This Tender Night (An Unfinished Short Story by Charles Freeman)

Posthumous butt-fuckers, the gaily-straightened Reich are, and tonight they’re all slab-reeled and dolled up with black eye liner, rosy blush, bulbous noses, hooped earrings and pale flesh.  Paulker, the youngest and smallest of the Fairy Gang Trees, is standing over the sink, naked except for his red banana hammock and slopping enough gel into his lice-infested hair to freeze it mid-explosion with the help of a hairdryer.  Near the refrigerator, Rodney’s gliding a razor over every last spot of his wrinkled and liver-spot littered scalp, not stopping until his rippled crown gleans under the kitchen light, hairless though not as smooth as a baby’s ass.  Satisfied with the scalp, Rodney proceeds to shave his unibrow clean off, which makes it so that the only remaining hair runs along the wispy waterfalls of his auburn side burns that plummet with a suicidal vigor from his ears to the pointed knob of his chin.  The troupe’s only excuse for a mother, Tonya, is also in the kitchen, six months pregnant and counting.  She waddles to and fro in a ragged balloon of a maternity blouse, swigging from a flow-heavy fifth of Scotch and coating its rim in purple lipstick, much to the delight of the gaily-straightened Reich.

She puts the bottle down with a resounding thud on the kitchen table and, raging drunk, lights up a doobie.  “Lil’ Paulkner,” she wheezes through the first drag’s coughing fit, “Where we a’goin’to dis night?”

“Dis night,” Paulkner returns, studying his mug in the espejo and gently patting the shrapnel sides of his hairdo, “We’s a’goin’to fine ourselfs a noo breedin’ ground, dat’s whut we’s a’goin’to do.”

“She ass’d where’s we a’goin’to dis night, nawt whut we’s a’goin’to do dis night, fuke’in’butte’fuke’r you,” sneers Rodney, “You’s sound-honing earrangs ain’t help shite, now, are dhey?”

“Eh, you ‘eep out of dis, you’eer?” says Paulkner, turning from the espejo to wag a fat, silver-ringed forefinger at the aging Rodney.  “I say whut’s’whut, fuke’ing’butte’fuke’r you is, n’ I say we’s a’goin’to fine ourselfs a noo breedin’ ground, no matta where’s, you’eer?”

“Aigh, n’ fuke youself whil’ you’at’it . . . n’ you’s fuke’in motha, you fuke’in’butte’fuke’r.”

Paulkner slams the hairdryer, still whirring and sputtering its hot breath, down in the sink and tears himself angrily away from the espejo.  He walks up to Rodney and jabs a fleshy, indignant and silver-ringed index finger into his flabby and drooping pectoral, saying quietly, his voice controlled with a strength anchored deep in his rotten heart, “You’s fuke’in’ knows di closes’ I gots to a motha is dis’ere Tonya, n’ she’s shite, fuke’in swollen wit’a’rat in ‘er belly, I tell’s you, so’s you bess keep yo’fuke’in mouth clamm’d’all’ham, or I’s a’half’feelin’ we’s a gonna knock yo’fuke’in teef cleeee-” Paulkner takes good care to draw the word out a good mile and a quarter for measure, “-eeeen out’yo’mouth.”

“Aigh, you’two, shite di fuke’up,” crows Tonya, “Yeez givin’di’rat in my belly an ear’s’ache n’ it’s’a makin’ me ooterus ache’too, so pleez, shite di fuke’up.”  She drags on her doobie, then takes a quick swig of the Scotch before exhaling.

Paulkner gives Rodney one last sneer and turns away, saying “Aigh, well let’s’be’on’wit’it, weez a’need’ sume breedin’, and weez be on wit’ it, weez bess be a’goin, fuke’in’butte’fuke’r’s.”  He heads for the door, snagging a black satin robe off the coat rack on his way, which he drapes over his bony figure like a vampire.

Tonya extinguishes her doobie in the bottle of Scotch, raises the bottle to her lips for a good luck swig, taking the doobie butt down with it like a tequila worm, and slams the bottle down on the kitchen table with a contented groan.  She tosses a glassy-eyed glance around her, then waddles after Paulkner. 

Not blind to his fear of being left behind, Rodney mutters under his rancid breath “Fuke’it,” and follows the two out of the nest, complicit now in the gaily-straightened Reich’s search for a new breeding ground.

_______________________________

Junkyard Daisy is quietly enjoying his usual supper at the Flop-Bar on this tender night, alone in his usual booth and hunched over his usual plate of heavily-salted beef steak, sided with the usual peppered string beans and chunky mashed potatoes. He maneuvers his fork and knife with the unhurried movements of a surgeon looking into a cadaver, working to sever the steak into twenty-four neat, little, juicy and still steaming pieces.  Finishing the process after several minutes, he leans back into the mahogany booth with a sigh, his fork and knife angled up at the ceiling.

He has come to the Flop-Bar tonight, as usual, wearing his khaki space-pilot jumpsuit, which he has worn everyday for the past six years.  He’s worn this uniform in every mode of life, whether endeavored in business or frolicking in play, whether reading a book in the quiet of his living room or haggling for a piece of furniture at the bazaar.  He has enjoyed turtle-coitus in his jumpsuit numerous times and can point out the stains to prove it.  He wore the jumpsuit to his mother’s untimely funeral and graduated from university in it.  The jumpsuit is so covered with the toil of the past six years, it never being washed outside of the showers that he sometimes takes in it, that it lends itself to a camouflaged appearance, which most mistake for its original design.  Its only adornment is a weathered patch over the right breast that depicts a lamb devouring a lion.  Tonight, the suit is only zipped up half-way his bared chest, revealing a black jungle of sinewy hair and a thick-linked gold chain necklace.  The necklace he has not removed from his neck in an upwards of twenty years, twenty years being a little more than two-thirds his life at the time of this tender night.

