A Narrow Path

“Sir,” her shrill voice cut through his reverie. “Sir, you have to pay for that sir.” The woman behind the glass was frowning at him and gesturing to the object in his hand. He looked down and realized he was holding a bottle. He turned it over in his hand and read the label.

“Hazelnut” was written on the light brown label in black ink in those old timey kind of letters you see at the fair. He looked up from the bottle at the woman behind the glass. She was gesturing again and her frown had turned in to a glare. “Sir, are you going to pay for that? You either need to pay for that or you need to make room for the paying customers.” Confused, he put the bottle down on the top shelf of the display he was standing next to and made his way for the door.

“How did I get here?” he thought. “Where am I?” He couldn't remember what he'd been doing just before the woman began yelling at him. He tried to think it through, but the first thing he remembered was her voice and the bottle marked “Hazelnut,” and before that, there was nothing.

After leaving the shop he found himself standing on the side of a busy alley. Tall buildings loomed high overhead until they almost seemed to lean in over the narrow stretch of road, and people were coming and going in every direction. He found himself staring up at the buildings, trying to trace the angles of their walls and make sense of their shape when he was suddenly bumped in to from behind. He turned to address the person who had walked in to him, but before he could say anything he was bumped in to again from the other direction. He spun to face the second person as the first hurried past, and that was when he realized that there were people everywhere. The alley was narrow and left little enough room for walking, much less standing and staring at buildings. The press of the crowd was already moving him away from the door to the little shop he'd just left, and rather than try to fight it he settled in with the rest of them and made his way slowly down the side of the road.

While he walked he tried to remember. Anything. Where was he? How did he get there? He reached in to his pockets looking for clues and found a wallet. Without thinking he pulled it out and opened it, only to find that it was filled with small slips of blank paper. It took him a moment to realize what they were, but then it seemed obvious. They were business cards. Small, white, textured cards about half the size of a playing card, but every one of them was blank. He flipped the wallet open to where the ID should have been, but in its place there was just another of the blank business cards. Then it suddenly came to him.

“Who am I? I don't know who I am?” He started to panic then, and might have fallen to the ground in shock if it weren't for the constant press of the crowd. All around him, the bodies of men and women provided a support and structure that was gentle and subtle, yet impossible to withstand. He tried then, as he realized he was being moved along, he tried to move against the current. He turned and pushed and tried to shoulder his way through the throng, but it was no use. He found that if he stood still, he could stand his ground but only in the face of people constantly bumping him and pressing up against him. And every time he lifted one of his feet that pressure would overwhelm him and he'd find himself several feet further down the road. The little shop with the woman behind the glass and the bottle labeled “Hazelnut” was already far away.

He turned then and looked at the direction the crowd was headed in. Ahead of him he saw more of the same. A narrow alley. Buildings that rose up in to the sky on both sides until they almost seemed to touch high above. And people, pressing in on all sides, on there way to some business that was impossible to guess and yet obviously important. He let the crowd push him along, imagining for a moment that if he were to simply lift his feet he could float forever in that sea of flesh. And while he moved down the street he tried once more to understand who and where he was.

It was only then that he realized he couldn't understand the language the people around him were speaking. They seemed normal enough, and all around him he heard the babble of voices. But none of the words made any sense. It was like listening to the radio when it's only loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to be listened to. Words that seemed to almost make sense came to him at random from everywhere in the crowd. He thought that if he could just catch the rest of that sentence, or get a few feet closer to whoever was speaking, then maybe he could understand. Yet somehow, no matter where he turned or how he strained, there was only the constant hum of conversation, without any of the context or meaning that words conveyed.

He thought back to the woman behind the glass. “I understood her. She spoke my language. And the bottle. I could read it. It clearly said Hazelnut.” But he couldn't remember what else it had said. He couldn't even remember what it was Hazelnut of. Coffee creamer? Ice cream topping? Besides that one word, and the black old timey letters on the light brown label, he couldn't remember a thing about the bottle he'd been holding.

“Maybe I should have paid for it after all.” he thought. But then he remembered his empty wallet with it's blank business cards. “What is happening to me? Is this a dream?” He pinched himself to see if he'd wake up, and felt pain blossom on his arm where his fingers twisted the flesh. In moments a bruise began to form on the skin. He tried once more to remember who he was. And then he felt the crowd change direction.

He looked up again and noticed that they were reaching the end of the alley. Where before he could have sword it continued on forever, it now suddenly ended in another of the tall buildings. This one had dark glass hung in all the windows and one of those electric signs over the door that he couldn't quite read. It seemed like every time he looked it was between words, with just the last letters of one scrolling away as the first letters of another scrolled on. He tried to stare at it, waiting for words to cross it whole and give him any impression of what was happening, but for some reason he couldn't seem to focus. His eyes kept wandering away and fixing on other aspects of the building, the stucco facade, the gargoyles over several of the windows, and the tall crenelations high above where it kissed the sky. The more he looked at it, the more it looked like the pictures of castles he'd seen as a boy, but every time he turned to look at the sign once again it was as incomprehensible as before.

He realized he remembered looking at pictures of castles. As a young boy. He tried to focus on the memory, to draw some kind of clue from it, but it was only a sensation. More of a relation to what he was experiencing than a true memory. He didn't seem to have any true memories at all from before the shop.

The crowd pressed him closer and closer to the castle in front of him, and as he reached the drawbridge that had been lowered over the wide moat that surrounded it he suddenly began to feel very afraid. As he got nearer the feeling grew, until it became a kind of terror that made his blood pound in his head and sweat break out over his body. He turned into the crowd once more and tried to press against the current of people. His progress slowed, but he continued to move towards the dark gaping maw of the open gate and the passage beneath the walls and the murder holes above. His terror turned to panic and he began to cry out as he pressed against the tide of people, trying with all his strength to push them aside, pulling at their clothes to move them from his path. But it was no use. They didn't seem to mind or notice, and every person he pulled away was followed by a thousand more. Step by step, he was pressed ever closer to the dark foreboding fortress at his back.

He turned and faced it once more. Above he could see men walking the battlements, and somewhere he heard screams. He looked at the people around him once more, but they had turned into monsters. Hideous and disfigured, their faces and bodies melted and ran before his very eyes, forming nightmarish shapes and then dissolving into a chaotic mess before reforming once more in ways that tormented him on some deep, fundamental level.

“Why?” he cried out. “What is happening to me? Why am I here?” He was almost across the bridge now, and as he looked up he realized that the people on the battlements had stopped walking. Every one of them was standing now, staring down at him. They didn't even seem to be breathing anymore, as though they were all poised, waiting for the next thing to happen. He lowered his eyes to the darkness at the end of the drawbridge and watched as it slowly drew closer. Ahead of him people were passing beyond the end of the wooden bridge beneath his feet and in to that darkness, but somehow it was impossible for him to see beyond it. His panic grew until it was all he knew. He no longer saw the horrible faces of the demons that surrounded him, or heard the babble of their voices. All he experienced now was the gripping absolute terror of what was to come. The unknowable horror that awaited him beyond that dark gate. The press of the crowd around him pushed him closer, ever closer to the darkness that swallowed every one of the people before him without ever growing full. As he inched towards it he braced himself for what was to come. The darkness was almost upon him now, and as the first black rays touched his clothes he felt a cold chill spread through his body.

And then he was through. The darkness was gone. The fear was gone. In it's place, there was a white light, blinding and everywhere. A feeling of warmth. And voices from every direction, but now he could make sense of their words. He understood the song now. The terror that had gripped him only moments ago seemed strange and foreign with his new understanding, and he knew that he could travel in any direction he wanted to go from here. There were no limitations now. Limitations belonged to the man he was before. The man who didn't know who or what he was, or why he was there, or where he was going. Those questions didn't matter anymore, that man was gone, and the limitations those questions placed on him were gone as well. He knew what to do and without hesitation, he stepped in the right direction and out of the light.

He looked down at the bottle in his hand. “Hazelnut,” it read, in blue letters on a white label. A woman was standing behind a counter looking at him. “Will you be purchasing those sir?” she asked. Confused, he shook his head and put the bottle down on the counter in front of him. “No thank you,” he said. He paused for a moment, and then turned and walked out the door.

Something Lost in the Dark

It was dark that night.

He could remember it. The dark. It was the kind of dark that seemed to pour in to you. It wasn't just an absence of light. It was the presence of dark. Palpable. Sensory. He remembered laying in the grass, the oily dark swirling around him like a living thing, waiting for his eyes to adjust. But they wouldn't. Even at the last before he went back inside, he stood there a moment, his eyes straining against the darkness, stretching to find the sliver of light that would show him the grass and the low stone wall and the tree he knew was in the yard and the porch he knew he was standing on. But there was nothing but the endless heavy emptiness. After a moment more he gave up and turned to go back in to the house.

It had been a long night. He remembered that. It was Halloween. He hadn't known her very long, but she'd invited him to come along with her to the party. It wasn't really his scene. Most of the time he preferred the quiet. But he didn't get invited to a lot of Halloween parties by a lot of girls so when she told him she wanted to go he was quick to say yes.

