2k words Short Story: Chain of events, The World Walker

World Walker

“You remember how we never even said hi to each other? ” Beccy told me. “Even when Keith threw the eight-ball at us, and we all played pool for the first time since your friends started drinking there, you didn’t say anything to me. In fact you spoke the whole time to whatshername.”

“Carmen.” I corrected her.

“Sandiago” she finished. I didn’t laugh and she didn’t notice, so I added a: “Wow that was lame.” But she only giggled like I was trying to be funny and not tell her that I found her unbearably annoying.

If she hadn’t lost her contacts on the pool room floor and I hadn’t been the one to find them by the bar, then we wouldn’t have ever started going to the gym, together, and there shouldn’t have been much of a chance the gym’s showers were under repair, that we would live so close to one another, and that I had made a move when she only had a towel on.

She squeezed my nose with her fingers, like a clothes peg. I wrenched my head away.
Said: “I moved house for you.”

She laughed even though I wasn’t making a joke. “We lived nowhere near one another. I had to segue into a parallel world where I lived in a smaller, dirtier apartment, stepped right through and away from a low paying (but money’s never a problem), satisfying job in a bookstore and you know what? Even with all the possible books that have ever been written I still haven’t got enough time to read what’s out there.

She laughed again, so to make myself clear I said: “And I did it because you are the most beautiful girl I have literally ever seen, ever, in all the places I’ve been, your body is a fucking private jet, a mansion, front row seats to every show worth watching, a blowjob from the most enthusiastic porn-star blowing like she’s about to go broke.”

Her mouth dropped open, which was coincidental, but because I was distracted I said: “That’s ironic.” She wasn’t smart enough to correct me. “I disgust you don’t I?” I said. “You know I only shower like twice a week? I can’t be bothered. It’s all deo.” Her face scrunched up. “Why are you saying all this?” She asked.
“Because I’m done, I’m leaving.” And I got up and started to put on my clothes. She went dead quiet. “It’s 4 AM.”

“I’m not leaving this house, I’m leaving this world, this universe. GG Beccy: I have always had the ability to slip into a parallel world. Or maybe it’s a new world. Or maybe I’m batshit crazy, hard to say. But anyway, I’m thinking this time, I’m going to be single. I’ve spent so much energy walking into desperate women who fall for me that I think I’m ready to do the old fashioned thing and plain old delude them till they fuck me.” I stretched. It was always a good idea to stretch first.

She threw a pillow at me. I dodged. Big smile.

She went for my phone.

“NOT THE PHONE.”

It connected with my nose. She was really good at pool.

“JESHUS.”

“IF YOU CAN LEAVE THEN WHAT HAPPENS TO ME HUH?”

It was a good question. I have no idea what happens when I walk out. Maybe I just disappear, which would be mildly traumatizing but also mind expanding- think of the implications! For a normal person at least. Maybe the whole universe ceases to exist, which if the universe was infinite would make me the biggest mass murderer of all possible times and spaces. But I can’t be the only one, so it’s not like I’m alone in this regard. Maybe a copy of me remains. If so, I feel very sorry for him, especially the me who talked shit to that guy with the knife that time in the alley. Either way, fuck it, I’ll never know.

“SO RUN THEN SAM! RUN LIKE THE WIND!” Beccy said, with this very rare, intense look in her eyes that I’ve only seen her have during a real orgasm. She picked up the other pillow. I blinked, so did reality, and she wasn’t there anymore. I blinked again, and there was my new coffin: maybe ten foot by ten foot, a sofa that was probably also my bed, a bookcase that had a series of thick books on the top shelf, plates, cutlery, wallet and phone on the shoulder height shelf, and stacks of books on the lower, taken from the middle shelf to make space for my life. A folding table glistened with chip packets turned inside out and tinfoil microwave dinners scrunched up within each other like blood covered Russian dolls.

The memories came afterwards.

I’m a fucking paralegal this time. Godammit it all to hell. Then the loneliness comes down on me and I’m reaching for the middle shelf with it’s half dead bottle, don’t even need the new memories to know that’s there. And what’s this, taped to the lip? A joint? Amazing. Upsides.

I spend my thirty first year single, in the same universe. Jacky throws a drink in my face at Sherry’s birthday party, which I only get invited to because I overhear her talking about it at work. The girl of indeterminate age at the 7/11 drives me crazy for awhile, has me borderline walking into another world where we get to be married because I’m certain the way normal people might be, that if I was with her the rest wouldn’t stink so much. It’s like a retreat, a monastery where I pretend to be a desperate prole for 365 days.

The breaking point wasn’t a woman, it wasn’t some new shiny crap I saw in a movie that I just had to try (like a G fucking Six), it was Roger Mckay, my boss. It was when he chewed me out for being late, again. He had to do it by my cube, right before lunch, so not only did everyone hear, but they felt awkward about leaving. I’m not a bad guy, I’ve never raped, murdered, hell even assaulted someone despite the fact that I could do it with zero consequences. I mean that’s some darkside shit, I don’t want to go down that path. And it was a close thing, between using the scissor, shoving him into Lee’s wall, and what I actually did: which was to stand up, slowly, adjust my tie, not answer his enquiry as to why, and then hand back, all the way like I’m flagging a blind bus driver, then turn my weight like a tennis serve, and palm open, full on, bitch slap. Goddamn did the fat man go down. I said, after the shockwave: “You incorrigible asshole.” And then it was TA!, one more for the road, and he went to his knees.

“Alright guys, I’m out. Fuck you all very much. Also, Sherry, your boyfriend cheats on you. He doesn’t even play poker. I can walk between worlds and I am leaving this one.”

And just for funsies I decided to full on run at Mckay’s glass office wall, leap sideways and leave. As I did I think I felt something solid. Then nothing. Then a bed, a freaking soft bed. It only occurred to me right afterwards that maybe I do leave something behind, and in which case, previous me just bitch slapped his boss and threw himself through his office window. If he gets medicated, do I get medicated?

What if I suddenly rubber band back to my other paralegal self in that parallel universe? Fucking awful thought. Of course it makes me wonder, almost, about the implication of time. I tried to read about physics stuff once. Thought about having a hypothetical what if conversation with a physicist once. Hell, I even tried to be a scientist, but I never really seemed to concentrate enough to shift into that kind of life. It’s like trying to remember something you just can’t, you’re certain that if you focused enough, if you found the right stimuli, then you’d have it again. I gave up eventually, figured that in the back of my mind was the fear that understanding what I can do would change my ability to do it, or maybe I wouldn’t want to anymore. Ignorance is bliss. Arbitrary is better than horrible.