Still poised as such, Junkyard Daisy surveys the smattered crowd of the dimly lit Flop-Bar this tender night.  A couple booths in front of him, a couple is performing a dramatic conversation in subdued tones.  Behind him, he can hear three men sharing travel stories and gossip, creating the overall effect of a ramble with their loud laughter and smug renderings of the outside world.  A waitress moseys around from table to table, then back to the bar, wiping her hands as she goes with the cloth hanging from her waist.  Bob Dylan’s scratchy voice rides an idiot wind that originates simultaneously from the four points of the compass, the four points represented by an identical speaker placed in each of the large room’s corners.  Junkyard Daisy, with the speed and patience of a praying mantis, leans back over his plate and harpoons the first neat, little, juicy, and still somewhat steaming piece of beef steak and shovels it into his handle-bar mustache-framed mouth.  He straightens his back and chews slowly, staring straight ahead with empty eyes and mechanical movements of his jaw.

Time moves at an incredible dawdle for Junkyard Daisy.  It always has.  His expression hardly changes in his perpetual opium-high.  One would think he has more in common with the cow he’s chewing than the humans that surround him.  While he chews his dinner’s first bite this tender night, he thinks to himself that he may have consistently consumed enough steak over the course of his life to be mostly composed of cow by now.  He thinks this would make him holy in some parts of India, though the cause of this holiness would also render him a decrepit thing.  He thinks this without twitching a single muscle outside of the ones that cause his mouth to chew. 

When he finally swallows, his eyes tint a deeper and glossier green, like emeralds under a subtly waning moon.  Junkyard Daisy leans over his plate again, no more or less hurried than the first time, and shovels a second piece of steak into his mouth, which he begins to chew slowly as he straightens his back.  Though he may not look it, he is desperately trying to reign the spanning time into himself with the ultimate goal of not taking several hours to finish his meal, as he sometimes does without meaning to.  Bob Dylan has closed his song with a shrill scuttle over the harmonica and Bessie Smith’s voice, singing Dyin’ By the Hour, now swoons out from the four points of the compass.  Chewing his second bite, Junkyard Daisy loses himself in the song.  He thinks to himself that if on this tender night he could manage a bite and a half every song, he could be out of the Flop-Bar much earlier than usual.

_______________________________

The gaily-straightened Reich, dolled up in garb hardly suited to the night’s bitter cold, is now slinking in a very cretinous line down the boulevard, which is quietly enduring a softly falling snow.  Paulkner is out in the lead, bent over with his arms bunched up in his black satin vampire robe and holding forth a barely intelligible monologue with the pavement, which sparkles with the diamonds of the snowfall underfoot before Paulkner’s tread churns it in with street dirt to make a brownish wet slush.  Behind him waddles Tonya, tipping this way and that and cradling her pregnant stomach like a bomb concealed under her balloony blouse.  She keeps her blood-shot eyes trained intently on Paulkner’s back.  Rodney is bringing up the rear, a bonnet strapped around his head to keep his ears warm and hobbling along with curses under his breath, “Fuke’you’s you fuke’in’butte’fuke’r, yous . . .”

Paulkner, hopelessly trying to keep himself from succumbing to the cold’s numbing effect, slaps passing trashcans and streetlights and erratically aims kicks at the homeless covered in bug-ridden blankets and crowded up against building walls, seeking shelter from the snow under protruding cornices.  “Aigh,” says Paulkner in a bleating sheep’s tone as he stops short at a streetside kiosk, “I’m a’s’goin’to get meez sume voozy ‘ills, I’m a iz,” and he begins to haggle with the merchant who is bundled up behind the kiosk counter.

After a general confusion, what with Paulkner yelling unintelligible nonsense and poking his finger into the merchant’s heavily padded chest, compounded by Tonya and Rodney’s yells and jeers as they move in and join the melee, the gaily-straightened Reich somehow procures a packet of woozy pills without having to pay a cent.  Paulkner takes four of them out from the packet, two for himself and one each for Tonya and Rodney.  Putting his fat finger to his nose, Paulkner rockets a yellowed glob of snot out of his right nostril before jamming both pills deep up there, cackling shrilly as he does so.  Behind him, Tonya and Rodney are greedily chewing their pills into a chalk like substance, which they eventually gargle then stomach.  “Aigh,” says Tonya through her broken teeth, “It’s jeez whut di rat’in’mi belly wunts, it’is,” and within seconds, they begin to feel the warmth of the pills spread through them as their spirits move into relatively better, though still quite heinous, zones.

“Aigh, I’s a’feelin’oung fo’unts,” says Rodney, smiling like a gnarled and weathered Buddha through his bonnet.  “Where’is’t weez a’goin’to agin?”

_______________________________

Junkyard Daisy is chewing his second to last piece of steak and the Flop-Bar’s late night crowd is beginning to trickle in.  As he moves his teeth up and down, exercising his limitless capacity of patience, he is aleady thinking about the last bite, which sits cold between the lumber pile of green beans and the mound of mashed potatoes.  He must, however, make it through this piece before he gets to the last piece.  One at a time, he thinks to himself.  To the passing observer, he looks like a snail making funny faces as he finally works the piece to the top of his throat.  He slowly swivels his head to take in the new scene.  None of the diners, or even the drinkers, that were here when he had arrived are still present.  In fact, two generations of clientele may have come and gone since his arrival.  He broods on this as he works the second to last piece of meat down his esophagus.   Precisely and slowly, he reaches for his glass of water, his hand approaching the glass as if it were attached to the arm of a prototypical android.  Around him, the crowd is moving into their third and fourth rounds and a chaos begins to wiggle its head out of a wormhole originating in some back alley of the universe and into the moment’s space.

