breathing heavily into me. I felt her reach down toward my penis and then felt her pull it out of her, and then she moved me off of her and rolled to the other side of the bed. I could see her looking down at her vagina and inspecting it with her fingers, as if feeling for something. I asked her if she was all right, and she only looked at me with wide eyes. “I don't know what you did, but you did something,” she told me.
When she was done she rolled back under me and I was again on top of her. “Lisa said she got a full-time job and was going to start paying me to watch her baby. I told her she didn't have to pay me but she insisted.” I looked at her as she got shy. “We have a pretend marriage, why not have a pretend baby? My life has already been absurd since I met you.”
I asked her where she got the idea. “Silvio didn't really help me with Sara and David, I did most of the parenting on my own. I'd like to experience taking care of a baby with a competent man.” “I ain't competent,” I laughed. She grabbed my nose and squeezed it as hard as she could while twisting it indicating she was not joking around. “What would we name it?,” I tried to ask seriously. “So you're in?” “Sure.” She smiled and at the same time reached below to make me solid again. “For this fantasy to feel real I need you to do whatever you just did to me again so I can pretend I've been impregnated,” she said. “I'm not the sick one, you're the sick one.”
To recreate the passion we did everything the same as before. We watched the penetration, sometimes individually and sometimes together, we watched eachother, sometimes individually and sometimes together, and in the end we looked at eachother with eyes void of meaning, my body pounding hers in a violent way to produce her grunts and her moans. I was doing it again to her, and this time I was playing into her complex anthology.
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Chapter 56
DEAR LYNNE
3:1:6:56
ON an Ides of March evening, with a city that is blue at night and orange at dusk, I had the windows open because today the air was somewhat warm and the wind came in in a friendly manner.
I was in my bedroom, sitting on a chair, watching Lynne and Kirby sleep on my bed.
I have been here for a while now, a lazy afternoon turning into a lazy evening. Looking at that baby sleep gave me many thoughts. The P force perhaps makes us reproduce at a biological level, but it seems the P force even pervades the economics of countries. Even world leaders influence us to have children to keep the economy going.
I didn't care much for Elway. He wasn't a bad person, he was just someone who inherited this world and its way of seeing, so that's not on him, but I didn't care much for him because it's people like him who hold the world back. The new way can only break through when the old way dies.
Sometimes I think that perhaps the Antichrist, or even the second coming of Christ, is not a person at all but an entire generation of people. In the Bible, or maybe some other religious text, I believe it says that a potential Messiah is born every generation. If that is the case that means destiny is not tied to the savior. Even means the potential Messiah is capable of committing suicide. But I digress. My point is an entire generation of people are more likely to save the world than one person, and every generation that passes us by, that generation has the potential to be the Messiahs. Or they have the potential to bring us closer to the Messianic generation. Or they have the potential to do absolutely nothing in helping the world progress and can actually make it transgress.
Elway was garbage. His ideas and his beliefs were probably garbage too, I didn't know him that well. His generation was especially garbage. They are no longer needed.
And I know that one day, someone a lot smarter than me and a lot wiser than me will come along, and then I will become the garbage.
I am only remotely optimistic about this because I know that organisms evolve, and according to naturally selected concepts, this would be prevalent in other aspects of life; populations must evolve, cultures must evolve, and societies must evolve as well.
Earlier in the day Lynne came down to my apartment and showed me a ring. It was exactly like the gold band wedding ring I gave her about three years ago. Is it three? Or four? She asked me to wear it. I said no and told her that it wasn't because of what it represented but was just because I don't wear jewelry of any kind. She asked me to wear it for just one day, so it is on my finger now, but I'm taking it off as soon as midnight strikes.