Jana.

Jana ended me.

A fucking taxi driver. Never saw that coming. Never saw the accident either, literally- was stuck dozens of cars behind it. Like God had reached down and froze the traffic for two hours. I could have left. I could have said stop the meter. Instead I paid, I stayed, we talked for hours and it was completely out of my control. When I told her what I could do, she took it like it was some kind of funny story.

The line that did it for me was when she asked: “What if every time someone, or you I guess, ah, jumps- they create the world they want? So like, you make it, from nothing, like you are God.” That’s when I knew, I had to make it so we were together. That was cool, I’d never even thought of that possibility. Why didn’t I just skip to the marriage? I could have, but I didn’t? Because I guess I didn’t want to leave, it was such a perfect moment. If I jumped I could arrive in another moment, but it’s not the same, the memories would drip in, it would be artificial, even if I was God.

So I stayed. We found a favorite bench, we prevented her bed from ever getting made, I wrote her inarticulate letters on scented paper, she dragged me by the arm to shit I’d never like till I loved it. I loved her, obviously. I’d tried marriage once, but never a wedding. It was glorious, and I didn’t care about my new family, or my new friends, just her, she was fun, the wedding was fun.

Happiness is a funny thing. It’s quiet. I think that in the end, it’s quiet. It’s the opposite of running. Time is the only thing that runs, when you’re happy.

The odds of a plane crash are incredibly low. You could fly your whole life, I mean spend it all up in the air, and it’s still against the odds you’re going to die.

And now, why can’t I find her anymore?

I keep jumping. I keep going from world to world, looking for my Jana. She’s not there. Nowhere I go. It’s like, I don’t know. I’ve wanted things before, I’ve wanted things way less badly than her. But I just can’t do it.

She once told me that the number one reason she’d never believe I could do the whole jumping thing isn’t because it was impossible. She said it was because she didn’t think I’d ever leave people behind like that. That I could be that selfish. And I believed her.

She said: “I think a lot of people would, but not you.”

So I’m still looking. And I’m still getting older.

And I’m starting to wonder if I ought to just stop, and skip all the way to the end. But I’ve never tried that either, all I know is I can’t go backwards. But I reckon I’m going to do it soon.

Short Story: Lucem Ex Tenebras

I was sitting at my desk arranging the desktop icons into the semblance of a middle finger when the chat window popped up. 

 

“Tony, are you there?”

 

I finished giving myself the finger and began to type: “Sorry, but this isn’t Tony.” and I was about to press enter when I read:

 

“I’m drowning in a sea of shit Tony, except I’m the sea. I could really use someone to talk to.”

 

It occurred to me that Tony might not be available to talk to whoever this person was. That is precisely what had happened to me, the day before, except her name was Michelle, and she’d gotten sick of how often I needed her help.

 

Besides there appeared to be no one else at any of their desks, anywhere on this floor.

 

I wrote: “Okay. What’s wrong?”

 

They said: “IT’S fucking stupid. I’m being stupid.”

 

“Whatever IT is, If IT bothers you, then it bothers you. And that’s okay.”

 

They didn’t type anything for awhile. 

 

Then they wrote: “On the subway someone’s phone went off. The ringtone was Don’t Stop Believing by journey and I wanted to cry because of it, but I didn’t want anyone to see so I picked up this newspaper and there was this stupid picture of a soldier upside down and he looked like an idiot so I started laughing but I was crying at the same time and then I realized I was holding the newspaper upside down and that everyone would know why I’d done it.”

 

I waited.

 

Typed “lol” then deleted it. 

 

They wrote “See, it’s fucking stupid.”

 

I typed “Why did the song make you cry?”

 

They wrote it all out. How their face had been scratched by the windshield of their car whilst they listened to what used to be their favorite song. How they had lost who they were and that reminded me qof how I’d lost Danielle, and how simple things that shouldn’t be, did. Like waking up. And breakfast,

 

Except Danielle was definitely still alive and waiting for me at home with the next episode of Game Of Thrones.

 

Later they wrote “Thank you I fucking needed that” so I thought it was time to type: “My name isn’t actually Tony you know. Though I am in tech support…” which is when I woke up from the dream, into an empty bed, on top of a duvet too large for one person because Danielle was still dead and I’d forgotten again. 

 

It took me sometime to get dressed and go to my real desk, out in the real world. It was somewhere around noon when I realized that I’d left my latest prescription at home. My supervisor let me go, told me to stay home, and I knew he meant well but why couldn’t he understand that I would come back the moment I took my pills and that the last thing I needed was to be at home. That auditing the accounts of a popcorn company was bliss in comparison. 

 

The pills didn’t seem to do anything except make day time TV somewhat more bearable. The romance, between an ancient concubine and some kind of half-man, half-bird creature was particularly enthralling, especially since I do not speak cantonese and so made up the words in my head. My stomach growled so I put some instant dimsum in the microwave and pressed some buttons. At some distance from the couch the microwave started beeping. I figured that now that it was cooked, that it would keep, for several hours if necessary. Later the washing machine started making noises. I remained on the sofa, listening with half-shut eyes to the nonsensical patter of another Chinese soap. 

 

Of course my phone had to go off right next to my head. An unknown number. I prepared to be polite. If it was all I going to do today, I was going to be polite to his poor, underpaid telemarketer.

 

“Hello.” I said, in my polite voice.

 

She said: “Hi there! I’m calling from tech support! Why so glum chum?”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“What’s on you mind man! I heard you’re kind of down.”

 

“From who? Who is this?”

 

“Well, I got this memo, said you’re kind of down. Got it from the sysadmin. He assigned me to you I think. I’m not sure. But who cares, whatever, you sound like ass, you really do and for what it’s worth you shouldn’t bottle it all up. Let’s see here…Danielle…lovely name that. Come on man, tell me about her. I’m listening. You can tell me whatever you like.

 

I tried a few Well’s, some But’s and it’s just’s- she waited for me to finish one of my sentences but I failed to. I only breathed slower, and harder, till I was gasping.

 

She said “Danielle would want you to treat yourself well, I mean, that’s love right?”