The Flop-Bar’s speakers are letting loose the torrent of Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man.  The overall noise level of the place is beginning to exponentially increase.  The waitress is moving from table to table, a foot per nanosecond less than a jog at this point, hurriedly bringing around pitchers and jotting down more orders.  The second to last piece of meat plummets into Junkyard Daisy’s stomach.  He can’t help but smile as his right hand inches the glass of water toward his face.

memory like a broken rocking horse (circa July, 2008)

The kerosene lamp is burning down to a flicker, mouthing emotions in silent whispers . . .

Its light dances across his face, casting shadows under his eyes and cheek bones as he stares expressionlessly over the top of a typewriter.  His hands slide across the keys to fill the room with a steady beat of clicks and clacks and a nostalgia for existence rides every sentence that the rusted arms of the type writer slap together.  He's written hundreds of thousands of words and they flow and dance across their pages.  He's writing about everything: the people he loved, the past he can only remember in fragments, the emotions that had brought him through clouds stretched out across the sky. 

And suddenly gravity's cage opens and he's floating through whirring protons and neutrons, the electrons passing right through him and his palpitating fists grasp emptiness in the spaces between the air molecules.  He's not going to catch all of it, he knows that, but he's not giving up, giving in, burning out, burning up. . . . Landscapes unfurl from his mind over the paper and they come out all wrong, so wrong, it's frustrating, every word is a lie and he knows it but he can't stop because he can't stop.

I was six years old, playing in a half-built house.  The smell of fresh wood and sawdust in my lungs and the feel of a project, of purpose, of desire for completion sifting through the morning air.  And Jacob runs up the steps towards me, firing an imaginary pistol, bang bang he laughs and I dodge the bullets, pulling out my rifle.

He stops typing for a second because she's standing next to him with a cup of coffee, because it's two in the morning and he likes his coffee at two in the morning.  He's sweating but he vaguely thanks her and gulps it down as she looks at his transcript.  She sees how he shifted tense and she thinks it's a mistake, but she doesn't say anything because he's sweating and his eyes are bloodshot and not seeing, he doesn't even know where he is anymore.  He's feeling light shedding its skin, the illusion dissolving in front of the next mirage, the life that caught him by surprise pulling him back into the formless haze.  He's slipping from reality as he blindly types on, the words flipping out into further detachments . . .

There was the war and all of that blood, the hospital with men missing arms and boys in wheelchairs.  Trevor was a Humvee driver who said he had driven through the wall of the past, firing mortars into ghosts who just laughed.  I remember him telling me that "There ain't no way I wasn't going to try and kill all of 'em. Trust me, you don't want them around, you're never safe because they won't go away and they'll always come back."  But apparently the ghosts just smiled and glinted like the ocean on a summer day as watermelon sized shells whirred through them.  And he told me how the seagulls were squalling for the stars that he couldn't see but felt, and the earthquakes and tremors underneath his feet made it so that his thoughts would wobble and he'd end up making decisions by turning around and stumbling backwards. 

The hospital times weren't all bad though.  This one time Larry's glass eye fell out and shattered on the ground and we all had a good chuckle like the ghosts in Trevor's adventure and we left our ghosts there laughing forever too.  Trevor was eventually discharged with a purple heart and six months later we got the news that he shot himself through the eye.  I know he was thinking about Larry's glass eye when he did it and he could probably hear us laughing back then in the hospital with the eye laying in shards on the ground and he must have been out to get us or he wouldn't have shot himself in the first place . . .

Journal Entry of a Turtle

September 28^th, 2008

I am going to die.  I was standing alone in my kitchen when it hit.  I am going die.  My knees felt weak.  My heartbeat increased.  I am going to die.  I am going to die.  It took hold of my stomach.  It felt like nothing I’ve ever felt before.  I am going to die.  I put my glass of water down on the counter.  I bent over and put my hands on my knees.  I am going to die.  Deep, quick breaths.  It was emptiness spreading inside of me, I am going to die, a hole opening up into a nothing, widening from the dead-center of my stomach, expanding into my chest, into my legs.  It paralyzed my thoughts.  Until that was it: I am going to die.  It just sat there in front of me.  I am going to die.  Nothing behind it.  I am going to die.  Nothing in front of it.  I am going to die. Nothing else.  All I felt was nothing. 

I am going to die. Nothing.  I am going to die.  Nothing.  I am going to die.  Nothing.  I am going to die.  Nothing.  I am going to die.  Nothing.  I am going to die.  Nothing.  I am going to die. Nothing.

And then I was afraid.  Fear swept in like a saving force.  The nothing was still there, inside of me, but I was afraid of it now, which meant that it wasn’t me anymore.  I wanted to curl up in the corner.  I wanted to hide from it.  I wanted to hide from something that wasn’t me.  But still, it stared at me, stared at my thoughts.  But my thoughts were there now.  Distinct from it.  I wanted to run.  I wanted to cringe.  I wanted to react.  It was desire.  It rejected what had just come in.  Desire and fear were fighting it down.  They pinned it.  And I was regaining control.  My breathing became more regular.  I had tamed it.  It was something at the bottom of my thoughts now, just a small patch of a phrase: I am going to die, spread flat like a thin layer of soil.

The kitchen hadn’t changed, but it had.  I stood still for a little while before I picked up the glass of water and took a sip.  It tasted the same.  And it tasted different.  I looked at the microwave.  Four numbers stared back at me.  11:32.  Glowing red.  It seems dumb, but there was someone behind those numbers.  Someone, motionless, patient, who had just watched me suffer something of a panic attack.  And I knew it was only me and that someone behind those four numbers.  Our eyes locked, turning the moment into a contest, a staring match between me and that thing behind the numbers.  And then its left eye blinked:  11:33.  