The party hadn't gone well from the very beginning. He wasn't used to these sorts of things and so he followed her lead. She knew the people who's house they were at, knew most of the people at the party. He was the outsider here, and he spent most of his time following her around like a puppy dog. He felt a little pathetic doing so, but he didn't really see an alternative. Inside he was hoping she'd get bored and they could go back to his place. His roommate would be asleep by now, even on Halloween, and he was hoping he could talk her in to spending the night. She'd only ever stayed over once before, falling asleep on his couch while he slept on the floor in front of her. To protect her.

As they sat in the small bedroom around the tall hooka pipe he remembered the way the cotton of her bra had felt beneath his hand when he'd made his first awkward attempt to find her breasts. She'd pushed his hand away, but gently, and he remembered the mixture of frustration and excitement he'd felt as he allowed her to move his hand down to her stomach instead, where his fingers had traced circles on her skin for hours.

They'd been at the party for a while then, drinking and smoking, when he suddenly realized he was sitting alone in one of the bedrooms. Another girl, not the one he'd come to the party with, walked past and saw him through the open door. She paused then seemed to make a decision and entered the room. She sat down in front of him and started talking. He couldn't understand what she was saying. Something about a drinking game. He nodded and smiled and they took turns taking drinks from a can of beer she'd carried in to the room with her. She had a pretty smile, but she wasn't the girl he'd come to the party with, and so when she tried to put his hand on her breast he pulled away. He remembered feeling a little ashamed at that, he didn't want to hurt her feelings, but it didn't seem right. Not when his girl was somewhere else at that party. He mumbled something polite to the girl and made his way to his feet, stumbling from the room.

He tried to make his way down the hall, but the combination of cheap beer and expensive weed had him staggering and leaning hard against the walls before he'd gone more than a few feet. He noticed in passing that he couldn't remember when she'd disappeared. There were still plenty of people at the party, the girl with the pretty smile he'd left behind. The older man who seemed oddly out of place amongst so many young people. The skinny boy who kept dancing in the front room, so desperate for attention that he'd been making a fool of himself for hours just so he could be a part of the group. There were people drinking in the kitchen and in the garage and smoking again in one of the bedrooms. Suddenly his head began to swim and the presence of so many people seemed to press against him from every side. So he stumbled to the heavy back door that opened out on to the wooden deck behind the house and the grass field beyond it and made his way out into the cool night air.

With the door shut behind him the light from inside the house suddenly disappeared. It was dark that night. He stood there alone in the darkness for a while, and then sank to the ground and laid in the grass while his head spun in circles. He tried opening his eyes and he tried closing his eyes, but it was so dark he couldn't tell the difference and the spinning never stopped. After a while, he stood up and turned back to the heavy door that led back into the party and grabbed the knob in his hands. He steadied himself there for a few seconds, holding it tightly in his grip as he swayed ever so slightly. A moment more, and he righted his posture and returned to the light and the smoke and the smell of alcohol.

He found her later, sitting alone in one of the bedrooms. A man was there, holding her hand, and when he walked in to the room the man got up and left without saying a word. She looked up at him, and he knew immediately that something had changed. She'd asked him to come to the party, but sometime during the night she'd gone from wanting to go out with him to wanting to go home with someone else. He knew that the moment her eyes touched his. He tried to make small talk with her, but it was lifeless. Whatever they might have shared or been was already gone. He tried to offer to take her home, but she said she'd get a ride. Something had happened while he'd stood outside in the dark, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

He remembered again the feeling of her shirt sliding over the back of his hand, her hand on his moving it away from her breast. He remembered the little gifts he'd given her, a lighter with the name of one of her favorite bands on it, a mood ring he'd bought for ninety nine cents at a gas station. He remembered the drawing she'd made for him of her favorite cartoon character on a napkin one day at work. He thought about the little cotton wristband he had in a drawer in his bedroom at home. She'd left it at his house one night by accident and he'd never mentioned it to her. She wore it to cover the scars on her wrists. He wanted to keep it because a part of him thought maybe she'd stop hurting herself if she couldn't hide the cuts anymore. He thought about that little black and white wristband as she stood up and turned her back on him, walking out of the room and leaving him there. Alone.

Somehow he made it to his car. The drugs were all coursing through his system by then. He couldn't remember much of the walk back down the road to where he'd parked. He remembered getting sick along the way. Then he was sitting in the driveway in front of his apartment. Somehow he'd driven home, but now that he was there he was too drunk and stoned to get out of his car and go inside. Or maybe it was something else. So instead he used the last of his strength to pull up on the release lever on the side of the car seat, lowering the chair back into a flat level position and fell asleep there in the car.

That night he dreamed of her. He dreamed of the darkness. He dreamed of the girl with the pretty smile who had his hand on her breast, and the girl with the cuts on her arms who had not. In his mind they became one girl, and then every girl. He dreamed of the look on her face when she stood up and walked away, leaving him sitting alone on the edge of someone else's bed at someone else's party. He dreamed of the circles he'd traced on her stomach and the night she'd fallen asleep on his couch. And again and again it would all disappear as the darkness would wash over him, filling him until he thought he would burst from it.

When he woke in the next morning he tasted vomit in his mouth. His back was stiff and one of his arms was badly cramped from the way he'd jammed it between himself and the gear shift to try to sleep comfortably. He tried to remember the night before, the party and the girl and the darkness. He tried to remember the way she'd smiled on the way to the party, and the look she'd given him before she walked away. Then he tried not to remember. But he couldn't change what had happened.

“Time only moves forward.”

He sat up and opened the door to the car. The sun was high above him now, its light covering the world like a warm blanket. It shone down on him as he made his way slowly up the steps of his house. The door was white and the sunlight reflected off it with such intensity that it stung his eyes, still sensitive from the smoke that lingered in his clothing from the night before. As he reached in to his pocket for his keys he remembered the feeling of the world spinning as he stood in the darkness on the porch the night before. The darkness was gone, and this was another porch, but he could feel his world starting to spin again.

When he made his way in to the house he laid down on the cheap, rough carpeting of his rented apartment and cried. The tears poured down his face and fell to the floor below and he rolled on to his back and stared at the ceiling. Something had happened last night, and things were different now. His tears poured down the side of his face and he made no effort to stop them. He let them all run out, until he had no tears left, and then he pushed his way to his knees and then to his feet.

He allowed himself to remember once more, and then he shut it all away. He built a wall in his mind, and the girl, and the party, and the darkness, and the feel of her hand on his hand all went behind the wall. And when every memory he had of the time they'd spent together was safely on the other side of that wall he bricked it up. So tight that nothing could pass between the stones. There wouldn't be any tiny sliver of light to show him all the silly dreams he'd made for them. No little reminders of their first date or their first kiss or the nights they'd stayed up together until the sky slowly began to fade from black to blue again. He'd shut it all away, and never think of it again.

And somewhere in his bedroom a little black and white cotton wristband would sit, untouched, until he'd stumble upon it years later and casually throw it away. Never remembering why or how he'd gotten it in the first place. And if somewhere there was a girl with scars on her wrists that she couldn't hide from the world anymore, well, somewhere there was a boy with scars on his heart that he would hide from himself forever. Never thinking about her or that night again. Never allowing himself to remember again. Never. Never.

Never.

Because remembering isn't redoing and reliving isn't possible.

Time only moves forward.

Pressed

This can't take forever. I just don't have the time. One way or another, I'm gonna have to wrap this up.

As I stood there standing over the body that thought kept running through my mind. I knew the others would show up soon and I didn't want to have to explain why I was covered in Jose's blood.

It had all happened so fast, even now looking down into his eyes I could only barely understand. Seconds ago I was standing behind Phillip's desk holding in my hand the very thing that I had come here to find, and then Jose had run into the room. He must have realized what I was holding, because he ran at me. Before I could even scream he was on me.

He grabbed my arm and we struggled. He tried to rip it from my hand. I stomped on his foot and grabbed his head with both my hands. Something strange happens when you find yourself suddenly fighting for your life. Neither of us said a word. For a few seconds we focused every ounce of ourselves on the singular goal of killing the other. There was no discussion. No quarter asked or given. There was only each other, and the struggle we shared.

And then I smashed his head into the corner of the desk until his body quit shaking and I could feel the weight of his death in my hands.

There was blood everywhere. And any minute now three men I could already hear coming up the stairs were about to walk into this room and see what had happened. I wouldn't be able to talk my way out of that.

I didn't think I could kill them all. Not three of them.

So I did the only thing I could think of. The only thing that would keep me alive. I reached down and put the box in Jose's pocket and I ran towards the stairs screaming for help.

Three years. Wasted. And instead of being free I was tied more tightly to Phillip and his organization than ever before.

And I'd lost the box.

They wouldn't be so casual next time. It had taken me three years just to get it in my hands. And now they'd be ten times more careful. Even if they blamed Jose for what happened, the fact that someone, anyone, had tried to steal it would make them cautious.

I would get another chance. Eventually. Perhaps killing Jose would gain Phillip's trust. Perhaps I wouldn't have to wait another three years before I held that box in my hand again. But today, a day that for one moment had held such promise, would not be the day I was made free.

As I rounded the landing and headed down the stairs, screaming all the way, I had one more thought.

With Jose dead, Phillip would need a new lieutenant.

Perhaps I'd hold that box again sooner than I feared.