 

“That’s…what the fuck…” And it just spilled out of me. In a babbling mess. I confessed about how I’d finally found someone that made me feel everything I’d ever dreamed of, right when I’d given up all hope, right when I was at my most overweight and tired, and then out of nowhere, just like that she’s gone and all the pills in the goddamn world weren’t enough. I told her how I hadn’t really been happy to begin with. How Danielle just accepted me and that was the definition of love.

 

The tech support lady said: “Self-acceptance counts too.”

 

And after that I poured the rest out. And after that I tried to thank her. “That was so much better than these pink pills I take.”

 

It turns out we took the same pills.

 

She had been swearing a lot. I asked: “Have you…ever been in a car accident?”

 

She said Yes.

 

“And do you have a friend, a good friend named Tony?”

 

She said What the fuck.

 

The line began to crackle. I remembered then, being transferred to tech support, the empty office, and a middle finger made out of desktop icons and: “LOOK, IF YOU’RE AT THE OFFICE TONIGHT, MEET ME AT THE PHOTOCOPY MACHINE!”

 

She managed to ask: “The pink one?”

 

“YES THE BRIGHT PINK ONE!!!!!” and the line went dead and I woke up opposite the TV and I made a mental, then a written note to bring all this up with my psychiatrist. Then I did my washing, ate the dimsum, and went back to work.

 

I was so excited that getting to sleep took ages.

 

It felt like I was about to go somewhere new. Meet someone new. It felt like my first date with Danielle and the debate I had about what flowers to buy. So I still thought I was awake even when I found myself at the bottom of a lift shaft, with only a ladder and the distant sounds whirring office machinery. I climbed and counted the floors, perpetually afraid I had lost track, that I was going to miss mine. It made me want to start all over again but my arms were tired and what if I wouldn’t be able to go back up? 

 

The silhouette of a head peeked out, far above me. “About time! I couldn’t find a single freakin’ photocopy machine anywhere. Its like the end of the world up in here.” 

 

At that point it became easier to climb, until I stood on the other side of the shaft from her, the gap in between too large to jump. “Jump it!” she said. 

 

“I’ll fall.” I replied.

 

She extended her hands and it occurred to me that if I ran really, really fast, then maybe I’d outrun gravity. So I did, and I was only a foot away from her when gravity caught up to grab me by my ankles, “OH HELL NO!” She yelled, then her hands clasping mine, pulling me up till we stood, face to scarred face. She kissed me and I didn’t ask why, or feel guilty at all despite the fact that she looked nothing like Danielle.

 

“I checked out the company directory, none of it makes any fucking sense, but I’ll tell you what- the sysadmin’s office is on the top floor. Come on, we’ll take the stairs.”

 

So we ran hand in hand up an interminable fire escape. Eventually we emerged into a white marbled lobby. At the end of it, large and imposing, were a set of double doors. One black, the other white, with a drop of the other color in each. Holding hands we shouldered both open together.

 

Inside the sysadmin dropped the dimsum he’d been eating. Then he tripped over a bundle of wires covered with what looked like unwashed clothes. He stuttered: “Who the…what the…you guys aren’t supposed to BE here! At the same time! Oh jeez, you’re even holdin’ hands.”

 

I gently disconnected from her.

 

The sysadmin sighed and circled us, humming and hawwing to himself. I said: “Excuse me, we would very much like to know how…”

 

“Shhhh.” He gently pressed one finger to his lips. “Shhhhhhhitttttt I see it now. Wow. You guys. The pills you both take. They messed with the system! Fucking PEOPLE!” His hands flew up, beseeching a red neon sign above him, composed of Chinese characters I did not understand. “Always messing around with the mind, like idiot children. Damn pills got side effects. Ought to put that on the label.”

 

“Look sir, is she real?”

 

She turned on me: “SAY WHAT? Fuck you, are YOU real?”

 

“YOU’RE BOTH FRICKIN REAL!” he said. “Look. Here’s the thing. There has been a teensy little screw up. You aren’t ever suppsoed to be together in the same place and time. The same place-time. That isn’t how it works,”

 

“How what works?” One of us said.

 

“The…buddy program. For broken people- not unlike yourselves. What happens is when one person is really low, like, down in the sewers low, then another person, quite like them, but- and this is crucial- not feeling the same way at that exact moment in time, contacts you, and you have a bit of a talk, to alleviate the symptoms of existence. Now you are both, if I may say so, HIGHLY QUALIFIED buddys in your own right. Seriously top notch traumas you’ve both sustained. But the algorithm’s screwed up, there shouldn’t be a recurring relationship. Not like this. There shouldn’t be anything tying you to together. Except for the goddamn pills your quack of a psychiatrist gave both of you. Same pills, same connection, and now you’re freakin HOLDING HANDS!”

 

He sighed again, said: “There is only one thing left to do now. Gotta reset the system.”

 

“Reset?”

 

“Yeah, turn it on and off. Works most of the time.”

 

“And then what, we just…”

 

“Wake up, and all of this is forgotten, and later on you help someone different instead.”

 

I asked him: “But wait, you mean, we go to the same doctor? We could see each other…outside of…work?” 

 

She asked him: “Hey dickhead, what if we don’t want to forget, did you ever consider that?”

 

The sysadmin paused, hands hovering over the console he had been typing at. “Sorry. Really am. But if I don’t do this you guys might end up perfectly happy, and then so much for balancing out the others. And you’ll know all about the backoffice. And you’ll start some frickin cult and invariably in a century or two it’ll all get fucked.”

 

I held her hand again. “What does it mean?” I asked.

 

I was pointing at the neon sign, which had changed from Chinese to latin. “Lucem ex tenebras; from darkness, light.” The sysadmin massaged the top of his forehead. “Even if I reset the system it won’t be over for you guys. You’re on your way up. The darkness, without it you wouldn’t understand each other. You wouldn’t care. Not as hard. Not as much. And for what it’s worth there are a lot of you guys out there, trust me.” He gestured to the stack of servers: “You’ll find someone else. Or you won’t. I don’t know. It’ll be like a dream- you’ll forget the details but you’ll remember the point.” He squatted and reached into a space between two servers.

 

She turned to me, her smile melding with the scar that traveled from her jaw to her forehead. “I’ll remember you.” She said.

 

And then he flipped the switch.

 

I woke up late on top of a duvet too large for one person. I was pretty sure I’d dreamt of Danielle. What little I had slipped out of my grasp, leaving only a few word that made no sense.