The Stood I Found Rocking

The stood I found rocking I held out like a fist full of glory, a magnificent display I ran now for the pleasant sensation of post-life glow.  How hard we should all try!  Not to put it in the wrong light, it’s simply beyond my ability to capture it any other way.  And the ways, the ways move away like rays from the sun.  It being so preposterous that we were cluttered around a small table in this dingy, overcrowded bar, the seven of us huddled like football players before taking the line of scrimmage, our beers in hand, yelling at cross channels and abusing the acoustics that our wall of faces had created. 

“Goiters! French!” yelled Stephen, his face beaming red from drunkenness.  Alex slapped him across the cheek, screaming “Off with thee!” and everyone laughed because no one had a clue what was going on.  I leaned back, breaking the circle and laughing so hard that my rib cage felt like it had incarcerated a monkey on PCP and I realized I needed to piss. 

The line to use the urinals stretched five persons long and I moved onto its tail to make it six.  There was a flush and a moment later our line became one person shorter.  The walls were breathing, palpitating in and out of focus.  Two new people arrived behind me and our line became seven-people long.  I was jittery and having a conversation with the guy standing in front me.  “I don’t agree with the one man rule,” I explained, slurring the syllables, “Should be the four men and five women rule, but no children.  Over-breeding, arghhh, passé!”  I was swaying, holding my groin.  The man replied in French and the words passed over me without me understanding any of their content.  I nodded politely.  Another flush and the line momentarily shrunk.

Walking out of the bathroom, I was accosted by a pair of disembodied hands that literally dragged me over to the bar, where I was met by Jacqueline’s eyes, lusterless and dumb drunk, her pleading for me to take a shot of tequila with her.  Two shots materialized on the mahogany bar as if by magic and, before I knew it, we were toasting to autocratic turtles.  I tried to figure out if chance or design had the tequila running down my throat.  Then I choked, trying to hold down vomit and desperately searching for a chaser.  I grabbed some man’s beer and took two long gulps.  I handed his cup back with apologies while reaching into my pocket for cash because, even in my stupor, I knew this man wanted to start a fight over me taking his beer like that.  Jacqueline had disappeared and I wasn’t finding any money in my pockets and the man was standing in my face and yelling in French so that his beer-breath flooded over my nostrils.  I felt a crisp something between my fingers and knew it was money.  I handed a red note to the man and he smiled and handed me the rest of his beer.

I felt like falling over and was vaguely aware that I was swaying.  I drained the beer in a single gulp.  The faces in the bar were blurring together and the din was a raging storm and I was stumbling around when I stopped remembering.  Dark ran this last act, who could rework the happenings of fourteen while it grew fantastically?  Here the filth turned to the sublime, the vomit glittering with diamonds, canned bile and canned memories stocked along a shelf stretching off through eternity.  Obliterated.  

a tale from england

My name is Dinkle Funass and the story I am about to tell you is not one told out of bitterness, although the events herein did radically change my life for the worse. At the beginning of all this I was a pre-med student, studying to become an urologist. I was attending West Minister University in northern England at the time and had just become engaged to a beautiful, young boy named Bobby Bradles. While at the time I considered myself a man, I soon discovered that I was nothing more than a young girl about to attend kindergarten for her first day of elementary school.

It was a bright Saturday morning, looked as if it was going to be one of those gorgeous days for the month of May. I was heading down to the local bakery to pick up some breakfast bread for my fiancée and me. While I was walking down the street, minding my own business mind you, this rat stops me to ask if I knew where the garbage dump was. He was about regular size for a rat, with a rather large belly, but it wasn’t the sight of him that caught me off guard, it was the fact that he was talking to me. I didn’t answer his questions pertaining to directions immediately and I instead threw my own inquiries back at him.

“Why the fuck are you talking you silly duck?” I questioned. He couldn’t explain to me how he had learned to art of language and told me to piss off. He said he’d figure out where the dump was for himself.

“This has the makings of an odd day” I thought to myself as I continued to make my way down the street. I had seen days like this before, and they never turned out well. A little further down the street I was stopped again.

This time a red mini-cooper pulls up next to me and to my surprise the car was packed full of clowns. There were six of them; one of the clowns was sitting on another’s lap in the back seat. The clown at the wheel rolled down his window and stuck his head out, but didn’t make his business immediately clear. What followed was a few seconds of awkward silence as this clown, as well as the rest of the ones in the car, continued to stare at me. The clown in the driver’s seat had a particularly peculiar air to him, with his pink afro-hair, white face-paint and unblinking eyes; he seemed to fit the description of a deranged lunatic. When I deemed this staring charade had gone on long enough, I decided to keep on walking. It proved to be a bad move.

Looking back at the situation, I should not have tried to walk away from the car, but should have ran. Running probably would not have even helped though; those clowns knew what they wanted. In a second the air was filled with the roar of a car engine harmonizing quite horribly with screeching tires as the mini-cooper jumped up on the sidewalk to cut me off. All four of the car’s doors opened simultaneously and the clowns began to get out. “Shit!” I whimpered under my breath as I turned to run. It was too late though; those clowns were on top of my white body faster than a cocaine addict can bump his own white fun. I started to scream for help, but the few people around were smart enough to not get involved in clown business. I was face down on the sidewalk, literally eating the cement with my bare teeth, when I was hit over the head with something hard. At least I imagine it was something hard because all of a sudden everything went black.

When I came to I was tied to a chair in the middle of a cold, dark room. The only light available to me came from a lamp hanging from the ceiling. The result was that I could only see about five feet in any direction that I tried to look. The air felt damp and heavy, I had the feeling that I was in a cellar of some sort. I tried to move the chair by jolting my body a few times, but it seemed as if the chair was bolted in place.

“Having fun, squirmer?” asked a creepily high-pitched voice from outside my radius of vision. “Why don’t you squeal a little for me?”