Anarchist's Lament

The craven are enslaved
Even hiding
In their dreams

While the Tyrants teach the young
To feed
Themselves to the machines

They march to cannons blasting
And the steady
Drums of War

While the few who cry
In conscience
Are not heard above the roar

Impassioned screams and whispers
Find they're
Crushed by the applause

Of the ignorant and many
Who fight blindly
For the cause

Those who try to argue that
This cannot
Be the way

Soon themselves become
The enemy
Of them that rule the day

For the prison's walls
And shackles
Are at angles hard to see

Only looking at them straight on
Shows the truth
In what they be

So they keep the sheep
Distracted
With both flashing lights and sounds

Till they're less moved by
Rationality
Than false baying of fake hounds

Hope is scare when men
Are slaves
And liberty is dying

If Freedom's broken heart
Were bared
In truth, she would be crying

But though the subtle chains
Of the oppressors
Are appalling

Take heart, for with each
Passing day
More scales from eyes are falling

A Choice to Make

He finds himself sitting in an empty room.

He tries for a moment to remember how he came to this place, but it is as though he has, jumped, from one moment to the next. He remembers climbing into the auto, and reaching for the key to start the engine. But his next memory is of sitting here on this cold, hard floor.

It is the coldness of the floor which draws his attention outward for the first time. The walls of the room are nondescript, plain and flat, with no noticeable adornments or additions. The floor is smooth, it appears to be poured concrete. On the wall across from him there is a narrow door, not quite big enough for him to walk through standing straight. It has no handle or lock, no hinges that he can see, but there appears to be a small keyhole along one side.

His clothes are missing, but the items he had in his pockets, a set of four keys, his wallet, thirty seven cents in change, and the ticket he brought with him from home, are all laid out neatly on the floor a few feet in front of him.

He cautiously stretches out his arms and legs. They feel stiff, as though he hasn't used them in sometime, perhaps hours. Moving slowly, he rises and walks over to where his possessions are arrayed on the floor.

He picks up each of the items in turn and holds them in his hand, turning them slowly over and over. Why were these things left here, for him?

“Why?”

He picks up the wallet and opens it. It still holds his diner's card, his driving license, and the twenty three dollars he had with him that morning. The pictures of his sister and her daughter are still tucked away inside the folded up letter she sent him before the accident. He breathes a sigh of relief when he finds them, but quickly folds the letter back up without lingering on the picture itself.

He picks up the change. He expects it to be slightly warm, like change that had just been taken out of his pocket, but instead it is cool to his touch. He holds one of the pennies tightly in his fist for a moment, and feels it gather in some of the warmth of his body. He holds it up to his face and feels the warmth of the penny softly radiate against his cheek. It calms him.

“It's comforting.”

He picks up the ticket he had with him that morning. It was a ticket he had drawn on lottery, he always played the same numbers. 12. 3. 50. They had been, well, if not lucky, perhaps, preternatural. At least he told himself that. Those numbers had become something of a memento to him.

“A reminder.”

He picks up the keys. Four keys. The ignition key for his Morrie. His flat key. The key he used to open the small bakery he worked in. And the key to the footlocker he kept in his closet.

And one more.

“Five keys?”

He holds the alien key gently between his thumb and long finger pointed upwards. He turns it down and around in his hand, puzzling it intently. As a key, it looks no different nor more interesting than any of the other keys on the small loop he carries every day in his pocket. While he ponders this strange comer, he slips his finger through the loop and casually spins the keys into his fist. It is a habit he does unconsciously. He spins the keys and releases them, spins them and releases them, as he looks once more around the room.

His eyes once again settle on the strange door. Too small, with no hinges nor handle. And yet, that small keyhole. The keys spin into his fist once more, and he looks down at his hand. He is holding his flat key on top, but it is the unknown key which draws his attention.

He holds it between his fingers once more and brings it up to his eyes, obscuring his vision of the door.

“Perhaps?”

The cold of the concrete floor is beginning to seep into the souls of his bare feet as he gathers the rest of his belongings in his hands and shifts idly from side to side as he contemplates the door. How long has he really been in here? Who brought him here, and why? Are those answers beyond that door, perhaps only waiting for him to insert the unfamiliar key?

He thinks briefly of the longed for convenience of pants, not for their warmth, but rather their pockets, as he tries to clutch all his belongings in one fist. He keeps hold even of the coins. Perhaps they are not much, but they are one of the few things he has with him now which are knowably his own, and he has no wish to leave them behind.

As he approaches the door he holds the key more firmly in his grasp. He had hoped that closer examination would mean greater understanding, but such eludes him as he examines the finely chopped line which separates the edge of the door from the rest of the wall. Taking a deep breath, he inserts the key into the small slot near his waist.

“What are you waiting for?”

With a sense of finality, he attempts to turn the key to the right, only to find that it has no range in that direction. His anticipation flees him with the frustration of the ruined climax, and grudgingly, he turns the key back to the left. The key rolls smoothly in the cylinder, and he feels rather than hears a click, as something inside the door reacts to the spoliation.

And then nothing happens. He stands still, nude, holding his few possessions in his arms, with one hand outstretched towards the door. The door stands still, silent and sealed, joined to him through the key that is both inside it and inside his hand.

“Well what did you expect?”

He contemplates his next actions carefully, and once more looks around the room, perhaps inviting some inspiration from the barren walls. But none is forthcoming. With a despondent shrug, he pushes on the door with his opposite shoulder.

He almost falls forward as the door slides smoothly away from him in reaction to the pressure he applies. His mind tells him that such a solid door must be terribly heavy, and yet, it seems to glide away with the slightest touch. After only a few inches, the door stops again, but this time he can see a groove built carefully into the wall beside it. Removing the key from the lock, he pushes the door to the left into the cubby which seems shaped for this purpose, and it slides in just as effortlessly, fitting as perfectly there as it did in the wall to begin with.

As he moves through the now open portal, he notices passingly that there are no external pieces of protrusions on the end of the door. Only a small socket with which the door can be pulled from its resting place.

Beyond the door is something else. A place of memory and wild imaginings. He looks back over his shoulder and sees the characterless gray room open behind him. He turns again and here, before him, he finds a sea of shifting colors and senses.

He can smell the greens in the air, taste the vibrant smoothness of the surfaces at his feet. His ears hear pictures and thoughts from his childhood.

Here, he relives a moment when his father gave him a shiny red bicycle for his sixth birthday. Over there he can see himself hiding behind the walls of his grammar school with Thomas and Gordy and the bottle they stole from the headmistress's desk. Behind him he sees his first kiss, and his first spanking, and his first failure.

Somehow he is able to take in all these things at the same time. Somehow he is reliving them all at the same time. He spins in the room, still clutching those things removed from his missing pants pockets, and as he does, he sees once more the yawning portal back to the gray, featureless room where he first found himself.

“I know this place.”

And he does. For this place is himself, far more so than the few meager things he carries in his arms, far more so than all the worldly possessions of his life combined. This place is everything he has been and seen. And more.

He notices something as he relives every moment of his life simultaneously. There is a thread here. Something indecipherable, yet undeniable. Something connects every one of these moments, the memories he cherishes and those he does not. He can not name it, but he knows it's there.

He tries to focus on one memory. Not that one. The memory of this morning. How he arrived at this place.

He seems himself sit down behind the wheel. He seems himself reach for the key. And then he sees himself here. There is no memory in between.

“Something is missing.”

He rewinds the memory. His hand retreats from the key. He climbs out of the Minor. He sees himself roll back the window and remove the thin plastic tube. He sees himself return to the house, and sit down at the table. He seems himself pick up the picture, and the letter. For a long time, the scene doesn't change.

He watches as he sits, holding the picture in one hand and the letter in the other. He could see the picture now if he wanted to, but instead he chooses to focus on himself. He doesn't want to see it.

After an eternity, he sees himself fold the picture up inside the letter, tuck it into his wallet, and put the wallet back inside the pocket of his pants. He stands up and leaves the room.

He can feel it. That thread. The link between forever and today. He plays the scene forward again, and watched as he takes out the letter and picture, looks at them, drops them on the table and walks out to the garage.

He seems himself put the plastic tubing in through the window, and sit down behind the wheel and reach for the key.

“So that's how I got here.”

The thread extends infinitely in one direction. But he can feel it ending in him now. He can feel the loose, frayed end of the thread in his breast.

He holds the penny in his fist again, but this time it fails to warm to his touch. He holds it up to his face and it feels cool against his cheek.

“Can I relive that moment? Can I change it?”

It seems as though he has all the time in the world here. He begins at the beginning, and walks slowly through his life. Sometimes he relives a certain moment or memory again and again before moving forward away from it. Sometimes he slides past moments in one go. But never quickly. He wants to relive even his painful moments. He wants it all to last forever.

In time, perhaps in forever, he reaches that memory of eight months earlier. When he received a call. There had been an accident. A crash. Something no one could have prevented. He had made supper that evening. After he hung up the phone he immediately ran to his room and pulled the crumpled letter from the drawer of his desk. He smoothed it out carefully, straightening every wrinkle, and placed the picture he'd taken of them only days before down in its center.

He wanted to race away from this memory. He wanted a chance to change it. But it was not something he could change. Not from this place. Because the thing he wanted to turn out differently hadn't happened to him. He wondered if they had been given the chance. Had they chosen to leave things as they were?

“Did they choose to leave?”