 

So I googled Lucem Ex Tenebras and went back to work.

Flash Fiction: Time Displaced

What’s wrong, she asked, when I went soft as pudding. Now usually I’m kinky enough that all the previous orgasms, guys or girls, adds up. Hum around my head. So it feels like an orgy with ghosts. But there where her head lay I could feel the tears she’d spread. Rising up out of her pillow. I had to go. This is the problem with my condition, being time displaced.

 

I was not born time displaced. And contrary to what Reddit says, it is not contagious either. You cannot get Deja Vous from someone else. What you are feeling is akin to when a depressed person walks into a room, and brings everyone else down with them.

 

Instead I was told it was a bad drug interaction. Between LSD, the antibiotics, and that ginseng extract bullshit Aunty Vie sent me again.

 

Since then I get horny in the weirdest places; library corners, certain alleys. The worst was my parent’s apartment’s balcony. I cannot go clubbing anymore. Or at least before one; I need the place full, I need everyone drunk- or they’ll see me stumble in during the day whilst it’s empty and all the combined sadness, desperation, euphoria and release, drives me crazy. I once had to walk in to use the toilet. By the time I got out my friend accused me of being an alcoholic.

 

The pretentious call it ‘psychic energy’. A measurement of the events that have taken place there. An attuned, temporally displaced observer does not only see the moment in front of them, but all the moments that have been there. So that is why I did not take the house tour. Because bedrooms are rather potent. And now I never go over. Because homes are filled with them. I suspect some artists might have been afflicted, which is why they kept writing about forests and paths. those places are silent, peaceful, even after we’ve sheared them away. They stay, pockets in time, hedges that cushion the present, stretch away like a white margin, pristine. I once hung around a mall being built, pile drivers thundering, curses flung past knocked hard hats. And sighed. It was amazing. So quiet. Between the sweat and the precision there was the past.

 

I have heard that the severity of the emotions, the distance away in time,

the sheer number of experiences; all of these contribute proportionally to the emotional response of the observer. I have heard that ghosts can be explained by this. That when people die they die forever, but their actions ripple, drops falling. Again and again and again.

 

I like window shopping. The dopamine surge of satisfied shoppers. Stadiums are dangerous. Full of hate and rage. And once I went back to France, had a panic attack as we went past an empty field. A desperate fear I only saw again in the eyes of a homeless man.

 

There are certain places on this earth I can never visit. And the thing is, I may not care as much about the tears you cry, I cannot help it. I know it will pass. And I’m telling you that if one of my kind starts to feel rather terrified, Ill or disturbed by a place with no negative history, no heartbreak, then one should be concerned about the future.

 

They say space is silent. The vacuum up there. But none of my kind have become astronauts yet. There is almost no place on this planet I have been that isn’t covered with the sweat of pain. Except on tall hills. Vast, empty fields. Deserts. And certain beaches, and only when I am lying down, staring up.

 

I used to think it were lovers that made beaches so great. But that isn’t what I’ve found with hotels. Except once lying down, I saw a clear, starry night and realized what I’d felt was hope. Some of it on the floor, below, where others had looked up. Most of it like rain. Traveling down from the future. From the sky. Onto us.

 

 

My Captain

Too often and like too many others I have

suffered silently choked by your words your callous stares,
Your ‘cheer up cheer ups’ your verdicts of self indulgence
Your condemnations of angst
But no more, not for him,
For the man who made me laugh,
Made me smile,
I will not stay silent for Peter Pan.

Oh captain, my captain,
I’ll say it plainly.

Robin Williams fought every day and today he lost. There is no comfort for him, no afterlife, just robbed time, just broken hearts, today the devils win. The shadows that asphyxiated him, the black that paid no heed to success, fortune, or fame. The invisible illness, the change within his mind. They took my hero and strung a noose around his head, they dragged him, beaten and bloody to the stocks and placed the rope around his neck and gave him no chance to speak, no dignity, no solace, they only promised that life was worse than nothing, and nothing is what they offered.

So many of us will not look into that abyss, will not dare allow it to rise and up fill us, and chill us, and gape at our mortality, our fragile happiness, that is why you call us weak, self-indulgent, liars and losers because the alternative is horror. Yes I will bend and buckle and break, I will kneel my head, avert my eyes, hold my stuttering tongue, will allow the heat to suffuse my face and your words to echo on my bed, and the tears to leak from my face, I will let you tell me I am not enough, but I will not let you tell that

To him.

To Robin Williams.

My first Peter Pan, you cocked that mobile phone before I knew what lawyers were. Stood bewildered among children, you were like the adults who crushed me till, you flew, you fucking CROWED, saw bright balls of goo where no food was threw it around never in my life have I seen a meal that looked as tasty as that.

You remembered how to fly again, bangarang my friend. The pan arises, the hook sinks. I saw hook at least ten times and love it still.

So you look Peter Pan in the eye and tell him he isn’t ill.

I never had a friend like him. Never had anyone who could be there all the time, who could take it. Who could stay the night, it was too much, day after day when I didn’t recover, hour after hour whilst I still cried. He never had a friend like me.

They taught him between jabs, between trips to the bar, between white lines and whilst he cried the demons taught him what matters, that people lie, that old men think they know what’s important, what life is made of; money, exams, rules and regulations, what to wear and say and do and when lest you become different. Robin took all that darkness and within it he found hope. Maybe he couldn’t be happy himself but he’d be damned if he did not try to make you laugh instead.

So when Robin whispered the dead men’s words and said, Carpe Diem, he knew you had to seize the day because those days when you can, they won’t come all that often, and when they do when you beat back those snarling fucking demons you gotta leap up, gotta make them all laugh, and all those lines you wrote in tears you’ll unleash them on the rest. The despair in their eyes inside their heads, the depressed we can see them, can smell the enemy on you, and Robin fought like Peter Pan, his sword, his sword was laughter, he was a knight, a bright white ball of happiness man that man burned away your misery because he knew, he knew, how bad those days could get.

Oh captain, my captain,

Carpe diem.

I will not say rest In peace because you did not die at peace, you were killed, you were murdered and me and mine will not rest either. Will not pretend we did not lose a brother in arms, a friend, will not bow our heads in shame, will raise our fists, not our glasses, will do the best we can; we’ll make ’em laugh, we’ll make ’em sing, we’ll dance our dances, write our plays, we’ll swing with the best of them, we’ll take it on the chin and get back up, one more time, one more time, again and again Robin. I promise you I’ll write a bit harder, I’ll try a bit harder, I’ll get up one more time more because I cannot let the demons know they’ve won. They don’t get to win, not anymore.