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Seeing her ask me over and over to wear it, I just couldn't fathom why it meant so much to her. Then I realized something. Lynne is the true dreamer in this story. She really hasn't changed much since I met her. If I smacked her around, she wouldn't call the police on me. If I gave her a black eye, she would eventually come back to me. So I understand a little bit better now why she behaved the way that she did when Silvio beat her senseless. And the thing is, you can't wake up someone who is a true dreamer. There's honestly a part of you that never wants to wake them, because that part of them is so special. She is not possible in this world, and I have a deep love for Lynnette that to someone on the outside looking inward could be misinterpreted or misunderstood. That's how love is sometimes, in the romantic sense. If you can point to it and say “That's love,”
there's a chance that it isn't. And if you can see it and say “That's not it,” you are most likely right. But there is a one percent chance you are wrong.
Instead of running last night Lynne and I spent that time in the courtyard because her knee was hurting again. It was strange to be in the courtyard at night when everything was moonlit. We talked about Sara and David. How Sara was her height now and how David was my height now. How Sara was more reserved like me and how David had more energy like her. We laughed about how a few nights ago Lynne walked into the kitchen with one pant leg up because she was massaging her knee and Dave called her a crip. “Brooklynne,” Sara added to the joke.
The night before I watched mother and daughter put on make-up together because Lynne was still teaching Sara some tricks. Two little flawers. First I watched Lynne put lipstick on her lips and then mascara on her eyelashes. Then I watched Sara put lipstick on her lips and then mascara on her eyelashes. And I thought at that moment of the difference between a queen and a princess. They can be separated by time, by age, by stories and even by worlds, but the travels of their journey will always be the same.
“Who wrote this, father?,” asked Brian Flanagan's son. “Boden Valade,” he answered,
“The greatest composer the world has ever known,” Brigid interrupted. “He's wonderful,”
Brian's son added. King Brian and Queen Brigid's son was now twelve and too was heavily concerned of music, even of composer's whose compositions were nearly 180
years old.
A week prior, the royal Flanagans made headline news. International news, indeed.
After days of government counseling, Brian had formally declared war on Germany after their invasion of Poland, and effectively, with another country, initiated the second World War.
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in their lives they would celebrate together and with their monarchy a jubilee, something to commemorate the power they had over their country and the influence they had on the world at large. Funny though, that they had power and influence over the Earth, yet each member of the Flanagans had a weaker power and a weaker influence over each other.
Nearly at midnight, Lynne woke up in the narrator's home to find the city of San Rashida throwing a blue shade into the dark living room. “Spook?,” she called out, but there was no answer. When she noticed a tiny composition notebook lying beside her with a gold band on it, she knew he was gone. But in opening the small composition notebook, she saw writing, and felt immediately that this was given to her out of a sense of guilt.
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She created flowers because they were her dream
A way out of reality and into being seen
A world where there was no defeat in defects
And a place where to reflect was like a reflex
In this dream I know that the lily is the echo of a star I know that the daisies are waterfalls of blood
In this world I know that the tulip is a sign of strength And I know that the orchids are what will bring the flood Each night when her flowers die she says goodbye
The lesson learned is to make room for another try
The seasons do not dictate what she does not know
They can only influence the flowers she will grow
In this dream I know that the dahlia is the mastery of thought I know that the daffodils are gatekeepers of the dead In this world I know that the zinnia is the woman's dress And I know that the roses are the words that are left to be read 162 | DEAR LYNNE
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On the first Monday
I saw her in light blue jeans
Told me her name was Lynn
And from her character
I could feel her mother's genes
She had a warmth about her
Something nurturing it seems
And watching her walk away from me
I studied her backside
And saw something I desired
Beneath the seams
Then came Tuesday
I admired her feet in tan colored heels
Now told me her name was Lyne
This was strange...
But she had a lover's heart that heals
"See you tomorrow"
But the hours felt like days
Dreaming and daydreaming
My mind was left in a daze
Now it was Wednesday
Bright red lipstick
And a smile that lives
Today she was Lenne
And I was learning the game of the huntress
Who perhaps came to claim lives
Kissed my cheek
And left her lipstick on me
Felt like now I was in her chains
And when she backed away she said to me
"This one stains"
When Thursday came along
She came to me in a sunhat that was white
This time I could feel she was Linne
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At me she stared, though never said a word
But I could feel her mystic might
Who was she?