The remainder of his memories were boring. Characterless. He had moved through each day like a sad doll. He had slept, and eaten, and occasionally bathed, but he had done nothing of consequence. Not until this morning.

This morning he had done something of great consequence. Something powerful. He had made his first real decision in eight months.

“And now you want to change that?”

He pondered that question for a moment. For forever and a day. He could. He knew that. From here, he could change anything. Except the one thing he wanted most to change. That thing was not his to decide.

But this was.

“Did they choose to leave?”

Could he?

She Really Felt

I had set out to tell a different story than the one that ended up on the page.

It was supposed to be something, else. Something special. Maybe it still was when I was finished, but it wasn't what I had intended.

It had begun simply enough, as I suppose most things do, with a chance encounter. I walked into the little coffee shop where she worked and ordered a tall mocha latte. Nothing fancy, but she smiled as she handed me my change, and I noticed the way her smile lit up her eyes.

Some people, when they smile, it doesn't reach their eyes. You can tell. Their lips curl up at the ends, and their cheekbones rise a little, but their eyes stay blank. They aren't really smiling. They aren't really happy. They are just putting on a mask. Maybe it's their job, or maybe they think it will make you go away. In the end, if you're watching, you can tell the difference between that and a real smile.

But she really smiled. She didn't know me, didn't have any reason to think we'd ever meet again, but she smiled at me. Here was a person who really felt emotions. It filled me with a passion. I wanted to see her feel something more.

I didn't go back into the coffee shop after that day. It was important that she not realize that I was trying to elicit some response from her. That would make it too forced, too fake. It would betray the purpose of the whole thing.

But I watched her from the parking lot of the shopping mall across the street. I watched her as she handed coffee to strangers. I watched as she interacted with her coworkers. I didn't use binoculars, that might give me away, so I couldn't see her eyes, but I remembered how they lit up when she smiled at me, and I could imagine them doing so again.

I imagined her sharing nice little anecdotes with the girl who mopped the floor. I imagined her wishing each customer a good afternoon as they walked out with their hot little cups and scones. I imagined her humming along to the fake music they piped in all day through little speakers up near the ceiling.

It was a wonderful experience, watching this pretty little thing love her life. But I wanted to see more. I wanted to see her feel other emotions. I wanted to see how real she really was.

I followed her home one night, just to see where she lived. I was careful to drive by quickly and continue on my way, but I remembered the spot.

I couldn't watch her all the time, I had responsibilities of my own to attend to, but when I had the opportunity I would drive by and see her working through the windows of the little coffee shop. Even when I was at work, or some ridiculous family occasion I would think of her and try to imagine what she was doing.

I started to carry a picture of her around in my wallet. I had taken it one day while she was out shopping with some people I assumed were her friends. She had just picked up a little handbag and was turning to show it to one of the other girls when I snapped the photo. Her hair was whipping around her face and framed it like the glow you'd see in those renaissance paintings of angels or god. Her body was turned away from the camera but you could see the look in her eyes. It was such a passionate moment.

One day when it was raining, I opened up the front of her mailbox. She always checked the mail when she came home from work, so I waited and watched as she reached in and pulled out the soaking wet envelopes. Each one, bills, cards, advertisements, was covered in rain water with ink running across the paper. I took a picture of her face as she shook them out in the lawn before she went inside. It replaced the other picture of her in my wallet.

A few nights later I went to her home and let the air out of one of her tires. It was Wednesday so I knew she'd be leaving for work at 10:45. I waited for hours for her to come outside, and when she did she immediately saw the flat tire. The look on her face was beautiful. This was a real person. Her frustration and surprise made me feel so warm inside, I began to cry. It was all too much. I had to drive away to a parking lot where she wouldn't see me express my emotions.

She eventually made it into work that day and I watched as she related the story to her coworkers. Each time she did so she relived the emotions of finding her flat tire. I took a video recording of her telling one of the customers what had happened. You couldn't hear her of course, I was too far away. But I could tell what she was saying by the way her expressions changed.

I stayed away from her home for a few weeks after that. I didn't want to arouse any suspicion. I found an internet site where she posted little messages for her family. I would check it every night before bed.

It had been more than three months since I first met her when I went by her house again and took her dog. I left the gate open so it would seem like it had run away. I watched her when she found the dog missing. I watched her frantically search the neighborhood. I watched her spend days driving around tacking up signs to every telephone poll with a picture of her dog and a phone number. I even kept one. And over the course of the next few weeks, I watched her slowly resign herself to never seeing her dog again.

I waited until it seemed that she had lost all hope, but not so long that she might forget about the dog, before I returned it to her yard one night. I had kept it safe in my home and even fed it the same dog food she used the entire time. I watched as she woke up the next morning and found it playing in the yard waiting for her. I watched her cry and roll in the grass with the dog in her arms.

I just wanted to see her feel. I didn't want to hurt her, but I wanted to see her hurt. That was why I killed her mother.

It was simple enough. The woman was old and frail. When the police found the accident, they just accepted the obvious explanation. An old woman had lost control of her car on a dark road and hit a tree. They didn't have any reason to suspect foul play, and so they didn't.

The funeral was almost more than I was ready for. She wept over her mothers grave. Quietly, with class, but powerfully. I could see the pain written bold across her face even from where I sat in my rented car nearly a football field away. I could see her shoulders shake as the pastor read the eulogy. I replaced the picture in my wallet with a new one.

I watched her for several years after that. Occasionally making little changes in her life to guide her towards something new. Once I had flowers delivered to her home addressed to someone else so she would think it was an accident. I cherished the look on her face as she picked them up and carried them inside. I made a noise complaint on her from a pay phone one night and watched as the police knocked on her door and woke her up. Another time I left a love letter under her windshield wiper made out to someone she'd never heard of.

Each time I was there, somewhere, to watch her. She became the canvas across which I painted a sea of emotions. And she felt every one of them fully.

In the end, I suppose it shouldn't have come as such a surprise when I ran into her that night.

I had followed her for years. I knew where she ate. I knew where she shopped. I knew where she went to church. But it was a small town. It wasn't that much of a stretch that one night I would find myself getting gas and look over to see her at the pump right next to me.

I wanted to tell her so much. I hadn't been this close to her in over four years, not since she sold me that first coffee. I wanted her to understand what I had done, and why. I wanted it to all be revealed, and I wanted it to never end.

What I didn't want was to see her look over at me across the top of her car with such dispassion. She didn't smile. She didn't nod. She simply saw me, and looked away.

The words died in my throat. My heart was broken beyond repair. I don't even know where I drove to after that, or how long I sat in the car before I got out and walked up to her door.

I opened it with the spare key she kept hidden behind the loose bit of wood along the porch rail. As I walked inside I imagined all the times we'd shared over the years. I wept at the thought of the little picture of her at her mother's funeral I still carried in my wallet. It was worn down from all the times I'd pulled it out and brushed her tears away.

I found her lying in her bedroom. I looked at her sleeping face and tried to imagine all those emotions played across it, but all I could see was the blank look she'd given me at the gas station earlier that night.

I called the police myself. I didn't want to get away. I didn't have anywhere to go now. I could hear them screaming at me to lie down as I walked out onto the porch. It didn't matter. It was all over now.

I couldn't understand how it had come to this. In between my tears I saw a vision of her smile.

Somewhere off in the distance I heard a sound of thunder.

In His Arm

It began with a small sensation on the back of his hand. Not quite like an itch, but kind of. Just a sensation. Like there was something he needed to address. But in his hand.

He ignored it at first. Perhaps he was too busy, or too stressed to take it seriously. He worked with his hands, they always had small nicks or bruises, one more irritating sensation wasn't going to slow him down.

But as day followed day, the sensation in his hand seemed to spread. It didn't intensify, but he began to feel it in his fingertips, and up towards his wrist.

He first really took notice of it while sitting in his home listening to the radio. He turned the program on every weekday evening at seven after dinner and listened to the old time music while he drank his tea. It was soothing. It reminded him of when he was a younger man.

But this day he couldn't seem to relax. On the table next to him sat the tall glass he had poured the chamomile tea into. He leaned back and closed his eyes, but he felt preoccupied.

That was when he realized he was rubbing his hand.

It was his right hand. His good one. Now that he thought about it, he realized that it had been bothering him for days now, he'd just been ignoring it. But after that afternoon, he couldn't stop thinking about it.

The next day, on the way to the grocery, he stared at his hand on the steering wheel as he drove. Now that he was paying attention, the sensation seemed so obvious that he couldn't understand why he couldn't just see the cause. It seemed like something so interruptive should leave some kind of mark. But the hand looked fine, it just didn't feel fine.

And it continued to spread. By dinner that night, he was feeling the sensation all the way up into his forearm. Like a tree growing roots through his bones. It still didn't hurt, but he was beginning to take it seriously. He decided to see the doctor the next morning.

That night he dreamt he was drowning in quicksand. His legs were trapped, and no matter how he pulled they seemed to become increasingly confined. He began to struggle, tossing and turning, and with each motion he was further constricted.

He sat up in bed terrified and realized that he had become entangled in the thin cotton bed linen he had pulled over himself when he went to bed three hours earlier. It had been too warm for a blanket, but during the night his sweat had made the bedsheets stick to his flesh and his tossing and turning had only wrapped them tighter around his torso.