What the hell was going on? I searched the darkness frantically for the owner of the voice and increased my efforts to loosen myself from the chair’s seemingly glued position. I decided to quit the struggle and put my game face on.

“That’s more like it” the voice said from the dark. The clown that had been driving the mini-cooper walked into the light. He had a funny walk to him, with every other step he seemed to hop a little. “You might be wondering what you are doing here,” he said in that queer voice of his. “It has come to our attention that you have come into contact with a certain rat by the name of Radio Squad. Is this correct?”

“A rat asked me where the garbage dump was earlier, if that’s what you’re talking about,” I answered him.

“We killed your little boyfriend,” the clown informed me. He was smiling as he let this released information sink into my throbbing skull.

“What?” I asked in pure horror.

The clown retreated into the darkness and returned carrying Bobby’s limp carcass. He threw the deflated mass of what used to be my fiancée onto the floor in front of me. I stared into Bobby’s dead face and the reality of the situation washed over me like cold water from a river in hell. “Wha . . . wha . . . what the fuck! You sick bastard! What the fuck!” I was screaming wildly. I felt tears streaming down my face and a tempestuous rage began to boil inside of my chest. What kind of sick people would do this? And for what? “What the fuck is going on?” I screamed.

“We wanted you to understand the full magnitude of the current circumstances,” the clown told me. “We need to know everything that Radio Squad told you, starting from your first encounter,” said the clown.

“I just met him today,” I was basically sobbing now. “He just asked where the garbage dump was and then told me he could find it himself. That was the last I ever saw him.” I felt like an animal in a petting zoo. “You didn’t have to kill Bobby you sick fucks!” I spit out the last line.

The clown took a few steps towards me and leaned in close to my face, his breath reeked like garlic and rotten cabbage. I pushed my head back as far as I could and turned away, his rancid breath made me more nauseous than the corpse at my feet. His tongue crept out of his mouth like a red snake from a hole, and quite suddenly I felt his warm saliva on my cheek, the snake’s venomous bite. I began to puke uncontrollably. The clown continued to lick my face until I had completely cleared my stomach of all its bile, reducing my vomiting spasms to reflexive gags. He backed away from me and allowed a curious smile to play across his lips. “That’ll do pig” he said. With that he retreated into the darkness, leaving me covered in my own, disgusting vomit. He returned a few moments later holding a large, wooden bat. He walked back over to me, again prancing with that queer little hop/strut walk he did, and stopped about a bat’s length away from me. My eyes were level with his crotch. Suddenly he swung hard at the side of my head and once again I returned to a sea of pitch-black nothing.

I woke up on the same sidewalk I was kidnapped from. My head felt like a broken egg and I could barely see straight. It was night outside and I weakly brought myself to my feet. After wobbling on my flimsy legs for a few seconds, I collapsed, once again returning to the pavement. I spent the rest of the night lying there, crying with my head in my hands. “Why am I alive?” I kept asking myself over, and over, and over again.

i'm not the ghost . . . you're not the ghost?

“Marginal.”

“Marginal? What the hell is that supposed to mean.” Kenji dejectedly snuffed out his cigarette in the ashtray, jerkily pounding the orange cherry into ashes like a piston.

“Marginal,” repeated Jacqueline, a saturnine expression on her face, “As in almost, though not entirely, insufficient.” There was a silence and she looked pleadingly across the table at Kenji, who still had his eyes trained on the ashtray. “But that’s beside the point, Kenji. I’m not breaking up with you because you’re bad in bed, I’m just at a point in my life where I’m realizing that everything’s wrong. I feel like a ghost.”

“A ghost?” mumbled Kenji.

“Yeah, a ghost.”

The waitress moseyed over to their table.

“Can I get y’all some more coffee or something?” Nobody said anything. Kenji didn’t even look up, though he could hear the mucilaginous sound of the waitress’ teeth mashing bubble gum. The rest of the diner was empty.

“No thank you, we’re fine,” Jacqueline finally responded, glancing at the waitress with an awkward smile.

“Alright, just let me know if you kids need anything.” The waitress moseyed off again. From the kitchen came the noise of a plate hitting the ground and shattering. A loud curse followed.

“I’m going to leave.” Kenji reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet, avoiding eye contact with Jacqueline. He dropped a few bills on the table and stood up. “I’ll see you around.”

“Good-bye,” said Jacqueline quietly, looking across the table at the empty space that he had just evacuated. She heard the bells on the door angrily rattle as Kenji shoved it open to exit into the night.

“Good night!” called the waitress from the counter. Kenji strode off without turning around. Jacqueline continued to stare at the deflated space across from her.

The waitress looked at Jacqueline for a few minutes and ruminated on her lone figure. She walked around the counter and over to the table. “Mind if I sit?” she asked, indicating Kenji’s former place. Jacqueline gave a disinterested hand motion. The waitress slid into the booth with her red, lipsticked lips pursed in concern. She reached across the table and took Jacqueline’s hand. “What’s wrong honey?”

Jacqueline sighed and looked out the adjacent window, which gave a view of the deserted parking lot. Her eyes felt sallow and sunken in her face. “I’m a ghost,” she sniffed mournfully.

Kenji slammed his open palms against the top of the steering wheel. Marginal? What the hell was she talking about? She’s the ghost! He rolled down the car window with violent arm movements and then lit another cigarette. The streets were empty and dissonantly lit by the tarnished yellow aura of the street lights.

He came to a red light and braked. All around him the city was completely motionless. The only sound was the hum of the car engine. Kenji turned his head from one side of to the other, glancing down both directions of the intersecting street. He took a drag on the cigarette and then pushed on through the red light.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Caitlin. “Caitlin, I’m not bad in bed, am I?” he asked immediately when she answered, adopting a slightly more desperate voice than he had intended.