What was with all these names?
And why with each one did there come a type?
Finally on Friday
She was there with nails painted in blues
"Hi, I'm Lynne"
And I could only look at her confused
Is she fucking crazy?
Or just a deep thinker giving clues?
It's fine, I find her interesting
A lovely woman who comes with a ruse
I wonder who she will be tomorrow
I wonder which outfit she will choose
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I first saw her in a series of dreams
In the night, in the night
And I know, I'm sure, because the feminine is sometimes void of light But she was like a ghost, I lost sight of her
She disappeared, she disappeared
But she can't be too far, I know, she must still be here Like a dream
She is fading
Like a dream
She is hidden
Like a dream
She is cryptic
Like a dream
She is mystic
Her symbols and her presence still they haunt me
Beautifully, beautifully
In the end, when it is she that I have, I'll be free
And so the days continue, and I lay here
And I dream, and I dream
And I try to find her in a distant memory
Who was the puzzling woman that I followed
That day, that day
Where was she trying to lead me when she went that way Dreams seem random but her every action had reason to mystery I am sure, I am sure
But her message cryptic, she was mystic, and this I cannot see In my greatest imagination
She was a dream, she was a dream
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But she must be here in this world, I believe
Like a dream
She is cryptic
Like a dream
She is mystic
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By moonlight you were the artist, and by sunlight the muse But you never saw me even with brushstrokes so obtuse At dawn you were the creator and by dusk the creation But you never cared to understand me with your cold sensation You'd look at me and there was nothing behind your eyes As if I was just one out of many, many goodbyes
Am I nothing to you, that you could cut so deep
Are my hands so dirty that you're a flower I can't reap or keep All I ever wanted from you was a smile and anything warm And all you gave me was a broken heart in a storm
You were the only person I ever let into my soul
And you destroyed my dreams in ways you will never know By moonlight you were my artist, and by sunlight my muse But I will never see you again in acrylic-based views At dawn you were my creator and by dusk my creation
But to you I have set fire for you are nothing but human degradation 167 | DEAR LYNNE
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I know that a woman's heart beats faster than a man's, literally Because women tend to be less powerful, physically
But one might like to think that's a woman's heart beats faster, metaphorically Because the search for love tends to be more powerful in women, philosophically 168 | DEAR LYNNE
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Evening, she vanishes, slips through my fingers like liquid gold Where has she gone, hidden within this world, like a classic story untold Night come softly, I feel her around me, like golden gas when it flows The magic autonomy, that's what she brings me, how to give comfort is what she knows She wears solid gold, but not the kind that's sold
Earned in the depths of a life so cold
Her natural beauty was once my sight to behold
But I was only a witness to her mystic gold
Days gone by, I've found her again, but she runs off into the rain I'll follow her, forever into eternity, and into a majestic domain 169 | DEAR LYNNE
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Light as thunder
Fall in love with her as quickly too
She will never ever strike twice
Fate has made this true
Catch you by surprise, a flash in your eyes
She is the Goddess of the most dangerous skies
So when it begins to rain
Understand, she's not far behind
Lovetorn
I'm trapped in her thunderstorm
I love the rain, I love her tears
She is as human as all my fears
Rolling thunder, her lightning brought me here
And takes me to a place so sincere
The weather has changed now
Drizzle in sunshine after rain
I never knew she had two faces
But light from stars is bright the same
I, understand now
She's the light all around my pain
And the darkness, she will claim
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There's a Goddess out here but she ain't from the Bible Shorty comes in capsules and vials and ain't about revival This chick's about claiming your life from day one of her arrival Come down to Lincoln street get baptized then get high yo She'll take you up to the skies but not quite up to Heaven Put clouds in your eyes got you singing the 4th verse of Psalm chapter 37
And down here its her name they sing praise and give the glory And everyday this chick fills a heart and snatches a lost story Rich or poor black or white the street Goddess is for those lookin' for light And I'ma be real I used to crave that shit on the corner of McKinley and Danverse But this love sells itself when you got everybody lookin' for answers See 'em line up down the block looking at her like she's Moses This ain't the truth though she's feeding you lies and it's coming in doses But you can't blame these cats cause this shit right here It treats pain depression anxiety it eliminates the fear How else can we live when we got nothing to live for