Carpe Diem.

The father on screen. You made Will Hunting love. Made him feel human, because despair and loneliness can make one kind, makes one brave, makes one bold enough to stand and speak and laugh and joke because those that live in darkness, know the value of the light and the secret to create it. You said it’s not your fault till I believed because it isn’t our faults dear friends. We lost one of the best today. So I will not say:

Raise a glass,
Rest in peace,
I will not claim
It is now easy,
Bow your heads,
Mourn and walk away.

No.

That is not our way. It never has been. We do not move on. We do not forget. And maybe we will never be whole, never be healed, never know peace and too many of us will die too early in this war we fight, we fight every day so to all the ignorant, selfish rest, to all the others too afraid to face someone else’s suffering, that do not accept what this is like, that do not know how daily despair tastes, to them I say laugh on, laugh on, laugh at our jokes that is what we do, but to you my brothers and sisters, captains and comrades, you know who you are, you that forget you are legion, today or tomorrow or right now you are surrounded but to you I say in my hero’s name:

Fight on, fight on, fight a  bit harder for him.

The demons do not get to win.

Show them what we are made of. Put on your red noses. Throw on the clown shoes. Hell forged, battle born, our smiles are scimitars, our bright eyes shields. Sing your soul out. Cut out pieces of you. Fling your pain upon the canvas, take the shadows and make balloon animals out of them. Dance to wake the light, burn brighter, to make up for the star we’ve lost today. Fight on, fight on, for the fallen, the fallen, for our

Captain, our captain,

Carpe Diem

Do not let him die in vain.

Short Story: The Wave

The problem with doing this 1k thing is it’s a real bitch to edit it. I really ought to though. Not editing something that is potentially good is akin to wasting most of the time spent writing it. Also it is good practice, improves the skill in editing. I want to write more from Children Of The Pantheon because I got a lot of likes, which makes me so happy. But today I was feeling something and that something might be in this story.

 

The Wave

 

Jon played the Louisiana blues and once and awhile the percussion of construction drills matched the rhythm rather than interrupt it. That black man somewhere else, somewhere far away in space and time, got drowned by Jon’s neighbor’s redecorating.

 

They’d saved up for it. Made sacrifices, like holidays, potential visitations to other countries where great memories could have been formed for them, and their kids, instead of this, this permanence; entire decades maybe with a minimalist kitchen, a partition that separates that made the living room and bar seem roomier, like in that movie Heat that Julie once saw. 

 

Kara knew, it was obvious, why mum and dad hadn’t let her buy those concert tickets. She didn’t believe Mom’s insinuations about drugs and booze and boys like Jules; they trusted her or they wouldn’t have let her stay a week in Nigeria, before the killings started. She didn’t cry because she couldn’t go, no, that would be petty. She didn’t cry when the trading of shouts, between mum and her, got so loud that Dad intervened, and swung like a pendulum between the two sides, settled on making it three. She didn’t cry when he told Mum not to treat her like their step son, who was gone. She cried because she’d realized, immediately, the way she understood with stark, sudden clarity a mathematical concept, an economic lesson in school, that she’d been a fool, that if Jules really cared he’d have never asked her if she could afford it, if he really cared he’d have said to do something else, if it was going to have been a date instead of some random, late, confluence of events then it wouldn’t have mattered whether or not she could go and that truth fell across her fifteen year old heart, the first of several blows, a chiseling that would sculpt a cold, statuesque reservation that kept her from something another woman might call true love, twice in a row.

 

Sol first saw Kara on the subway, towering over the locals in her commanding heels, a small blonde head above a sea of bobbing scalps. She was a whole carriage away but he stared anyway, thankful for the distance, confident that she could not tell he was looking at her. He waited for the crowd to dissipate, to uncloak her body so he could see her in full, for her to leave maybe, to abandon him and his lofty fantasy. He missed his stop and berated himself, and at the next, where the best cinemas were, the crowd on the train dispersed like a flock of pigeons, leaving the space between them mostly empty, and her revealed, resplendent in a summer dress, her face sad. More than what he had hoped for, enough it hurt because he knew he would never talk to her. She left, dressed rarely like that, for another of her best friend’s weddings. Kara collected best friends like her step brother had collected types of crisp packets, never opened, never enjoyed. The variety and promise printed upon them the sum of it. She had crushed them, cruelly, one after another, when she found them in a moving box after the first time she left Malcolm, She crushed them just to see if she would feel anything and she didn’t, not till later when the guilt finally arrived. A tear crept down one eye, she let it, thinking that no one will see and if they do see then maybe that was okay. Sol didn’t, he was too far away. When she left the carriage Sol subtly took his fist, and smacked it in slow, point blank movements against his head. He had missed his stop, he had missed her, and by imperceptible degrees he was getting more sick.

 

Marcie was the only one at the party who knew the extent of Sol’s illness. Being married she was only allowed to care a certain amount, that past some wavering line it was inappropriate, despite how desperately afraid he could get when they went to the park, how he let him put his head on her shoulder, held his hand, how that felt warmer than the mostly cold bed. She hadn’t seen him barrel towards her like that before, spilling wine with mad abandon. He arrived and asked her how it was going, his habit, to always start with pleasentries before he conspiratorially asked who She was, pointing towards a tall woman, blonde, who slumped in a chair, head forward, posture broken, a pint of beer clasped in both hands. Marcie knew someone that knew Kara, pointed Sol towards her and reveled at the smile on his face. He went and she watched, watched Kara laugh, then texted Mike, and left. Went home and refused to let Sam sleep, kept him up all night with a desperate passion that he hadn’t seen for two years, It brought them back together, and when she cried at the end it did not matter.

 

On a beach in Indonesia Sam stood, watching his wife from a distance, measuring her against the other tanned bodies and nodding in satisfaction. He struck up a conversation with a bartender, the shadow of a net falling over them both, draping their features in cross-hatches. Eventually he got to say- that’s her, over there, in the pink bikini, and they shared a moment as he whistled and nodded appreciatively. Sam’s phone vibrated and he cursed, went up towards their sea view room to call his brother when with head down he staggered into someone behind a trolley, knocked him over, realized how old the man was and apologized profusely. Sam helped him up, brought him inside his room then noticed the cut. He cleaned it up, added a band aid to the old man’s face. The old man, his face and hands gnarled, dark and lined as treebark danced over the chess set Sam and Marcie kept on their bed. They said nothing to one another and afterwards Sam stared at the chess set and almost asked the old man for a game. The moment passed and they parted.