“Oh boy . . .” she groused sardonically.

“I’m serious.”

“Why don’t you come over? You sound like you’re in rough shakes.”

“OK,” said Kenji gratefully. He hung up and took one last drag before he flicked his cigarette out the window. Orange embers flew as the wind caught the stub.

“This life ain’t no cake walk,” agreed the waitress, nodding in consolation, “That’s for sure. I remember when I was your age . . .” she trailed off dreamily.

“I mean, when I think about life, it always seems so endless in its possibilities, but . . .” Jacqueline paused, furrowing her brow in concentration. She lipped a couple silent words and then looked pleadingly across at the waitress, donning the same helpless expression she had shown Kenji an hour ago. The waitress took Jacqueline’s hand again.

Kenji rolled off of Caitlin and onto his back. He stared up at the ceiling panting, his face gleaning with sweat. He laughed out loud. “Caitlin, you’re the best friend a guy could ever have.”

Caitlin laughed back. “You’re the best guy a friend could ever have.”

“Is that your dad?” asked Kenji, pointing at a picture of a man that was propped up on Caitlin’s dresser.

“Yeah,” she giggled, “He’s been watching us this entire time.”

“That’s a creepy thought,” said Kenji. He rolled over and tickled Caitlin on the stomach.

“Stop it!” she squealed. He started kissing her neck. Caitlin’s cell phone began ringing on the nightstand. “Oh shit,” she said, gently pushing Kenji off of her, “It’s probably Derek. One sec.” She flipped the phone open and answered, tinging her words with a feigned sleepiness. “Yeah . . . That’s OK honey . . . no, no, come over, it’s fine . . . no, I’m awake now. Come over.” She shut the phone.

“I thought you broke up with that jerk,” accused Kenji.

“Yeah, but I still like sleeping with him.”

“For Allah’s sake,” it felt like a giant drain in his stomach had suddenly been opened, “You just slept with me! What the hell do you need him for?”

“Jesus, don’t be so melodramatic.”

“But I’m the Krishna for all you gopis.” Kenji felt like he was leaning over the brink of his sanity.

“Trust me, Kenji, you’re no Krishna. And stop being so melodramatic. I did you a favor tonight. Now hurry up and get dressed. Derek sounded drunk, and he’s gets mean when he’s drunk. Jehovah knows what he’d do to you if he caught you up here.”

“You’re running a friggin’ brothel,” mumbled Kenji angrily as he disentangled himself from the sheets. He looked away from Caitlin as he pulled his jeans on and slipped his t-shirt over his head.

“Well, tell the ghost I said hi, will ya?” Caitlin retorted.

“The ghost broke up with me tonight.”

“Oh,” her tone suddenly dropped its harsh edge, “That explains why you’ve been acting so strange.” She sat up. “You’ve been seeing that girl forever. Oh, you poor baby.” She got out of the bed and hugged him from behind. Her flesh felt warm against his clothes. She kissed him on the back of the neck. “It’s probably for the best, though. It can’t be healthy to date a girl who’s always talking about how ghostly her life is. She’s like a zombie that knows one song, but won’t ever stop singing.”

“I better get going.”

“Derek will probably be here any second.” She kissed him on the cheek one more time.

“I’ll see you around.” Kenji headed for the bedroom door, giving a parting gesture over his shoulder without turning around. Caitlin cocked her head as she watched him disintegrate into the darkened hallway.

“I’ve probably wasted enough of your time, anyway, carrying on about my problems and all. I’ll be fine, honest.” Jacqueline gathered her purse and coat into a bundle between her arms. “Thanks for sitting with me though. You’ve been amazing.”

The waitress smiled. “Hell, I appreciate you sticking around with me. Normally I’d’ve spent the whole damn night sitting behind that counter in a deserted diner. It’s been nice to have someone to talk to for once.”

“Have a good day,” said Jacqueline sweetly as she stood up. Her legs felt a little cramped from sitting so long. “The coffee was wonderful, by the way.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Jacqueline gave one more good-bye before she walked out of the diner. Her car was the only one in the parking lot. She shuffled through her purse, searching for her keys.

As she sat down behind the steering wheel, she realized that she had never even asked the waitress for her name. She paused to think for a second. “Whatever,” she mumbled to herself, starting the engine. She shifted into first gear and pushed on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward. “She’s kind of a depressing woman anyway,” addressing the city through her windshield.

more words . . . (july, 2009)

I

Robert didn’t notice it until his boot brushed against its soft mass and it startled him so that he jumped back and he jerkily brought the flashlight around on it.  The thing was small and wrapped up in cloth and slumped against the wall of the tunnel.  Robert expected something to happen as he looked at it, shaking slightly and poised for motion, but the thing didn’t move and he just stared at it.  Even with the beam of electric light trained on it, he couldn’t discern a definite form from it because of its cloth covering.  He thought it might be an animal, but more likely a human.  He’d never encountered any bodies besides human bodies in the tunnels, but it was strange that it had a cloak draped over it and it was so small. 

He steadied his breath and reproached himself for being excitable and he kept the flashlight trained on it.  He bent down closer and became convinced that, whatever it was, it was dead.  He could tell by the smell and its stillness.  He looked at it with pity, but didn’t get too near to it or touch it.

He stood up and scanned the tunnel with his flashlight.  It was completely silent except for the soporific drips of water that echoed intermittently off the rocks.  He turned to walk on.  The shadowed mass flinched on his periphery, which startled him and he did a double-take and shined his flashlight on it, but it was lying motionless against the wall. 