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When you put the red lipstick on I think of rose fresh blood And when you pair it with the blue rose earrings you are mysterious love When my lashes has black lashes I see black roses in her eyes Yet there is a white rose light in her look that makes feelings impure pure When you wear the purple rose dress it's like love at first sight again and again A green rose in your hair and I wonder how can I feel this rare beauty twice When you smile with the sunshine of new yellow roses I feel your energy So close to rose orange evening skies you give me reasons to know you more When I see you I am glad to see your pinkish rose glow every day You bring to me a peace in peach roses even when you have nothing to say 172 | DEAR LYNNE
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A blue rose grows a hue of who only she knows
And a blue rose who means mystery is what she sows
Kept in her garden it becomes black when night goes
What color she expresses and radiates
It no longer shows
Black has said to be death but in me I feel life
For the dark that has claimed her I feel envy
And I feel strife
A deadly sin in silhouette she let me pet her stem
My hand went from thigh to knee to foot
And then back again
But when came morning again she was pale blue
Like the sight of the sky whose night was anew
The Sun came through clouds with light and I knew
This was not the same flower of that same hue
A new sense of innocence she gave in the day
Unlike the dark which grew lust and moral decay
In the light she demanded love and respect that way
A little bit of water with a hotter sunlight ray
But the Sun does not last forever, it has places to be So the sunlight cannot protect her forever from me
And when the Sun settles and the darkness does begin
So will the flower of mystery, whose petals know only sin 173 | DEAR LYNNE
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I have seen your soul and on your body I have been an explorer If I cannot hide beauty, I will reveal horror
For years I have been with you in this eternal fight
If I cannot create darkness, I will destroy light
Your lovemap is a task I have given sleuths
If I cannot speak lies, I will silence truths
And your love now I know without it it's impossible to live well If I cannot lower Heaven, then I will raise Hell
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Chapter 57
THIS WAY, LITTLE MAN
3:1:6:57
GANIGEN was either God or a god. He was the youngest politician, at age 22, to serve on the Greater Order and was chiefly responsible for the ideas that brought a nation together. He won the confidences of the people and then went on to win a great number of elections, until when he was 31, he won the most prominent seat in office, the seat of the Great Director. For many years, he continued the progression of the communities he was sworn to develop, but in a certain year, for reasons unknown to him, the people looked in other directions and the confidence and faith they had in him had shriveled.
At 38, Ganigen had lost the first of three elections. Then at 39, he lost another, and then another. He was no longer a favorite of the peoples. In fact, the new order of thinking, which to some seemed hostile, had looked at Ganigen's generation of politics as lesser and more vile. And for this depiction and interpretation, the newer order had declared Ganigen unsound and that he should even die with his unsound ideas.
In the area of the lower valleys there lie ancient ruins named Carcosa which are said to possess the final concept of existing, which may also be known as death. In the dark hours, unsavory people are thrown into the ruins where they are set to experience the final concept of existing. After hours have passed and the dark hours have turned into light hours, the people search within the ruins for the person they had casted into the ruins. When the deceased body is found, which has usually succumbed to delirium, it is taken out and thrown into a nearby river which snakes the ruins.
Ganigen, who was walked to the ruins at the dark hour, attempted to clutch the pant of one of his guides as he was thrown into the ruins. A long fall which possibly may have killed an unfated individual left Ganigen with a scraped arm. And soon the darkness crept all around Ganigen as he sat, almost in the fetal position, in a corner of the ruins, terrified of the place he knew only deathly things about.
And so in line with deathly things, in a few consolidated moments Ganigen began to hear faint sounds. First it was something low, perhaps a low rumble in the destroyed rocks, but then it became louder until it forced Ganigen up and into a motion of running.