 

Tirto always smoked during the sunset, from the vantage point of the hotel roof. He saw the orang putih, along with his wife, could trace their tiny movements across the sand. He liked to think they were happy, invented a story about how he was a doctor, and she a nurse, that they met in a hospital when an old man died. Someone kind perhaps. He told himself the story in his head whilst the cigarette burned down, then afterwards considered lighting another. He held the cigarette between two fingers, heard the siren and did not believe. His eyes drifted towards a horizon that seemed to be speeding towards the beach. The tourists did not know what the siren meant. Too few of the locals stayed to explain. When the tsunami came it swallowed most of them. Tirto watched the entirety of it, for hours he watched. He never did not find his doctor and nurse. Prayed for them at home. Wept for them alone. The only solace he could take from that wave was that he did not lament he would die anymore. It was a better death than those short-lived others. Months later in the hospital he realized that wave had begun far off the coast, during an earthquake but also, far before the earthquake, that wave began underneath the earth, had traveled for years across the ground, underneath, had begun a billion years ago just to obliterate all those lives. Tirto counted the waves that led them to that beach to die. The wave was a story no one could tell. There was no God in that wave. That wave itself was a spirit, one of the spirits of his grandfather that Tirto never understood till now. Tirto wondered at the waves that allowed him to arrive all the way here, on this bed, and how far back in time that wave had begun. He wanted to write this all down, wanted to tell someone the story, to make it whole and spread out, all it’s constituent parts like the sand on that beach he had spent so many hours writing on. But his throat betrayed him, his hands were weak. He died draped in the tears of those who would miss him, his last words a gurgle. 

 

The others, they carried on.

Buddy Bot Part 4

Mike perused the drafts of previous GUI’s, examined the history of the work they’d been doing, sifting through it the way someone might look at old photos of past events, unaware of what they are looking for, hoping they’d feel something when they found it.

 

*Ahem* Mira simulated in a low tone. She’d learned to do it after only once being told, tentatively, that she had startled him. Not learned. This was the outcome of an algorythym, the input being: ‘told to be less intrusive’ which would be defined, painstakingly, by better programmers than him.

 

Are you going to the gym tonight?

 

 “Yes. Definitely. I haven’t missed a single of the last five sessions!” Except she’d know that. She has a perfect memory afterall. 

 

That’s great news Mike. Keep up the good work, you’re on your way to becoming your best self! 

 

“I used to hate that phrase.” MIke mumbled. He highlighted population control. Placed it side by side with the latest change. Population management. Anala had stopped by yesterday, placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed twice and said something like “Thanks for staying late recently, you’re the best at this Mike. You’re the best! Don’t worry, the next change is purely superficial.” 

 

“Be easy then, no sweat ‘Nala.” 

 

Mike said to no one, or perhaps to Mira: “Populaton…management.” Trying it out. What was that Mike?” 

 

“Nothing Mira, really.”

 

Okay but if you want to talk about it feel free!

 

A chuckle escaped Mike. He’d heard the others don’t keep old backups close at hand. Archived away somewhere, or just left in some folder no one can remember. What was the use of keeping them? Someone else might have a copy anyway. Someone in legal, or marketing. Mike tracked the change to the logos, the headers, the footers, how one child policy lasted all of several hours before someone gave Cally a history lesson, became the new nuclear family, became the trinity, which was targeted towards South America, towards Italy, accelerated away from Mike when his counterpart, someone called Javier Lee translated the interface across the world. “Which do you think sounds better Mira: ‘The Eden Initiative.” or…”We’re running out of space, food, water, energy and…uh…we’re fucked…” 

 

I don’t really know what those two things are. What do you think Mike?

 

“I don’t Mira. I have my own problems. Nothings changed.”

 

You gotta help yourself before you can help others!

 

“Damn straight. You know, I’m thinking of taking these Yoga lessons to meet…people. And also because it’s good for me. Take the money I was spending on Solwar and like, use it on that.”

 

Yoga is great for you Mike! I know a lot about Yoga, would you like me to list some positive facts?” 

 

“Nah. It’s fine, I’ve already decided.”

 

I can also recommend many licenced venues, gyms, and personal trainers near you, Mike. 

 

Mike continued to highlight jargon, long dead. 

Short Story: Rahul or Raul

Raul or Rahul

It was 2001 and the towers had not yet fallen, and Raul’s brother had not left for university. Even though his brother’s empty room was only a scant few meters away from Raul’s, his brother had still tried to send Raul the video over MSN messenger, perhaps just to see if it would work. Raul didn’t know why he’d done that, and the lack of knowing followed him into his dreams, like a hole he could not descend into, a place which when he shouted questions at, would only echo.

So lately, Raul could not sleep. One morning he watched the sky change color again, his eyes half-lidded, feeling itchy all over and incomplete. He lay and wriggled in the stark, smoggy dawn, and tried to list all the reasons for why his brother had sent him the video, and which of the reasons seemed most like the truth. Why not just ask him to watch it? He could have gone right across the corridor, they could have watched it together.

Raul watched the light creep up his own computer, which had itself effortlessly slept through the entire night, and behind the black screen of which waited the link he had not yet dared to click. He went to his computer, tired of being exhausted, and he found the MSN message, the window a week old and still open, the link the color of un-clicked.

He clicked the link.

The ponderous, slow, Windows Media Player whirred to life and an image appeared, of Raul’s brother, a guitar casually perched upon his lap, waving indistinctly in the direction of the camera. So that was what the video was of- that birthday party, from when they had been in school. Raul couldn’t quite remember much of the party, except how his brother had awkwardly dedicated the song to Raul- yes- didn’t he? He did, at the beginning, right before he played the song. He’d said, “this one’s for…” or was it “the song goes out to…” or something else entirely. The song had been for him.

Raul pressed play.