He started to walk away and took a few steps and then paused.  He turned around and put the light back on the cloaked body.  He hesitated and then moved closer.  He crouched down and took its arm from under the cloak and it seemed like a child’s and he felt for a pulse on the paper thin wrist and he felt a dull throb from the artery.  He pushed off the hood that shrouded its head and saw that it was a boy with sunken cheeks and a sweaty mat of blonde hair.  He stood up and looked down at it and it couldn’t have been more than four years old.  He looked down at it for a long time and then finally tucked his flashlight under his arm and hoisted the child over his shoulder and continued down the tunnel. 

XXII

How many months, years, lifetimes had he lived down here?  Since yesterday?  Or the day before?  The infinite chain of yesterdays he’d leave behind and bequeath to the creature in Catherine’s stomach.  Thousands of yesterdays spent deep beneath a surface that he couldn’t remember anymore outside of the rare strikes of memory that came coupled with a feeling of selflessness breeding fleeting glimpses of an open soft blue sky and the sensation of a breeze brushing around his flesh and a darkness now . . . a terrible deep darkness broken only by the feeble penetrations of electric flashlights and dancing candle flames.  Headaches.  Nightmares.  Moments of beauty.  Moments of beauty when his thoughts unraveled around him as a silk robe sliding off his body in the serenity of this eternity of wet granite walls and their deep darkness.

He stroked Catherine’s thigh in the dark.  Traced his hand over her swollen stomach, its hill of flesh where the creature kicked from inside.  And the boy that had died that night in the corner.  How he had carried its body for miles through the maze of darkness until he was almost lost himself and he put the body in a giant crevice in a wall far away and retraced his steps back home, an entire day’s, or an entire night’s (the distinction no longer mattered) journey.  Who knows how many hours he spent carrying that body as far away as he could, the work of a lifetime, and how Catherine had cried and said before he left with the cold body in his arms that she didn’t do it, even though she hadn’t wanted it she had taken it in and she didn’t do it even if she had thought about doing it.  And how that boy’s soul had entered into Catherine’s stomach, Catherine had woken up from a dream and shook Robert awake and whispered through the dark that she’d just felt the child enter her, enter into the creature in her stomach . . .  

                                                                                                      . . . after Margaret never came back, how long ago?  Eddie had looked out into the tunnels and wouldn’t look at Robert and said in a low voice that cracked with static that he found her body without its head in the tunnels past the east line, her neck like a drainage pipe that led to a puddle of dark blood, past the east line where she never should have been and how they couldn’t make sense of it because it didn’t make sense.  And now she was inside Catherine’s stomach, Catherine had woken up from another dream during another night and she shook Robert awake and whispered through the dark that she’d just felt herself enter Margaret, and Robert now kept his hand at rest on top of her navel, which rested slightly on the warm down-slope of the hill of flesh as it breathed rhythmically, and he could feel the faint kicks from Margaret and how Margaret was probably still holding onto all of those skulls she so desperately traded for their survival and how one of those heads belonged to Catherine . . .   

                                          . . . and now they were near starving.  Eddie kept them alive with what little he could get and Robert looked through the darkness to where Eddie was snoring gently in the corner.

IX

Catherine stared into Robert’s eyes.  She could see nothing.  Nothing.  Emptiness.  Two little black holes imploding into the same enormous void.

III

            When Margaret came back that night, Robert showed her the child and Margaret responded excitedly. 

“Does he have a name?” she asked walking over to the corner where it was sleeping.  

            “I don’t know,” said Robert, following her.  “At this point we’re just hoping that he makes it through the night.  He’s only woken up once, and that was only for a couple minutes.  The rest of the time he’s been like this.”  He looked down at the boy and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Oh poor baby,” cooed Margaret and she crouched down next to the child and cradled his head in her arms and petted him gently across the brow.  “We’ll get you feeling better in no time,” she assured it as she put her hand on its chest.  “He seems to be breathing fine,” she addressed Robert, “Which is a good sign at least.  How did you find him?”

“In the tunnels, he was slumped against the wall.  Scared the shit out of me at first, my foot hit him and I didn’t know what it was.”

“Where’s Catherine?”

“I think she’s further back somewhere.  Lying down.” 

“Is she alright?”

“I don’t think she’s feeling well.”

“Does it have something to do with the boy?”

“That’d be a safe bet.”

“Did she say why?”

“I don’t know.  She’d probably tell you if you asked her.  She’s been behaving strangely toward me.”  Robert watched as Margaret cradled the boy’s head in the candlelight.  “How was the run?  I’m guessing it went alright.”

“Yeah, but I think Reg’s ripping me off.  Or someone’s ripping him off.”

“Why?”

“He gave less food than we agreed on.  Said he didn’t have a choice.  I mean, I’m bringing more heads every run and getting less food for them every run.  Either Reg or the market is screwing me.  I’m trying to figure out which one.”

“Especially because there might be another mouth to feed now.”

“Yeah,” Margaret looked up with an expression of concern.  “I hadn’t thought about that yet.”

“Is Ed coming back tonight?”

“I hope so.  I want to see what he thinks about Reg.  He’s usually good with figuring these things out.”

VII

Margaret switched off her flashlight and the familiar and complete darkness flooded the tunnel like a silent ghost of a predator.  She guided herself forward by stretching her arm out and sliding the tips of her fingers along the wet, bumpy wall.  She could hear clearly now the sharp taps of footsteps echoing behind her, further behind her in the dark corridor, probably covering the same ground she had covered a few minutes ago.  She listened to the lucid clicks of the footsteps through the monotonous drip of cave water that leaked through the rock.  The footsteps were keeping pace with hers, maybe even gaining, definitely heading in the same direction and belonging to more than one person.  And now her shoulder was beginning to ache.  She adjusted the strap of the bag so that the weight shifted. She kept listening to the footsteps and concentrated on the sensations that ran from the slimy contours of the wall through her fingers and into her chest.

The events of the past twenty-four hours had her empty stomach in knots as she went over them in her head.  Corifon had acted strange when Margaret had arrived at his place on the surface.  Didn’t say a word when he opened the door, just ushered her in, his shifty eyes scanning the walls as if he was about to be shot in his own living room.  He handed her the bag, put a finger to his lips and ushered her back out.  Then the police outside of Brunswick.  She had never had problems with them before, but this time they had seemed suspicious during the routine check. 

The officer who had read her papers had an incredulous smirk on his face while he scanned the information and Margaret thought she was done for.  They pulled her out of the car and began to search the vehicle and she stood there and shot glances at the stars that she so rarely had the opportunity to see and her heart was pounding in her ears.  Then they stopped the search without checking the trunk, thank god they didn’t check the trunk, but that seemed strange.  It was too obvious a place to not look.  Why wouldn’t they check the trunk?  And then Reg’s place had been entirely empty when she brought the heads over in the morning.  Everything was cleared out.  No trace of residency.  Just an empty cavern and so she had to leave without being able to rid herself of the bag.  And now this: the footsteps behind her, her being alone in the dark with this bag and she could feel through the bag the eerie, curved shapes of skulls as they jostled against the back of her thigh, and suddenly she wanted to fling the bag away and start running but her cargo was too precious.  Abandoning it would start a whole new chain of problems.  She hadn’t slept for forty hours now.  The footsteps behind her were getting closer. 

Usually she was at peace in the darkness.  She could travel the branches of cave for miles without light or the slightest trepidation, relying only on her instincts.  But now the darkness seemed a horrible nightmare, warm and viscous, oozing and enveloping and suffocating her.  And the bag was getting heavier and she repositioned the strap but her whole shoulder was aching.  She imagined the lifeless eyes that were staring void at the canvas walls on the insides of the bag, the mouths slightly open, the cold tongues curled and motionless within.  She started feeling dizzy and sick. 

Then she heard footsteps coming from further up in the tunnel.  And the footsteps behind her were still clicking closer.  And the clicking started to spin a web around her and she stopped, then started walking back the way she just came and then stopped again and pressed herself against the wall.  A drop of water fell from above and rolled down her cheek. 

Now adrenaline was pumping through her blood and she could feel the blood pounding in her ears.  They were approaching from both sides.  She snapped her flashlight on and ran the beam of light over the walls, looking for cracks big enough to slip through, to exit from.  Nothing.  Just the faint shimmer of wet rock, the shadows and the footsteps coming closer from both sides.  She dropped the bag, no longer caring about its contents as she frantically ran up and down the corridor, shining the flashlight and searching for an escape.  Nothing.  Just the faint shimmer of wet rock, the shadows and the footsteps coming ever closer from both sides.

She switched the light off again knowing that she had seconds before they came.  She slipped down to the ground and put her back up against the wall and breathed heavily.  The footsteps were louder on both sides.  She started to cry but the sob got caught in her throat as she burrowed her head into her palms and tried to make herself small.  Then the footsteps came right up to her and stopped and her fingers were glowing red against her face but she couldn’t bring herself to move her hands away from her eyes.

V

            Just a vague disbelief of all that had ever happened to him . . . a general confusion when he’d drag his hand over the bumpy, slimy surface of a wall, the cool, wet sensations of the rock.  He was necessarily there, but he knew he that he wasn’t really there.  An existence he could only define by rejecting what was all around him, rejecting what his perceptions gave him until there was nothing . . . but then again, he might be jumping to the wrong end of the spectrum, taking a road that only showed him half of the truth.  There could also be everything.  Not only the little that he saw, felt, heard . . . but also everything that he couldn’t see, feel, hear, touch, and this list ran off into the infinity. 

He was stuck between these two ends, these two extremes, knowing that if he could truly understand both, he might be able to prove they were the same thing, that the spectrum was really just a circuit. 

II

“What are we supposed to do with it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  I couldn’t just leave it to die out there.”  He looked up at her from a bowl of soup.

“We can’t do anything for him.  You know that.  The last thing we need is a child to look after.”  Robert stirred the soup thoughtfully and watched as the little pieces of vegetable surfaced briefly in the steaming brown liquid.

“You think we should just throw him back into the tunnels?” he asked.  “Just leave him and hope that someone else finds him before he dies?”

“We could put him on the surface.  He’d at least have a better chance of surviving up there.”  Robert watched the candlelight flicker over Catherine’s face.  The boy was sleeping over in the corner on a bed of clothes that Catherine had laid under him.  A little while ago the child had woken up with a sickly look in his eyes and they had silently fed him some water before he went out of consciousness again.

“That’s bullshit,” Robert responded, “they’re probably hunting for him on the surface.  People don’t end up down here by accident, they’re driven here.  Someone desperate for that child to live probably put him down here or else he was abandoned by people already down here.  Either way, they won’t tolerate him up there.”  There was a silence and Catherine looked at the wall behind Robert and her yellowed retinas gave off a wet glimmer in the candlelight and her bottom lip quivered. 

“We’re going to look after him,” he said firmly.  “We’re not starving and we can spare a little of what we have to keep him alive.”

“Alright,” said Catherine quietly, “you’re right.” 

They finished the rest of the meal wordlessly.  The candle on the table was nearly stumped and started to sputter and Robert looked over at the child through the dancing shadows.  Catherine stood up and went to a horizontal jagged crevice in the wall and pulled a candle from it.  She came back to the table and blew out the nearly stumped candle and darkness descended on them.  Robert could hear her trying to get the new candle into place atop the soft wax of the old candle.  He took his matches out and struck one.  In the match light he could see she was crying but she was trying to hide her face so he didn’t say anything as he lit the candle.  Then she walked off, deeper into the cavern to be alone and Robert watched her recede into the darkness.