Ganigen had run without breath many yards into another section of the ruins where he no longer heard the rumble, but as he went again into a fetal position, he again heard a sound. But, this time, it was that of a voice that seemed to come from nothingness.
"The most basic definition of the sphere is that the distance from the true center to any of its edges are equal," the voice said to him. Ganigen began looking around wildly, unable to tell which direction the voice had come from. Only after a few seconds of searching, Ganigen suddenly became aware of a light in the distance which slowly 175 | THIS WAY, LITTLE MAN
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populated that small section of the ruins.
Though it was a source of light in the dark hour of the ruins, Ganigen identified it as hostile as he watched it grow from the distance he was away from it. It was after about a minute of watching the light that he began to realize that it was forming in the shape of a sphere. And once that sphere of light stopped growing, it began to move in the direction of Ganigen. The movement of the sphere toward Ganigen brought horror to him, and soon he turned around and began running to a new section of the ruins until he saw that it was out of sight.
The new position he had acquired had a rope hanging from a higher section of the ruins. Seeing that the sphere was not in sight, Ganigen at first pulled at the rope. After it showed signs of sturdiness, he attempted to climb it to reach the higher section of the ruin. And as Ganigen climbed to the higher region, he again heard that same voice he heard moments prior.
"Often one has thought of the strange reality of dreams. While in them, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the matter in dreams and the matter in the real world. Even the abstract matter that comes to one in thoughts can be indistinguishable if one becomes truly lost in it."
The voice gave Ganigen pause, but then he began climbing again. And finally, he reached the higher level of the ruins. He looked again for the lit sphere but did not see it and was relieved. But behind him now was a sort of tunneled exit. It was briefly lit, but still a place of unwelcoming darkness. Despite this, Ganigen believed that such a tunnel may be the exit to the ruins, and in reaching its end he might cheat death.
As Ganigen walked through the tunnel with a great fear in his heart, he was again met by the voice when he reached the halfway mark of the tunnel. "The moment we begin to irresponsibly pick and choose what makes a person human, we will inevitably turn certain individuals into beasts."
Ganigen at first dismissed the voice, but then he thought of what it said, which was not a right he had given the voice before. But the thought of beasts was soon ended when Ganigen reached the end of the tunnel and saw that he was only in a new section of the great ruins. In his frustration, Ganigen called out, "Who are you?!" And the voice responded almost immediately, "Imagine, that whenever two objects come into physical contact, they react in either a prime or composite way."
Still frustrated, Ganigen began walking in a direction he hoped might lead him out of the ruins. The further he walked, the further his mind went away from the sphere. It wasn't until he turned a blind corner that he was met face to face with the sphere he declared hostile. At first he was instinctively amazed at its intricate design, but when human nature took hold he became extremely terrified, and in trying to run he slipped and 176 | THIS WAY, LITTLE MAN
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fell two levels deeper into the ruins where he dislocated his left arm.
The pain had momentarily brought the sphere out of his mind, but soon he began looking for it again in case he had to escape. He did not see it, and then soon made plans to relocate his dislocated arm. Again, instead of moving freely about like before, Ganigen decided to simply sit and rest. Then, the voice came to him again. "When we study these events and the events they lead to from a mathematical context, we might discover that the great places we have given to these great events are entirely subjective."
Ganigen had not the energy to speak back, or to even contemplate, and for when he was ready to move again, he suddenly saw the deathly figure of men with white eyes walking toward him in the darkness. Ganigen quickly rose and began running away from the men until again he was in a new section of the ruins. Once he thought he was safe, but in walking he happened to look down at his arm to see tiny insects crawling all over his body. The sight shocked Ganigen as he went wildly to strike them all off. In his attempts to do so, he suddenly fell another level deeper into the ruins, which was also the final level one could fall.