He slowed his breathing and tried to distract himself from the terror of the dream. Slowly he realized that the sensation in his arm had spread up to his shoulder. He looked down at his hand, expecting it to be black now with the cancer that seemed to writhe beneath his skin, but still the pink flesh that was revealed to him seemed healthy.

He tried to lay back down and return to sleep, promising himself a visit to the doctor's in the morning, but it was no use. He couldn't ignore the sensation any longer. It was driving him mad.

He thought briefly about getting the old knife he kept beneath his bed and cutting into his arm, just to see if there was something under the skin. He actually reached under the bed and felt the blade with the fingers of his left hand, but he quickly abandoned the thought. It wouldn't be sharp enough and he didn't think he had the stomach to cut his own arm open laying in his bed.

But he couldn't stand it much longer either, and he began to fear what might happen if the sensation spread much further. What if it spread to his face? His brain? He wasn't a man of science, but this thing had him frightened. He staggered to the closet and dragged on some clothes before heading downstairs to put on his jacket and drive to the hospital.

On the way out the door he could feel the sensation reaching up past his shoulder. It seemed to be extending fingers into his neck towards his head. His panic nearly unmanned him as he fumbled for the key to start the old truck.

The hospital wasn't far, but the sensation began to spread faster as he drove. To his mind, it seemed like whatever was happening to him knew he was getting help, and was flying toward some conclusion in an effort to prevent that. It seemed to crawl up the side of his neck, dragging itself by its fingernails just below the surface of his skin. In his terror he began to drive faster and faster, racing against the agonizing advance of the sensation. He ignored stop signs and speed limits as he pushed the old truck towards the hospital.

But he knew he wasn't going to make it. Somehow, without knowing why, he understood that this was a struggle for his life, and that he didn't have a chance. Perhaps if he'd gone to the doctor when he first felt it in his hand. Perhaps if he'd gone in before bed that night. But now it was too late. The thing in his arm was going to win, there simply wasn't time left.

He thought about the old time music he listened to every weekday at seven. It reminded him of when he was younger. He wished he were younger now. Perhaps a younger man could have fought off this thing. Perhaps a younger man would have acted quicker. Perhaps a younger man would still have years left to live before dying here in the road tonight.

He felt it now, in his face. It was slowly oozing up the side of his jaw, towards his right eye. It didn't seem to be spreading down into his chest or back. It had a destination. It was headed not for his heart, but for his brain. He had no idea why, but he was filled with dread at the thought of what might happen when it got there. What he might become. He couldn't live like that. Whatever it was, he couldn't let it take him over.

The sound of the front left quarter panel striking the metal guard rail along the side of the bridge sounded like someone dragging broken bottles across a chalk board. It buckled at first and tried to push the truck back onto the road, as though the bridge itself couldn't fathom why he might want to leave it. But he kept the wheel turned hard into the rail and it quickly broke away. His front left tire went over the edge of the bridge and out over the empty space below just as the sensation reached into his eye.

He saw such things. Things he had never imagined in his simple life. It showed him what it was, and he understood now. How it had come to be inside him. What it meant to accomplish. It showed him the things that could be achieved. It took seven seconds for his truck to crash against the icy water running in the river below the bridge, and in those seven seconds he saw everything.

The impact drove his body first into the steering wheel, and then immediately past it and through the windshield beyond. Hard against the water below, the windshield was heavily reinforced, and the impact destroyed most of the structure of his head and upper torso instantly. No longer conscious of his experience, he was spared the terror and agony of that incredible impact, and as the truck drove him deeper into the cold dark water, and the parts of his body that continued to function long after being rendered irrelevant shut down from hypothermia and blood loss, the sensation which had begun in his hand faded away. Some parts of his brain were still receiving signals from his spine and efforting to understand them, but that was just the final electrical discharges of a collapsing biochemical system. There was nothing left to interpret those signals. No one left to act upon them.

People would fail to understand what would drive a seemingly sensible, middle aged man to get dressed and drive off a bridge in the middle of the night. They would assume drugs or alcohol, but none would be present. Eventually they would decide he must have simply fallen asleep, or become distracted. Perhaps he just lost control.

He might have, had he not take that last action. Perhaps he even did as that first tire slipped off the road. Certainly by the time he hit the water.

But he had been in control when he pulled the wheel into the guard rail.

It had been a conscious, deliberate act by a man who was admittedly desperate and afraid, but still in control.

The Hemingway Solution

I've already made the necessary preparations.

It was only a few days ago that I decided on this course of action. It was raining that morning, and as I sat writing in my journal it suddenly came to me. I should have recognized the solution sooner of course, it was only a few years ago that Ernest took the same path, but for some reason it has eluded me for some time.

Perhaps it was simple fear, mixed with a hope that did not wish to be burdened by an ever intrusive reality. I had hoped that we could reach some form of reconciliation. I recognize that she no longer wishes to be a part of my life, and certainly I no longer of hers, yet I had hoped we could put aside our vitriol. I had hoped that some of the work I had done recently would be able to generate some amount of income which I could use to stave off the spectre of hunger, and worse, dependance, which has haunted my sleep of late. At the least, I had hoped for some happy news, some good word, to reach my ear. Anything to lift me from this dark depression.

But perhaps this is for the best. She and I will never again find peace, and if the world no longer has any interest in my work, better I suppose that I quit bothering them with it. And so it was with a kind of relieved acceptance that I made the first call and scheduled the cessation of my utilities.

It all took a few days of course. These sorts of things ought not be rushed. And yet, as I took each successive step drawing me ever nearer to this moment, I felt not so much an urge to be done, nor a fear of the doing, but rather a simple contentment. As though these final errands were a burden that could be lifted from off my shoulders, and that in so doing, I had done some small service for those to whom I would soon be doing a small disservice.

Of course there are always so many things to take care of. So many small steps. So many details. But each one seemed to fall into place almost effortlessly, and for the first time in these many months I felt some sense of accomplishment. It was as though in planning for this, and preparing for it, I was able to check off my list of things to do, and in so doing, able to find a renewed purpose to my days.

None of this made me regret or change my decision of course. I had set myself upon a path, and having so committed, could not now step away from it. To do so would pay the lie to the very sense of accomplishment I had been experiencing. It would return me to the bitter, failing, husk I had been collapsing into only days before.

So I scheduled the cessation of my utilities, and ended the phone service. I asked the mail carrier to hold my postage and called the newspaper and canceled my subscription. So many little details in a man's life. So many things you don't think of. The sum of a life I suppose could be taken from its contractual commitments. And in severing each of those commitments I was severing my ties to this world.

I went to the grocer and purchased the drop cloths. I needed enough to hang over the walls and windows, and to drape on the floors. Of course they had to be sturdy enough. I wouldn't be using the Boss & Co like he did, but there was sure to be a mess. The Boss & Co was effective to be sure, but simply not of my interest. I had always been more interested in pistols and revolvers and would of course be selecting one from my collection. Far better I thought to use the tools at hand than to acquire a new firearm simply for a single use. Not the work of a collector that.

I stayed up late last night thinking about what to say. It may be some days before they find the note I intend to leave, and there are sure to be questions. I have made my living with words, and now, at its ending, I was struggling to find the right ones. I didn't want to lay blame. I wished there was some way to assuage the guilt that some would surely feel. It isn't their fault, neither their decisions nor actions which led me here. Not something that was said or some perceived slight. Not even from her. It was my decision, and the one which I felt was right under the circumstances.

Ultimately, I decided to express as succinctly as I could my apologies and motivations.

I don't like to leave messes when I go away, but if I could have cleaned up any of this mess, I wouldn't be going away.

And so now, as I sip one last cup of tea and contemplate the milieu I have waiting when I return to my home, I find myself ready to go. I feel no fear of what is to come, and no sense of loss at what I leave behind.

The problems have mounted, and it is time for me to solve them. I have weighed the alternatives and rested upon the solution. The preparations are complete, and the time has come.

I will sip this last cup, and then return to my home. November in Pennsylvania always was a beautiful time. I can think of no better place to be going, nor any more lovely to leave.

How to Tell a Story

Sometimes circumstances conspire against us.

It really shouldn't catch me by surprise, I suppose. After all, I'm not new to this world. I've lived long enough to understand that a man can only bend the universe to his will so far, before it snaps back out of his grasp. And when that pendulum swings, it always swings too far. It's just the nature of things I suppose. A man ought not to complain when he gets a rough turn, not if he's over the age of ten at least. A man ought to know by then that that's just the way things go.

Still, when it happens, it does seem to catch us by surprise, doesn't it? And we do still complain, don't we? So there I was, sittin in the car on the side of the road, cursin the universe, my luck, and all the damned turns and misfortunes which had brought me to that place. Because it wasn't fair, and I didn't have it coming.

None the less. A man ought not complain. So after doin just that, but only for a moment, and feelin sorry for myself just enough, I got out and started walkin.

We live in a world where many of our decisions are out of our hands. A world where much of what impacts our day to day is beyond our control. We are put upon. And all of the opportunities we are given to affect any substantial change in contradiction to those basic facts is mere illusion. It's just fluoride in the water. It's supposed to be for your own good, but it's really just there to keep you pacified.