The image would not move. He tried again. It stayed frozen. Raul checked; it wasn’t the codec; or the godawful player. Was it the file? Was it corrupted? Raul slammed the keyboard, then muttered alone, to himself, to calm down. Did his brother dedicate the song to him? Raul peered deep into the frozen frame, trying to access the memory via association, and could not- it was just out of reach, or perhaps, the picture was of too low quality. His doubts clamored about how it never made any sense, for his brother to dedicate that song to him.. It was a love song wasn’t it? The kind you sang to your girlfriend, or in his case, boyfriend. That’s what made it so awkward- though it had been hilarious- everyone knew his brother was gay and this was way too over the top, that he’d meant his older brother.

Unless.

Raul smacked himself in the head.

HE’D MEANT RAHUL!

RAHUL! His brother had had a crush on him! But Rahul himself wasn’t AT the party, so what’s the point in dedicating it to him? Raul didn’t know, and this sent his head into the keys, sounding that annoying warning blare. He noticed then, eyes straining against the top of his head, that in the bottom of the frozen video was someone with a pink mohawk on his head, and an ancient, 90’s style camcorder in his hands. Obsolete, backwards tech, you couldn’t send THAT over MSN. Though supposing if you lived nearby, you could probably run over with the video as quickly as send it online, though you’d need a VCR to play it.

Raul considered, whilst he got dressed for work, of trying out passwords on his brothers locked computer

Then he left.

The world was a bleary mess kept at a distance by the insomnia. At the bus stop, when he heard the tinny, absurd, custom ringtone come from the woman’s phone- the opening theme of Pokemon; “I wanna be…the very best…that no one ever was…” before catching himself, realizing- it was his brother that had shown everyone at school how to get that song onto their phones, his brother who organized that ridiculously awesome phone-sing-a-long-prank during the famous assembly, so what if this woman knew him? What are the odds that this was just a coincidence? How awkward would that be if she didn’t know about him. How do you broach the topic?

Raul said nothing.

Instead he planned how it was he would find out exactly who the guy with the pink mohawk was. At work he used the company landline to place several calls, whilst simultaneously using his Nokia phone to text people. Through friends of friends of his brother, he tracked the number down. He tried it, and in a polite flurry asked the mohawk if he still had the video. The mohawk did. And was he free this evening? He was, sort of. An impending meeting had Raul outright demanding, in a fluster, that he be able to borrow the video that night. The mohawk said sure, but to come by before seven . Raul thanked him profusely and got back to work. It came easier, the promise of the video like a beacon, something to look forward to, that he thought would bring him peace.

The fucking meeting ran over.

When he finally left, it was pushing 8:30. He called the mohawk and the phone rang, and rang, and rang. He texted the mohawk, asking if they could reschedule, that Raul would go anywhere, would travel across the city if he had to, he just needed to see the damn video. Finally a pissed off woman answered. “What the hell do you want?” Her voice softened when he told her who he was.

“Bob’s at the airport. He had a flight to catch.”

“But…what…when is he coming back?”

“He isn’t…” At that Raul couldn’t help it. He began to tear up. “Hello? Are you there?”

“…What’s his flight number?”

She told him and he ran to a taxi, worried inside, ran out of the taxi, and into the airport to a help desk, then ran from the help desk to the check out counters. Then ran from the checkout counters to the immigration entrance. Raul scanned the travelers for a pink mohawk. There were none. Raul wanted to scream, so he did, he screamed: “BOOOOOOOOOOOB!” and someone with a dark crew cut in a suit put up his hand. And no one arrested them as the towers hadn’t fallen yet.

Bob had the camcorder, and the tape, and the camcorder could play the tape on a tiny screen.

“Is it okay if I watch it on my own? In the toilet?”

Bob said it was okay.

Raul sat with the seat down, glad he bought some earphones from the nearby store. He plugged them in, crossed his fingers, and pressed play.

His brother came back to life.

Raul rewinded to the beginning repeatedly. Each time he felt the whole machine shake as the analogue tape physically wound itself backwards. He did this several times to make sure he had heard right, till he was sure his brother had said:

“I dedicate this song to the not yet departed: Rahul! Wish you were here man!” Of course. Rahul. Rahul was leaving the city, a few weeks from then.

So Raul stopped the tape, right before the song began. He felt the hole again, the lack, the truth failing to fill it.

Then he took a breath, and pressed play.

Raul listened, and heard, and saw, that the song wasn’t really awkward at all. It wasn’t hilarious either. It was okay. Under his breath, on top of the toilet, Raul sang along. At the end, to Raul’s complete surprise, his brother made a joke. It was that Pokemon joke. No one at that party had gotten the joke, except Raul. He’d laughed so loudly, wow- THAT was awkward. He remembered now, how his brother had stared right at him, how his brother had made the joke knowing Raul was the only one who would get it, and it was funny because Raul had given him his charizard card, before he knew what it was worth, and that’s what the joke was about.

Then it call came back to him. Raul remembered the whole damn party, the laughing, the dancing, and how, drunk for the first time, he had hugged his brother, and he remembered what that felt like.

So Raul cried, and he said goodbye, touching the tiny screen with his wet fingers.

A poem: Be Honest

Be Honest

Make them rhyme,

Make them dance in time,

To one another.

Let the cadences rise and fall,

As you try with words to contain it all.

Why can’t we speak directly,

Of things so complex,

Seemingly intimidated by simplicity.

Say: “you are lonely and you wish you weren’t”.

Instead with metaphors padding,

The room you exist in.

Expand your soul with similes,

Like how the dead ones did:

The ones you try to imitate.

A roadmap before cars,

Of how far profundity goes.

Poets and thinkers,

Gods and priests,

These long gone men that defined the parameters,
Of what it means to dream.

Why can’t you say it out loud?

Be proud and say: “I am in pain, please help me.”
Or :“Sometimes I still dream about you.”

Instead of the winding ways,

The words that stand, sway,

Always indirect,

You never just say:

“Please just stay.”

Flash Fiction Medley

I was reading about black holes today, which put me in a certain kind of mood. The Japanese have a word for it “Yugen” . That and I saw this picture (warning 10 MB picture), which is a super-high-res image of a fraction of the stars in our own galaxy.

You know I’ve always thought there was something deeply wrong with me. Partially because of the two links above. I’ve had people get very red-faced, very loud and and sure about certain ideas they have, including ideas that are really quite fantastic, compelling stories, like God and the Afterlife and Retirement, when the very fact that all those stars out there exist reduces so much of all of that noise coming out of people’s mouths to be….