This fall did not result in further injury, but Ganigen was now completely fatigued and could no longer move or escape hostile forces. And not only was Ganigen defeated physically, he was now defeated mentally. He felt as such that the delirium many had spoken of had finally seized him. And as Ganigen laid there, tired, slowly did approach the sphere he had been running from. And with it came a low rumbling sound, but Ganigen had not the energy to defend himself or flee.
Finally, the sphere reached a downed Ganigen. But Ganigen now did not show fear.
He did not show courage, either. Ganigen showed only the wild confusion that invades man when they are thrown into something they do not fully understand. And so, the sphere lowered itself for Ganigen to see it more clearly, and this is when Ganigen stared straight into the sphere and saw that it held the universe's mysteries. Ganigen was in awe of it, but before he could study it further, the sphere suddenly went away. Ganigen tried to stand up to chase it, but soon lost his disposition and fell back down. And as Ganigen layed there, he heard the voice again, "Two of the most powerful feelings a human being can feel are tied to faith. To have one's faith proven, and to have one's faith disproved."
For the first time, Ganigen truly thought of the words spoken to him. Before Ganigen was thrown into the ancient ruins, he had a strong faith that he would survive them, but the moment he was thrown in that faith was lost. And so while his faith was not fully restored, Ganigen began to believe that the voice speaking to him was not entirely foe.
"Help me," Ganigen said with some of the last amount of energy that he retained. But the voice did not answer or help him. After seeing this, and not wanting to die in the ruins of delirium, Ganigen got up with his remaining energy and began looking for the lit 177 | THIS WAY, LITTLE MAN
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sphere.
After the first few minutes of the search, Ganigen felt that the ruins changed. Not physically, but in nature and perspective. At first, the ruins were a place of misery and death and not to be explored, but at present, Ganigen searched and explored the ancient ruins with an ambition found in great devotion. It was a devotion that conquered fear and had its strength in the highest reaches of the human mind. And while Ganigen was still afraid of the ruins themselves, when he finally heard the low rumble again he did not run.
Instead he went toward it.
And now he was again walking down a tunnel that was as unwelcoming as neither death nor the dark. He slowly walked down the tunnel, pulled forward mostly by the intense desire to survive and escape the ancient ruins. And the further he walked, the more aware he became of the light that radiated from the sphere. When finally he reached it, he looked at it again in great wonder, and soon the sphere began to rise. Ganigen followed it with his eyes as it rose, and in it he could see all of the mysteries of the dark universe. The feeling of this imagery could not be described in words but only in the indistinguishable reality of dreams.
Then, suddenly, the sphere was gone and Ganigen was present again. Something in Ganigen had changed. He was not sure if it was the ruins, or if it was the sphere, and he was not sure exactly what about himself had changed, but he knew something was altered.
He left his location and again had plans to find the way out of the ruins, and as he began that journey he again heard the voice he had heard so many times before. "This way, little man." And for the first time, the voice did not come out of nothingness. It now had a physical location in the world, and Ganigen followed the direction from which it came. He climbed through all of the levels of the ruins until he reached ground level, and finally he saw the exit to the ancient ruins.
When he exited the ruins he saw that it was morning and light. In the distance, he saw men walking toward him. The same men who had thrown him into the ruins and who were now coming to the ruins to find his deceased body to be thrown into the river. As the men approached, they could not believe what their eyes were telling them. So engrossed were they that when they finally understood what they had seen, that Ganigen now had wings, they turned around and ran for the village in horror, for they knew now that either great or terrible things were coming.
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Chapter 58
THE KING OF KINGS
3:1:6:58
LAST night, I had a dream. When the discussion of religion between Jesus and I had ended, he told me one last thing. He explained to me to never allow myself to be influenced by men with worldly desires. He then reached into a bag and removed thirty pieces of silver. He handed them to me, and I took them, and then watched as he took the net of fifteen fish beside me. “It's too much,” I told him, but he only looked at me. “If I have taught you anything of any value, it is to give wisdom, not charity,” he said.