So we learn to ignore those things we can't control, at least to whatever degree we can, and focus on the things we can. Oh, I suppose there's a few who never do quite give up on all the things beyond their influence, poor bastards probably go crazy in time. You run into them sometimes. They walk up to you out in public and start talkin about how their dead husband always used to like this grocery or some such nonsense that don't mean a damn thing to you. But the rest of us learn to accept and get on.

So I was gettin on. I left the car right there, rolled it and locked it of course, and started puttin one in front of the other. Only way to get where I needed to be. While I walked, I considered the strange path I'd traveled throughout my day to bring me to this point. Still beatin myself up I guess. Any one of those decisions could've been made different and woulda saved me from bein in the wash so to speak, but there I was none the less. I'd been through worse and hadn't yet figured how to go back and fix it, and I didn't then either.

I'd memorized the address. And I was plannin to park the car somewhere and walk at least part way anyway. I still had the note in my pocket too. That was the most dangerous part. It's one thing to plan on killin a man. It's another to go carryin around incriminatin evidence in your front pants pocket. All I'd need is for some pain in the ass police to decide to stop the man walkin down the side of the road in the middle of the night. Then he'd start callin up his friends and they'd all come circle up, lights a shinin, and then where would I be. Standin there with a note in my front pocket linkin me directly to thirteen other deaths in four states, that's where. Not a pleasant thought that.

But you had to make a splash you see. I'm no damn murderer, and the sort of thing I was doin requires a little risk takin. You had to wake people up. And to do that required a bit of dramatic flair. People don't get up for a little thing like a dead man. Even a dead tax man. You got to give em scandal. So I wrote the notes, and the notes told a story.

The story was important, because it was the one I wanted told. It was a story needed hearin. It was a story of how people could stand up for themselves, how they could be strong, and capable, and smart. How they could fix their own problems and live their own lives. It was a pretty damn good story I thought.

But you can't tell it all at once. You have to let it out slow. A little here. A little there. People get scared when you look em in the eye and tell em that everything they believe is a lie and everyone they trust is a liar. It's too much for some. Can't just drop em there, gotta lead em there. So I'd leave a little note each time. And over time, the story got told.

There was a man, not unlike yourself, lessen I suppose you're a woman, but you get the point. He wasn't a dumb man, but not particularly smart either. Not wise nor foolish. He was just a man. He knew what he was though. Not down on himself nor too high. Give him credit for that.

He had his problems. We all do. And he dealt with them as best he could. He wasn't too good to ask for help when he needed it, but he didn't rely on others either. Just took each day as it came, and did his best with what he had.

One day his neighbors got together and told him they had a better way. They offered a way to ease his burden. They'd form a collective. All he had to do was chip in to a pool of resources, and whenever anyone was down, they could dip into the pool and take care. And when they were up again, they could pay back into the pool.

Now these were all good folk. They had good intentions. But our man was already able to take what came. So he thanked em, and wished em luck, and said he'd be about his business for now. Nothing personal, and if any of them ever needed a hand he was always willin to do what he could, but just the same he'd just keep on as he was.

Like I said, his neighbors were all fine folk, so they just nodded their heads and went on their way. And nobody took any offense. They knew our man was a givin soul, and expected everyone would get on just fine. So he continued on and they started their collective. And no man had any problem with his neighbor.

Every so often, someone would get down, and they'd dip in to the pool. And most of the time, when they were up again, they pay it back. There were hiccups and wrinkles to iron, but for the most part things were fine. And our man was fine too.

But over time, the collective began to struggle. Every once in a while, a man would borrow when he was down, but when he was up the money didn't get paid back, and sometimes people weren't smart enough to use the money to get back up, in which case they just kept borrowin without returnin. Over time, they had themselves a diminishin return on their investment. And as the problems began to grow, the pool wasn't large enough to help everyone involved.

It just wasn't intended to be used by everyone at once. It was supposed to be there for times of need. But people began to rely on it. They figured it'd be there to fall back on. So some people took risks. And if those risks didn't pan, they could just lean on the collective. But the pool wasn't big enough anymore. They needed to make it bigger.

So they asked everyone in the collective to increase their contributions. This would fix the problem you see. If the pool were just bigger, than it would be able to help everyone when times got tough. Of course, if you were down, no one expected you to contribute your full share, but if you were up, well it was only fair. After all, the pool was there for you too, in case you needed it.

But over time, some people never needed it, and some people always seemed like they did. And as the contributions got higher, those who were havin trouble making ends increased in number. It seemed that more and more people were findin the cupboards bare after making their contribution to the pool. So they'd just dip back in and take their contribution back out, but then there wasn't ever enough there when other people really needed it.

Eventually, those what never needed the pool started wonderin why they were contributin so much to something they weren't using. So they started talking about gettin out of the collective. But those what needed it more often said that wasn't fair. After all, they agreed to participate. It was for everyone's good. And besides, it was there for them too, should they ever need it. So everyone stayed.

But over time, it still couldn't be supported. There just weren't enough puttin in to support those takin out. Even as the suggested contribution rose and rose. In fact, each time it went up, it seemed like fewer and fewer could afford to contribute, and more and more were havin to take out. So they needed a new way to fund the collective.

And that's when they came back to our man's home and knocked on his door. Only this time they weren't the same folk as before. Before they'd come with dreams and ideas. Now they had demands and recriminations. There were people in need, couldn't he see that? And he had plenty. In fact, since he hadn't been a part of the collective, he'd made a small fortune providin goods and services to those who were and who had lost the ability to provide for themselves. He had plenty to share, and a lot of that money had come from members of the collective in the first place. By rights, it was theirs.

That was the last note I'd left. The story was gettin told. I had another note in my pocket that night. And as I walked up the side of the road, down the path I'd memorized days ago, I thought about how that story would end. There was still plenty more to the tale. The note in my pocket wasn't the last. If circumstances went my way, I'd still have several more little notes to leave behind. There were plenty of people who needed to hear the story I was tellin.

Because some of those things we can't control aren't as far beyond our influence as we may have been led to believe. That's the real pacifier. Not the illusion of control. It's the mask behind the mask. It's suddenly realizin that your supposed control was an illusion. That's how they keep people from takin back their lives. When they realize that all that stuff they were taught in grade school while they held their hand over their heart and allegianced was a lie, a lot of people just give up. They accept and they get on. Because by the time they're ten, they realize that some things are just out of their hands.

Course, some things ain't everything. So I carried little notes in my front pants pocket to remind people that there were some things they could control. So that people who had given up hope might find hope waiting on their window sill one morning. And sometimes risks had to be taken. But when a man, even if he's not the smartest man, not particularly wise nor foolish, takes those risks on himself, he can do great things.

And when an idea takes root in the heart of a man, why, maybe such a man could change the world.

Depending on how circumstances conspire.

A Nighttime Diversion

Some people are just dicks.

There's nothing you can do about it. You're driving to work one morning, and for no apparent reason, someone decides to make your life worse. There's no justification for it. It doesn't make them happier, or better, or make their lives easier. They're just awful, nasty people. So they cut you off in traffic, drive too slow, and give you dirty looks. These people are what's wrong with the world. They're why the terrorists are winning.

I hate people like this. I saw one of them at the grocery store the other night. I was there to get milk. I like milk. It makes for strong bones. So there I was in the refrigerated section, digging behind the old milk looking for the new milk, they always hide the fresh stuff in the back, when I saw him. He was bothering the girl at the deli counter. They were out of chickens. Ass. Like somehow it's her fault they're out of chickens.

I quit worrying about the milk. I could get milk any time. Here was an asshole, right in front of me. Something had to be done.

As he headed up front to pay for his purchases, sans chicken, I grabbed a few things at random off the canned vegetable aisle and followed him to the checkout counter. I hung back and let someone step in between us, and then got in line. I didn't want him to notice me too near him, but I didn't want him to get away either.

After I payed for my cans of peas and fruit cocktail, I nodded and laughed at the small talk of the guy bagging my groceries. He just wanted to be noticed. I didn't catch his name. I was trying to watch the dick out of the corner of my eye so I could see which way he went when he stepped into the parking lot.

I had parked near the door in a handicapped spot. I always do. I'm never there long, if anybody bothers to call the cops I'll be long gone before they get there. They can't get there quick enough to save you from a robbery, they certainly aren't going to get there fast enough to boot my car. Since I was parked so close to the door, it wasn't hard for me to be in my car and watching him before he was ready to pull out of the parking lot.

I followed him down the expressway, never too close or too far, for miles. We passed a few other grocery stores as we drove down the edge of the city. I started to wonder why he'd drive all the way over to my grocery store just for chicken. Maybe he just likes the kind they sell there. Maybe he's neurotic. I sped up a little to vary the distance between us. The key to following someone in traffic is inconsistency. People are self absorbed. They only think of themselves while driving. If you want to seem natural when following others, you have to seem to be ignoring others.

After a while, he turned down a residential road. This is always the dangerous part. It's easy to give yourself away following someone down a residential road late at night. So instead of turning in after him, I drove past the side road. That way, if he was looking in his rear view, he'd see me drive past. After a few hundred feet, I turned around and drove back to the turn off.

This is where stalking someone is more of an art than a science. His car wasn't visible from where I was, so I had to guess what to do. Do I turn down one of the many side roads in the neighborhood, or keep going straight ahead?