Something less.

Not that I know any better. I am so awfully aware of how little I know that I indulge myself in a congruently complimentary hobby/passion/desperate need: to make things up. If I had it my way I would be a professional-maker-upper. I don’t want to call them novels or fiction, I want to call them stories. That’s all they are in the end.

In that spirit I’m writing this flash fiction medley which is is comprised of ideas that have taken root somewhere inside of me, that I have been quite an abysmal parent to, always claiming tomorrow I will finally write them all out, and do them justice. However in light (or lack thereof) of super-massive black holes of infinitely large mass and infinitely small volume I will deny my perfectionism and just let the ideas flow, like so much kaleidoscopic vomit.

Starting with The Third Planet Is Sure They’re Being Watched By An Eye In The Sky (because I love Modest Mouse and because Edward Snowden). This would have/will be/should have been a story about an obscure band with some average to pretty decent instrumentalists who acquire, randomly at a party, the skills of a front-girl and lyricist of dubious reputation- she has an obsession with psychedelics and is rarely seen sober, a sort of neo-hippy that others dismiss as pretentious.

Her name is Rachel and her parents are rich and thus the band plays at her place, which is austere and owned by her single father, the too serious CEO of some impenetrably dull hedge fund.

She writes these strange lyrics and sings in an off-beat falsetto with the band wishing she sounded more like Haylee Williams but they can’t deny the poetry, the way in which her words are so enigmatic, flow so easily, and how she never ever writes them without being at the very least stoned, if not tripping all over everybody’s balls.

The band is obscure, they get some hits on Xanga- using the new-fangled internet (did I not mention this all takes place in the 80’s?), play a few concerts but never make it big. They are torn apart by the tragic suicide of their front-girl, who falls in love with the gay guitarist that found her at the party and can’t hack the impossibility of it all.

The band falls apart, the lyrics left online.

Till they are found by a certain boy decades later. He fails to find anyone to take credit for them. On 4chan him and a dedicated few begin to form a subculture over these lyrics on account of how eerily accurate they are when it comes to historical events in the 21st century.

Funny thing about these lyrics. They are strangely prophetic. Very much like an 80’s version of Nostradamus, Rachel had somehow written down these hard to understand, rolling lines, that all seemed to come true. So this subculture spawns a member, who didn’t show her tits then GTFO, who becomes, through some twist of fate (in other words a realty TV show contestant), super-famous, ga ga famous, and after singing the autotuned songs of successful song writers eventually releases her own album- remixes of Rachel’s lines, catchier now with a bit of dubstep to underline the drop.

The last song in the album contains lines that suggest that this was what was always going to happen anyway, and whilst scholars spend a goodly amount of time debunking and arguing against the prophetic nature of all the other songs (not unlike a an 80’s remixed Nostradamus)  it is very difficult to argue against the rather explicit nature of these final lines that talk about another girl from another time when information is far more free taking her words and making them widely known.

See why I don’t finish these stories? That one could go one for awhile.

There is also Sonder, a story I really keep telling myself I’ll write, which is meant to be about a single day in the life of this person, and how it ends suddenly, and how although there is all this pain in his life- a divorce in process, a job that does not treat him so well- he values the time he has waiting, at the bus, or at lunch, the in between times, where he listens to these fantastic pod casts that teach him all about natural selection, or the general theory of relativity; space and time and history.

And at the end of this day, through random chance he is struck by a car, on his to the operating theater- with his broken family and wife united by the tragedy, all around him wishing him well with superstitious but well-meaning platitudes and the invocation of a plethora of conflicting Gods; then, in that gurney with the tube in his mouth he starts to imagine.

He imagines zooming out, of that hospital, and appreciating the hundreds of lives in the same building- like disparate atoms in a gas cloud all heading towards their own destinies, all of equal importance, all comprising a whole. From their he zooms out to the city block and wonders at the various animals, the sparrows and cockroaches that have evolved to fill their various nooks in the shadows where tigers once stalked- the strange ways in which life has continues to reproduce itself and that trajectories through time those species have taken…he zooms out again to the whole island, considers the geological movements, the plate tectonics of the island breaking off, reforming, the volcanic violence that led to it’s original creation- and he zooms out even more to consider the earth, wrapped in it’s atmosphere against the void, this pale blue dot with all the variety, all the life, all the water and wealth of chaos- and zooms out again, to the solar system and the strange series of collisions that led to the planets, the life cycle of Sol, and again to the galaxy with it’s billions upon billions of sisters to Sol and all that potential, the potential for all those hospital tragedies, and again to all the billions of other galaxies and the sheer amount of other things, the shadow of infinity- and without God, and without answers, with one single tear rolling down his face, the man is content in the face of death. Without words, without actions, with his imagination alone he traversed all of space and time.

The definition of Sonder.

The anesthesia dulls him to sleep and he dies on the table and his imagination is lost to an invisible past only the reader might have appreciated.

Let’s go for the hat trick, one time, with my final story-yet-unwritten: Get Krunk

Which is quite simply about a man who does not drink much, or dream much, whose life is turned somewhat inside out by the collapse of his company, a sudden thing that discards him, and all the things he thought were important, and leads him to a bar his fellow workers always frequent and he never did, where they regale each other with happy memories he missed in his endearing naivete, and how he drinks quite heavily that night.

He stumbles out of the cab home too early near a football field where the lights of the stadium hypnotize him- shadows, young, dance underneath those sharp lights, and he stumbles towards them driven by a mysterious line “get Krunk, get Krunk”…and he finds himself in a party for high-schooler’s, and he joins.

This man he looks so young and his askew tie and stained suit mark him as cool among all these teens. The story would have been about the lie he lives for one insane, magical night, where he tries to relive his past, and would have turned on a girl, the kind of girl he wishes he would have had, and how he realizes at the end how late it is, when, she brandishes her fake ID with pride.

I’m not certain what he would have done during that party but I think it would have had something to do with making a heartfelt speech about the future for these young ones, and something about how he befriends a supposed younger version of himself, who really is not like him at all- and that realization that he can’t even guide himself, because of course there is no one like him- not truly- that truth hurts.

I probably would have ended with the girl and whether he has sex with her or not because that shit sells.

Three’s a crowd apparently so I’ll cut the medley short. It’s kind of freeing to let these stories out so I might do this again soon. It’s also a form of cheating which appeals to me.

The End.