He stood up with the net of fish over his shoulder, and then went to step outside of the boat and into the vast ocean. I was confused, and at first I thought he would fall into the water, but he didn't, and I watched him the entire duration that it took for him to reach the island as he walked on water.
I stayed out in the middle of the ocean until the Sun fell, and when I decided that I would row back to the island, a sort of wind began to take over the waters. The row back was much more difficult than I had expected, and it must have taken me three times the amount of time it would have taken me had there not been winds, but when I arrived on the beach of the island, I saw many hundreds of people walking about the night, and each of them, every one of them, had been eating fish.
Just outside the gate of my storage unit there were five boxes. Each box contained about one hundred of my composition notebooks. Each word written in the notebooks was now also on my laptop computer. Each word twice, really, considering the backup.
And I should probably make a backup of the backup.
Also just outside the gate is a metal bin that within it I have started a fire. Though it will take more than one fire and one night to burn all of these composition notebooks, it is a task I will complete.
Writing in all these notebooks for all these years, it didn't make me happy. It didn't make me whole. It made me not full nor complete. When I wrote the very first word, I was in mental and physical pain, but by the time I got around to the last word of the first composition notebook, the pain lessened just a tiny bit. I was a fraction less sad. That, I'll take any day of the week.
In the dark of the night I went over to one of the boxes and took out a notebook. I didn't open it, I couldn't. I simply walked to the fire and placed the composition into it, seeing the pages begin to burn. Akin to writing, the second composition was easier to burn after the first. And was easy the third, and the fourth, and the fifth and sixth and seventh. And after the seventh, I stood back and watched the smoke that was rising into the air.
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Voluntary suffering is easy to understand until it isn't. Feeling guilt for wrongdoing you have not done makes absolutely no sense until it does. I read somewhere that if you learn to suffer voluntarily, you avoid massive involuntary suffering. This has always made sense to me and I have more or less applied it to certain areas of my life; if you live your life alone, though you suffer loneliness, you will never have to grieve when someone close to you dies. And fucking guilt. It is horrible and precious. Twenty years in solitary confinement and my only crime was sympathy.
A lot of the difficult things in my life have been easy. The only thing that has ever actually been difficult is my battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And it is nothing I can beat, that is something I am not afraid to admit. But I take pride in knowing I was able to transform it into the anthology complex. I gambled and played dice with my life, but I'm not surprised. Where I come from, we play for keeps.
And there is a risk for the danger that comes with that amount of depth. There's a certain amount of truth that is uprooted from the lies, truths that are sometimes painful, but also truths that are reassuring. Truths that show you that you are not alone and that life is not so hard after all. Now don't get me wrong, life is hard, but it's a lot harder when you're using someone else's eyes to see it. Eyes that see lies. And the world is filled with lies. Learning to understand yourself you discover things about yourself that were buried, and you learn to come to terms with those things. These truths about you can appear so ugly to the world, so much so that if you were to tell anyone about them, they might say that that's not true of you, and this is proof that even the outside world wants to believe in lies. They want to believe in lies about themselves, about the world, and even lies about you. They are so afraid of the dangers of that depth that they would rather live on the surface, but the surface is a painful place to live. Life is still hard down below, but it at least becomes somewhat bearable. Being in the truth of your humanity, you learn to wake with new wings, and those who did well in sadness earn the right to begin doing well in happiness.
After a few nights I had burned more than half of my composition notebooks, and after a couple more I had one more left. It must have been by chance that as I went to place it in the fire, a piece of paper fell out of it. I picked it up from off the ground and saw that it was an old letter from Derek. I read it one last time, and then placed it back in the final composition notebook. And then from a distance, I threw it into the fire.
Every time in my life that I tried to go off on my own to die, something pulled me back. That is the closest I have ever been to God. The closest I have ever been to a personal God. And if there is indeed a God and there is indeed a Hell, and if he sends me there on my day of judgment, then that is more of an indictment on him than it is on me.