I went ahead and drove straight ahead for a few blocks and then turned down another road. This one would take me out of this neighborhood and onto another main road. Sure enough, there was his car ahead of me, turning into a driveway. Looked like tonight I was going to get lucky.

I pulled into someone else's driveway and shut the engine off. He got out of his car, grabbed his grocery bags, and headed into the house. I waited for about twenty minutes, but he never came back out. You can't hurry these things. Sometimes people forget their purse or their hat in the car and run back out for it. If they don't come out in twenty minutes, they aren't coming out any time soon.

I pulled out of the driveway I was parked in and drove slowly towards his house. I parked in the street a few houses away from his car. I turned the engine back off and opened the trunk of the car. I opened the duffel bag I keep in the bag and pulled out the mask and gloves. I started keeping this bag in the car a while back. You never know when you might need it, it's just good to be prepared.

After a few minutes, the lights in the window flicked off. He must be headed up to bed.

I worked my way around to the back of the house. There was a sliding glass door in the back. Like most people, he hadn't bothered to jam anything behind the door to keep it in place. He hadn't even engaged the lock. I let myself in quietly.

I really hate people who don't treat others with respect. People deserve better than that. They shouldn't be seen as animals. I mean, really.

There ought to be a law.

Strange Holiday

I suppose it shouldn't be that much of a surprise, and I can't help but feel like I should have seen this coming. For a moment, all I can do is look at the three small links that connect the cuff around my wrist to the one around the pipe. Soon, I'll be able to think clearly enough to decide what to do next, but for now I'm just going to sit here and stare at that short bit of chain.

I really can't blame her. After all, she was taking as much of a risk as I was, going home with a stranger. For all she knew, it could just as easily have been her chained up in a hotel bathroom with a head full of pillows and chalk dust. Of course this was probably her plan when she went out tonight, but I learned a long time ago you never know who you're fucking with, and I'm sure she's learned that too.

A few minutes go by before I start to really assess my situation. My head is still cloudy and my tongue feels thick like it's filling my whole mouth, but my eyes work so I start looking around.

My first irrational fear is that she stole my kidneys. Like in the story. But I'm not sitting in a bathtub full of ice, and a quick reach back with my free hand seems to reveal a noticeable lack of surgical scars. Everything seems to be in place. Everything seems fine.

Except of course that I'm naked and chained to a water pipe.

I look around the room and notice a few things. First off, it's decently well lit. There's a central fixture over my head, and it looks like it has several smaller bulbs in it. It's not a dirty bathroom. The floor is clean, and the little soaps are sitting on the edge of the tub and by the sink, still in their little wrappers with the hotel's name printed on them. It occurs to me that hotels probably use such cheap little soaps because people steal them all the time. Bastards. The towels are all folded neatly and sitting on their wire shelf between the toilet and the tub, but my clothes are nowhere to be seen. Which means they must be in the bedroom. At least I hope that's what it means.

I'm not scared. Even if I end up sitting here all night and day tomorrow, the maid will be in eventually for turn down service. The next day or so might not be the most comfortable of my life, but it's not like I'm in any real danger.

I wonder why she just left me here like this. Things seemed to be going well. We got on alright at the bar, and at the second bar after we left the first one. I brought her back to my hotel room thinking the evening was progressing, well, more or less as I'd predicted. I planned on being naked, just not handcuffed and alone.

It must have been the wine. She'd drugged me somehow, that was obvious. One minute we're dancing in the bedroom, drinking the merlot, and then I wake up here, like this. So it must have been the wine.

It doesn't seem fair really. And for a second I allow myself to feel wronged. Cheated. I had plans. Things were going well. I'd really been in need of a nice little holiday, and this weekend was supposed to be just that. And now it was all ruined.

I'm not really upset though. Not for long. After a while, I even laugh about the whole thing. The maid will find me, in a day or two. Until then, I'll just sit here and wait. It's not like I had much for her to steal anyway, not on me. She got a little cash, a few credit cards I can cancel tomorrow, maybe she kept my cell phone. But nothing too serious. I kinda hope she just left the cell phone. It's a new phone.

So I didn't get laid. It's not that big a deal. I'll get laid next time. In a way this is better. I have a story to tell.

After all, if things had gone the way I'd planned, I'd hardly be able to tell anyone about it later. You can't exactly brag about picking up random girls at bars, having sex with them in hotel rooms, and then murdering them and taking their bodies out to the desert in the trunk of your car to bury. But I can tell the guys at work about this. It'll even make them laugh.

And there'll be other holidays and other girls. It's never hard to pick up girls at the bars. And next time I'll be more careful.

Because you never know who you're fucking with.

Light in the Valley

It hasn't happened before or since. Just the one time, and most don't even know about it.

It was a cloudy night, I remember that. We'd been sitting there for some time. Just sitting under that tree. We'd run out of things to discuss, but neither of us wanted to go back. So we just sat there, under the clouds, and we stared over the side of the cliff at the river below.

It was dark. You couldn't really even make out the river. Maybe if it hadn't been so cloudy, maybe there would have been some reflection. Like christmas lights floating in the water. But it was cloudy, so there weren't any christmas lights, just a dark slightly darker than the darkness that surrounded it. The kind of definition you get when you look over the edge of a cliff on a cloudy night.

So we were just sitting there. I thought about putting my arm around her, but it didn't really seem right. She wasn't my girlfriend, and it wasn't that cold. I just wanted to reach out and touch her. You can feel so alone, even with a person right next to you, especially in the dark when no one is talking. But it really wasn't my place to go putting my arm around her, so I didn't. I never thought about whether or not she would have wanted me to.

That's when it happened. At first, it seemed like there was a light, off in the distance, past the end of the river where the water bubbled up out of the rocks. I just thought it was a little lightning in the cloud and ignored it, but it didn't flicker. Instead it glowed steadily, and it got brighter.

The clouds began to part around it, and still it got brighter. Thoughts that maybe it was a plane or a helicopter were gone almost before they were formed, certainly before they were spoken. It was just too bright, and too big now to be anything like that.

Still, we didn't say anything. I wanted to ask her if she saw it. She had to be seeing it. She couldn't not see it. But she didn't say anything. Then again, neither did I, so maybe she was wondering the same about me. Neither of us said anything, and the light grew brighter and brighter.

Soon it was filling the sky, but it didn't seem focused on us. Sure, it was getting closer, but that almost seemed to have more to do with it getting larger than anything else. I wasn't afraid, I wasn't even really curious. It was so strange, and so vast, all I could really do was sit and stare. Soon there wasn't any room in my mind left for fear or wonder. In the face of something so unlike anything I knew, so much more vast than anything I could comprehend, there wasn't room for anything at all. Just sitting and staring and not talking.

It was like what they always tell you in school when they talk about blue whales, how one whale is so much larger than a human. You can't really understand it. The idea of any animal being so vast is more than you can really truly grasp. So they tell you it's like three school buses run on end. They tell you it weighs as much as a hundred cars. They tell you it's bigger than anything else ever was.

But to the kid sitting in his desk, that's all nonsense. You can compare it to whatever you like, he'll never understand the reality of it. He can't. And I couldn't understand what I was seeing that night either.

If you asked me to describe it, I'd use similes. I'd say it was like the sun came down to the earth. I'd say it was like all the light in the world filled the valley beneath the cliff. I'd say it was like being in a lightning storm. I might even say it was like seeing God.

But I can't really tell you what it was, any more than I can tell you what it was like. I might as well say it was like three school buses run on end. It doesn't make any sense to you, any more than it does to the kid in the desk. It's a huge unknowable thing, and when they say you had to be there, this was what they meant.

Then it was gone. It didn't leave any impression behind. There wasn't any damage to the valley. The clouds moved right back in to cover the sky. It didn't even leave an impression on my eyes, like when you stare at a light bulb for too long. It was just there, all unknowable and vast, and then gone.

The entire thing couldn't have lasted more than a few moments. I finally turned to her to ask if she saw it. I knew she would say yes. She had too.

But as I turned to her, I noticed she was looking at something in her hand. A rock she'd picked up earlier in the day. I'd seen her put it in her pocket. It was just a small brown pebble, smooth and flat, just like countless other river rocks by countless other rivers. Suddenly I knew that she hadn't seen it. She'd been staring at that rock. It didn't make sense, surely the light would have caused her to look up, but I just knew that if I asked, she'd tell me she hadn't seen a thing.

So I didn't bother asking. We'd sat there in silence so long anyway, it wasn't worth breaking it now, not when I knew what she'd say anyway. Maybe that's why people stop talking. You know what I mean? Because they know what other people will say. So they just quit.

Anyway, I didn't say anything. I just sat there. After a moment, I turned back to the cliff and looked out over the edge at the river below. There wasn't anything to see there, just the darkness, and after a while we both got up and headed back inside.

Without a word.

On Disobedience

Once we were young. We sat in smoky rooms in small groups and talked about important things. We were going to change the world. We were going to be a part of it. We'd get high, and discuss philosophy, and religion, and science. And we knew things.

We aren't so young anymore, but we still know things. We don't get high, and we don't get to talk as much, but we still know things. We know how to write a letter that can't be understood except by the person it's written to. We know how to blend into a crowd so that we aren't noticed. We know how to hide a knife in the palm of our hand so that they don't see it coming until it's too late. We know how to build a bomb, and how to bury it so it goes off when they drive their tanks over it. We know how to bandage a mortal wound, and how to make one.

We learned fast in the early years. It was either learn fast or not at all. When the first tanks rolled into our cities we thought the government would protect us. Then we heard about the strikes. Tactical. Nuclear. No government left after that.

Some people advised caution. Negotiation. Appeasement. But we weren't having any of it. So we started to fight back. That's when the learning process began.

We learned real quick that you can't just run up to a man and shoot him, because he has nine other men with guns right there with him. They had better weapons, and better armor, and we weren't going to win through force. We learned you can't poison their food and water, because they have equipment that tests for that, and they're inoculated regularly to protect them from most poisons.

The hardest lesson we learned was that you can't convince most people to stand up and fight, no matter the cost. No matter the loss. They just accept it and move on.

We couldn't blame them really. For most people, it was meet the new boss same as the old boss. They went about their business. They made goods. They sold goods. They bought goods. They paid their mortgages and fed their families and clothed their children. And they didn't really give a damn which god they were told to pray to at the end of the day, because god had never been there when they needed him anyway.

So we didn't blame them. Not most of the time. Not most of us. But we did blame the men with the guns, who rolled into our cities in their tanks, and slaughtered our leaders with their bombs. For us, it didn't matter who the new boss was. We didn't ask for him. We didn't want him.

So we learned that some people don't need convincing. They fight because they can't see any other way. And more and more those people came to us, to learn our ways.

We started as a small group. Only about a dozen. Men, and a few women, who couldn't sit by and watch the nation they grew up in salute a foreign flag. It wasn't really patriotism. It wasn't really heroism. We just couldn't stomach it.

I suppose it was a kind of pride really. The kind of hubris they speak about in college courses on Greek tragedy. Whatever it was, it kept us up at night. Studying.

So we learned. And we shared that knowledge. And over time, they began to learn too. They learned to keep their safeties off. They learned to look over their shoulders. They learned to fear.

So now we sit in dark rooms, and we gather in small groups and we discuss philosophy, and religion, and science. But we learned fear too, or at least, caution. So we get quiet whenever we hear a noise outside. And we never meet in the same place twice. And we don't use our real names, just in case someone's listening.

Because they are listening. They're always trying to find out who we are. Where we are. Because they want to put a stop to our behavior, but mostly, they want to make an example. They want people to see that resistance can't succeed. More important, they want to go back to believing they're invincible. They want to go back to when they didn't have to look over their shoulders, or test their food for poison.

And it's our job to make sure that never happens. We know we can't win. That wasn't ever the point. We know we're outnumbered, and outgunned, and outfunded. We know they have more materiel, and more time. Ultimately, they'll win. For every one of them we kill, there's ten thousand more, or a hundred thousand. Every one of us they kill puts us on the brink of extinction.

But we're not dead yet. So we leave posters on bathroom walls telling people how to make simple bombs. And we leave guns in public parks with instructions on how to use them. And we put bombs in their homes and cars and leave graffiti at the site to let people know who's responsible.

And maybe it won't matter. Maybe someday, people won't even remember what happened. Do you remember who lived in Rome before the Romans? Who lived in Egypt before the Egyptians? Who lived in China before the Chinese? Maybe historians do. Maybe they don't. We don't.

But we know one thing. We're in it now. We're living it. And the Bard put it best.

Let the world burn, we aren't young anymore.

Bright Column

It stood in the center of the room, shining dimly in the soft light that washed in through the windows. The sky was clear, and the moon was filling the snow covered field outside with a bright blue glow, but only a shadow of that light managed to reach in, between the drawn curtains, and illuminate the squat structure that jutted towards the ceiling.

At first glance, it would have seemed totally smooth. It wasn't until you looked closer that you realized that it had tiny thin lines covering its entire surface. Those lines almost seemed to form a pattern, but a person could trace one all day with their finger and never have to cross another, nor find the end of that line.

He'd been sitting there for hours, staring at it. Trying to decide what to do next. He only had until morning to make his decision, but despite the seconds quickly falling away, he had to be deliberate. Moving it wasn't an option, and the one time it had activated had ended, poorly, at least so far as he could tell.

So for now he sat, and slowly considered his options. For the hundredth time he briefly entertained walking away. He could get up, open the door, and leave it for someone else to discover in the morning. Whatever happened to them wouldn't be his responsibility. No one had warned him when he'd walked into this room six hours ago. Why should he feel any obligation to do so for someone else.

But of course, he couldn't do that. If he did that, he wouldn't have the answer he needed, and he certainly wouldn't have the resolution he hoped for. Walking away like that would leave him wondering, for the rest of his life, whether he could have saved Elizabeth, and he didn't think he'd live long under that stress. So once more he dismissed the idea and went over the problem again, hoping he could discover some previously unrealized angle. Some key to the puzzle before him.

They had been walking along the path between the foreign language and fine arts buildings when they noticed the door. It was cracked open, with the latch caught on the outside of the door frame. It had been a nice night, and Greg was sure he was going to score, so he leapt at the chance to make their way inside. The dinner had been delicious, the movie entertaining, and he was sure that a little adventure would be all he needed to push Elizabeth over the side.

So he pointed out the open door and talked her into going into the building. Just for a moment, just to see what it was like in the middle of the night, with no one else there. Elizabeth smiled at him and put one hand on his arm and another on his shoulder as she followed him through the door. He could smell her apple blossom perfume as she crowded close to him, and feel her breath on his neck.

They walked down the dark corridor and he tried each of the doors as he went. Each one was locked, but he knew that there were couches in the lounge at the end of the hall, so if he couldn't find a dark corner before then, they could take a break there. Hopefully more than a break.

But that was when he found one door that wasn't locked. He was a little irritated about not getting to those couches, but they would be there, and maybe there would be something better here, so he pushed the door open and they went inside.

Later, he would remember that he'd never been in this room before, but there were a lot of rooms he'd never been in before, so that wouldn't have tipped him off anyway. He would remember that he'd never seen a classroom without desks and computers before, but how could he have known if that was important? He'd remember the way Elizabeth looked as she leaned over the edge of the table, examining the bright column that stood in its center. How could he have known that would be the last image of her he'd have?

She must have touched something. He was sure of that by now, but what he couldn't say. He'd held the door open for her, and she'd walked past him, so she was standing between him and the column when it happened. All he could remember seeing was a bright glow pouring out from around her and suddenly she disappeared.

He had played the scene over in his head for hours as he sat on the floor in the corner of the room. Each time, it was no different than the time before, but something came loose in his memory this time. Just as he saw the light, he'd looked up from her hips and seen her face reflected in the window across the room. He wouldn't have even been able to see it in the darkened window if it hadn't been for that sudden glow. But he did see it. He saw her face, and she had said something. Mouthed something. Three words.

But in his memory he couldn't make it out. Something. Three words. In that final moment, had she realized what was happening? Had she tried to warn him, to tell him something? Or had it simply been some innocuous comment? Something meaningless, with no bearing on the puzzle at all?

She must have touched it. She must have done something to activate it. He had been too terrified to touch it again, but he had stared hard at the side that had been facing her. He had stared at that almost smooth side, following those lines with his eyes.

But when the lines carried his eyes around the edges, and he returned to the side facing the door again, he couldn't find the place where he'd began. It hadn't moved, he was sure of it, but somehow that place where the lines seemed to point in towards each other was gone now, replaced with a series of concentric swirls.

Somehow. The lines were moving. For a while he stood still, staring at it, not blinking. But the lines never moved. Then he thought he heard a noise outside and looked away. When he looked back, the lines had moved again. Now there were parallel lines running the length of the column from top to bottom.

He backed away until he felt the wall behind him. He edged into the corner, and slowly slid to the floor. Since then, he'd sat, working the puzzle over in his head.

If she had touched it, wherever she had touched it had moved. If she had said something as that glow had enveloped her just before she disappeared, whatever she said had been lost in the confusion of the moment. Greg was good at puzzles. He usually liked them. But this time he was afraid some of the pieces had fallen out of the box.

So he sat there looking at it, and he thought about walking away. There weren't any security cameras in the room. No one could prove he had anything to do with her disappearance. He could wait until tomorrow and see if anyone came and ask them for help, but what if there was no help to be had? At best, he'd be in trouble for breaking into the school, at worst, he'd be held responsible for whatever had happened.

Why would someone leave something like this in an unlocked room in an unlocked building in a small, unremarkable college? What kind of monster would leave it where it could be found? He railed at what had happened, once more disgusted at the world for putting him in that place, at that moment. Then disgusted with himself for wasting time feeling sorry for himself instead of working at the puzzle.

He tried to recreate those words in his head. The words he'd seen in the window. Something about the column? A shape she'd seen?

It was a waste of time. It wasn't working. He stood up and approached the table. Daylight was coming, and he couldn't wait. He couldn't leave. He couldn't get help. He couldn't get away. Regardless of how many pieces he had or didn't have to this puzzle, there was one thing he hadn't tried.

As his hand touched the column he saw his face reflected in the window across the room. Suddenly, he knew what she'd said. It didn't have anything to do with the puzzle after all.

His last thought before the light completely enveloped him was how he wished they'd made it to those couches.