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Chapter 59
THE PRICE OF DARKNESS
3:1:6:59
ROCK walked across the broken debris of the bridge carefully and as water from the river crashed onto the fragments. When he finally got to the end, he needed now only to climb to the top of the mountain before him as the gates to Grand Searle and out of Ocidico stood there. Climbing this structure, though, would pose a great and dangerous task.
To live as a moral person in an immoral world is chiefly impossible. After enough moral victories one will suffer a moral defeat, which is always an immoral victory that you could not completely control. Once one begins to understand that in the battle between good and evil, that immorality is actually rewarded more often than morality, true morality is tested.
Immorality has always been rewarded because it is what has always survived. It is no different than the human being who will do whatever they have to do to avoid perishing.
Morality, on the other hand, is weak. It is rare for it to survive come the dark hours. It has minor victories here and there when pitted against immorality, but ultimately, it is a weak ideal against a strong foe.
The morality we have chosen is not our own, but shaped by the world it belongs to. It has small spots of light within it, but it is surrounded by darkness. That darkness symbolizes everything you have done and everything you will do to persist, and that same natural will is the price of darkness in gold.
Rock's will was at the moment being tested as he climbed up the mountain. Halfway through, he looked back down at the broken bridge, hoards of water crashing into its body. He was now at the point in which falling meant almost certain death, and as he continued to climb higher, that certainty only increased.
There were moments in his ascension when a foothold would break loose and he could hear more debris falling down onto the hard surface below. Scrambling, he would feel with his feet or look for with his eyes a new foothold until he was allowed to climb higher.
When Rock was finally only a meter away from the top of the mountain, he noticed that it was becoming morning and he could see the Sun rising as he looked in its direction. Ironically, the final place to place his hand was the strongest any of the debris on the mountain had been, and it allowed him to pull himself up completely and off of the slope, where he rolled onto the deserted street in complete exhaustion. The game was over and no bounty would be awarded. Instead, Terrell escaped into the great city of Grand Searle.
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Chapter 60
THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS
3:1:6:60
SATAN appeared at the end of the pathway and to a grandly designed door that would lead him into the new world, but when he opened them, he saw that there was one more obstacle to face. A trial that God had put forth that for most would result in error. Up above toward a rough ceiling Satan could see a small spot of light coming through and into Acidica. The only light Satan had seen in his entire journey came from fire, and this light coming from above told him that this was light from the new world itself.
Observing the wall that he would have to scale, Satan wondered if it was possible to reach the top without falling, and when looking downward into what would be the error, Satan saw a lake of fire that would help perish anything that fell into its grasp.
While not a creature of morality, Satan was however a creature of principle. As he went to climb the wall, there was only one thing on his mind; if he had conquered the final trial placed by God to prevent him from entering the new world, he had a single promise to keep; he will make the lifeforms murder, steal and deceive one another to show God that giving them a free will was a mistake.
What is there more to fear than a being with unshakable principle? In its own right it is a true faith, to be unbothered by the way of man or by the way of Gods. Free will was a concept that was gifted to Satan, but in his wisdom he has seen it as a tool used for destruction. This insight has only strengthened the one principle he has lived by all of his years; that through allowing evil, he could reveal good.
And so began the ascension of the ruler of darkness. Halfway through, he looked back down at the lake of fire, hoards of lava crashing down below. There were moments in his ascension when a foothold would break loose and he could hear the debris falling down onto the raging fires beneath. Scrambling, he would feel with his feet or look for with his eyes a new foothold until he was allowed to climb higher.
When Satan was finally only a meter away from the top of the wall, he noticed that the light that had been coming through was at its brightest. Ironically, the final place to place his hand was the strongest any of the holds on the wall had been, and it allowed him to pull himself up completely through the small opening in the ceiling, where he rolled onto the desert in complete exhaustion. He was now out of Acidica and into the new world.
Standing up, he was no longer a creature with horns, but a man without cloth. Lucifer looked every which way and saw the new world with new eyes, and in looking upward he saw a bright star in the north and began traveling that way. It was his intention to begin here, for if he could not create darkness, then he would destroy light.
182 | THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS