Keep Your Mind Clear
Small waves float lazily on a nearly white sea. A seagull rides those waves, unbothered, unmoving. The sky is clear but in the distance, over the horizon they’re dark and ominous, moving towards the mainland where a flash flood will cleanse the dry earth after weeks of heat and no rain.
Richard Turse walks along the sand, head down, dragging his feet. His hands are both placed inside the pockets of his beige khaki shorts, and his hair drops in front of his eyes in a snake curl that he blows away several times. His head kind of feels like the sky. There’s sun, and thick clouds, and the feeling that something sinister is coming. Like soon his mind is going to simply stop providing him with comfort, and it’ll all be replaced with discomfort. His skin will feel too tight, and he’ll develop some serious form of agoraphobia.
Depression isn’t at the forefront of his mind, but it’s there. He’s heard friends and family talk about it, but he’d never felt it first hand. His ex-girlfriend, Holly Jensen had once told him that it had nothing to do with sadness, that it was simply an inability to feel comfort, and an inability to feel at one with the natural world.
He understood that now. Couples sat on the beach, scrolling on their phones. The sun blinded the screens, and he wondered if they could even see what they were looking at?
He wants to yell, “Hey, is there anyone out there? I’m looking for human life, human connection. Can anyone hear me?” But like every other time, he remains quiet, when he wishes he could speak up.
Up ahead, he sees something. And hears a hoarse voice singing out of tune. Richard squints and as he approaches he sees a man who must be on his knees, because he’s barely half the height of Richard, then he supposes it could be a little person, and then he stops squinting incase offense is taken at this man zeroing in on what the little person might suspect is some kind of circus freak. So, he returns to his casual walk, staring down at the sand, and the voice gets louder and clearer.
They sent me off to Vietnam
And I came home, half a man
They sent me off to Vietnam
Now all I have is a tin can
Richard can see the man clearly now, and he isn’t a little person, rather a legless veteran planted in the sand by the water with a cup held out. His eyes are closed, his face is old and his beard hangs down to his chest. The man is wearing a tattered faded green army jacket with pins and patches etched all across. And he notices the ring finger of his left hand is nothing but a stub, and he feels shitty for letting his mind tell him that his problems were the worst in this world, when there were people like this who still found a reason to wake in the morning.
Before he knows it, he’s standing in front of the man and the shadow from his body creates shade that opens the veterans eyes.
He looks down at the man and tries to hide pity from his face, but feels as though he’s failed that test. So, he sees the cup and inside his shorts he hauls out some change, nods his head and drops it in the cup.
There’s a splash, and he looks down to see it’s filled with coffee.
“Oh, my goodness. I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry.”
And instinctively, due to the nerves and guilt he’s feeling, Richard reaches down to put his hand in the scolding hot cup of coffee, and the veteran grabs his wrist. It feels like fire scolding his skin, and Richard lets out a scream and looks into the man’s eyes to see only empty white.
“Show us, then”
As he pulls his hands free, he stumbles back into the sand. But it’s no longer sand, just a blank nothingness. He rubs his hands on the surface and looks behind him, nothing. He rubs at his eyes, and tries again. The same thing.
The man is gone, the couple on their phones. The blue in the sky, the clouds, and darkening horizon, all gone.
“What’s going on?” He asks, and then screams it. “WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON?”
He puts his hands on his face, rocking back and forth and says, “bring back the sand, the sky, clouds. Bring it all back.”
Then he puts his hands next to him, and can feel the softness and the heat. He opens his eyes, and the sand is back, and the sky, but there’s nothingness where the water was, and Richard says softly, and questioningly, “uh the beach? The water?” And it returns.
Richards gets back on his feet, and the beach is back but there are no people, and he thinks he’s going crazy. He thinks about the couple on their phones, and looks in the direction where they were, and they appear, like nothing happened. Still scrolling the darkened screens.
It must be a dream, he thinks. It has to be a dream or everything he’s ever learned about the world, about time, space, all of it, was a blatant fucking lie. Because if an old legless man grabbing his wrist could stop the world and he could bring it back by thinking, then what in the holy hell did everything mean?
So he tries to bring back the legless man. He thinks and looks at the spot where he was just sitting. Richard feels foolish like he’s Professor X or something, holding his temples, trying to use his newfound power, or curse, or whatever it was, to make a man reappear. But he won’t.
So he continues along the beach, trying to remember everything as it was, but realizing just how hard that is, and just how much he’s gone through his days lately like a zombie, not paying attention to anything around him.
But then he clears his head, and says, fuck it. If he can’t remember, he’ll just make it better. He looks up ahead, and thinks of a jungle gym, monkey bars, a large slide that snakes around, and lands on soft ground. Kids laughing, and parents pushing them on the swings. Then beside that he puts in a splash pad, and a volleyball net, and a basketball court. Before long the beach is filled with laughter, and Richard smiles.
His legs are tired so he puts a bench to his left, and he sits and looks out. He imagines sail boats, yachts, and a cruise ship in the distance. He takes away the storm clouds over the horizon, and he puts a cold can of beer in his right hand.
And then in the empty spot next to him, he thinks about Holly Jensen, and when she appears, she says, “Hi, Richard,” and puts her hand out. Richard puts his hand on hers, and they look out at the water. “Things have been crazy, Hol. Real crazy. But maybe they’ll be okay. Maybe we can just stay here?l?”
And when he looks at her, she smiles but her eyes are hollow like the legless man.
“Keep your mind clear, Richard. Keep your mind from darkness.”
“What?”
And she points to the water. The water begins to turn red, and the storm clouds return.
“Don’t think about death and destruction, Richard. Keep your mind clear.”
And Holly begins to laugh maniacally. Mouth wide, too wide. Like her jaw should be broken. And then the voice of the legless man in his head, “They sent me off to Vietnam,” and the ring of artillery fire.
Richard falls off the bench, and sees a platoon of men in green, shooting at the Viet Cong.
“No, no, no, no.”
Then his mind is racing. He looks out and Professor Halburton, his History professor in college is standing in the sand with a whiteboard behind him. His eyes hollow. Blank white, and he has a stick and he’s pointing it at the board.
“Today’s lesson will be about the Salem Witch trials which began in February of 1692.”
And then Halburton points the stick beside him, and Richard looks.
Two women tied to a wooden pole scream as flames rise up, and burn their flesh.
Then Halburton says, “Today’s lesson will be the Holocaust”
“Today’s lesson will be about Columbine.”
“Today’s lesson will be about 9/11”
“Today’s lesson will be about Rwanda”
“Today’s lesson Richard will be about the bloodshed of everyone you love.”
He sees his parents lying in an x on the sand over each other. His little sister next to them. He’s crying now, holding his head.
“Please stop. Please, Dear God, stop”
He closes his eyes, screaming. And when he opens them, the couple who was staring at their phones, are looking up at him like he’s crazy. They do so only for a second, before returning to their screens.
Richard stands up slowly, shaking.
They sent me off to Vietnam
And I came home half a man
They sent me off to Vietnam
Now all I got is a dirty tin can”
Richard sees the body in the distance. And he wants to run the other way, but something is telling him that he can’t. That he shouldn’t. That he needs answers to whatever in the hell just happened.
And so he gets up, and walks slowly towards the legless man singing. As he approaches, he gets a sickening sense of deja-vu. He stops in front of the man he’s holding out a cup, but this time it’s empty. He does a double take just to make sure, but it’s empty, except for a few small coins.
“Do you uh know me?” Richard asks, and the man opens his eyes.
“Keep your mind clear, boy.”
“What in the hell was that?”
“Your world is coming to an end.”
“What?”
“Your world is coming to an end, Richard.” The blank eyes stare up at him. “The only way to keep your life intact is to rebuild it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The time will come when you’ll have to rebuild this world. And you’ve seen how beautiful it can be, but also how tragic. You’ll need training.”
“Training?”
The man puts the cup out. “Drop the change.”
Richard takes the change from his shorts, and drops it in.
Again, he grabs his wrist.
"Show me, then"
Again, nothingness.
A Game Of Faith
He doesn’t feel any pain initially. Just shock, as the finger is cut from his hand and lies on the dirty barn floor separate from the rest of his body. But the shock is quickly replaced, and he screams. A scream that hasn’t emanated from the back of his throat since he was a boy, and his older brother locked him in the basement for six hours as he went out drinking with his friends. Darkness and cold, and all the monsters that kids imagine in their heads to the point where the distinction between those fears and reality begin to run perpendicular. The noises, the sounds, the foundation of the house are all ghosts who have been waiting for a moment alone with a ten year old boy who is locked, without sight, and without hope.
But now he sees true evil standing inches away from his face, smiling with crooked teeth and an emptiness in his eyes that make him feel cold, helpless, like there are no succession of words in the English language, or any language for that matter, that could get him out of this. He’s here, wherever here is.
And the man talks to him in riddles. He presents himself as a God or a brother, or son, or emissary. He talks about a God who enjoys death, hunting, enjoys blood that soaks into the dirt until it can’t, and then floods the earth. He’s speaking about man. The duality of man. The breaking of man’s spirit, and how many things a man will do that he swore he’d never do. How many ways he can make a man question his faith, his judgment, and his whole world. He tells Peter to simply call him, the God, for that is what he is playing.
“These eight behind me, know this is just the beginning,” the God says, as he grabs the finger from the floor and taps Peter on the forehead with it. Then he points to a row of four men and four women standing behind him in dirty clothes. Dirty white clothes, streaked with dirt and mud, and their faces, the same.
The God takes a knife from the back of his pants, and stands up slowly, a crack of his knee is heard. The screaming has stopped, but now the pain begins to throb like a speed induced heartbeat. The heartbeat that’s about to come out of his throat any time now.
“Faith is broken too easily. We believe until someone gets sick, and then we blame. We believe until we lose love, then we blame. We believe until we’re robbed of our humanity, one limb at a time,” The God holds the finger up, and smiles. “And then we blame. But these folks here are believers. Their spirit cannot be crushed. It cannot be broken. And a faith that absolute deserves divine reward. And tonight they shall receive it.”
The God grabs the knife and walks to the far end of the row. There’s a man with a shaggy beard of matte black, with white strands down the middle, under his chin ,and eyes that are staring straight ahead, no fear that Peter can see.
The God rubs the man’s hair, and kisses him on the lips. A deep one, and he slips his tongue into the man’s mouth before slitting his throat and watching him drop to his knees.
“You see this?” The God says, “This woman next to him is his sister. They shared a womb, and shared their 37 years on this planet together. Not a single evening spent apart. Now, this would crush you,no?”
Peter is panting now, and he can feel acid and bile climbing up his stomach, slowly but surely. His eyes water, pushing out and down his cheeks and oxygen refuses to enter his body. He feels like he's on the moon, or another planet. He feels like he’s in the dark basement, and everything is closing in on him. The world is closing in on him.
“This would crush you, no?” The God repeats. And Peter nods his head. It would crush him. He’s already lost his faith. Most of his faith left with his finger, and the rest just exited the strangers throat. Spilled on the barn floor. Liquidated.
“Now look at her?”
He does.
“Nothing. She cannot be shaken because her faith cannot be shaken. That is divine faith, sir. Faith is the belief in something that you cannot see. It is the belief in something no matter what goes wrong on this planet. If you believe, and you have faith, it isn’t a matter of what can keep it. It’s a matter of what can break it. And for these here, the answer is simple. Nothing. Now, let me ask you? How is your faith since losing your finger, and watching this man die?
Peter’s jaw feels wired shout, and he stares.
“You must answer before we begin our game of faith.”
He tries to speak, but his throat is dry and closed and at first the words come out in an unintelligible croak.
“Try again,” The God says.
“I-I still have faith.” He doesn't know why he says that, but he does. A last feeble attempt at rebellion.
“Do you?”
“Yes”
“Well we will see at the end of this evening, whether you lose your faith, or your head. Because sir, you cannot keep them both.” And he laughs. “Follow me my loyal servants.” He says and opens a large steel door, and allows the remaining seven to leave.
“Start running.”
And they take off. The God closes the door, and returns to the nine fingered man. Returns to Peter.
He leans down in front of him, his finger still in hand. He looks around, and up at the steel rafters and around the old barn, like he’s deep in thought. Peter is shaking, and now the pain is deep, and he feels sick, drenched with sweat. The God hauls a black lighter from his breast pocket and lights it. “We’ll need to cauterize that wound before I explain what’s going to happen.”
“Please, no. God, no.” He sobs like a helpless child. “Please.”
The God grabs his hand in his, and his grip is tight, and mean, like he could tear his arm from the rest of his body without trouble. His hands are calloused and rough, and his knuckles have strands of dark hair. He smells like turpentine, mixed with sweat, and other God awful scents that make him feel sick.
He holds the flame from the lighter, and stares into the man’s eyes as he places the flame on the open wound. The nine fingered man screams with primality, like an animal. Screams loud. And after five seconds, the God takes the lighter away, and Peter finally throws up in front of him, before falling in the puddle. The God stands up, and drops the knife that he used to cut his finger, to the ground, inches from his face. A splash of vomit, hits his cheek and crawls down.
“God has asked me to find you, Peter. He’s asked me to find you, and see if you’re worth saving.”
“W-why me?” He says weakly. “Wh-y me?”
“Well now, isn’t that a question, Peter. Isn’t that a question. It is five minutes to 11,”
The God looks at his watch.
“At 11, we will start a game of faith. A religious experience, if you will. That is if you want to live. Do you want that, sir?”
He looks down, and Peter nods his head, slowly rising from the puddle of bile, and chunks of previous meals. He’s on his knees, his face caked in slime, tears in his eyes, but now obedient. No longer screaming, no longer hoping. He’s listening.
“The seven out in the field want to die, Peter. They want to because death is but just the beginning. They’re happy to die at your hands, Peter. So, you will have to kill them. They will make a game of it. They will run, and they will hide. They know these woods, and these fields, and the river’s edge. They know the grass, the wheat, the pebbles on the shore. They know it all. So they will make a game of it. And you sir, will have the evening to kill all seven. And every hour, you will lose another finger, if the seven are not dead. Do you understand?”
Peter stares at him, stares into his eyes to see if he can find any humanity, to see if there’s anything at all except an empty void. And there’s none. This man, this thing, this God, can not be bartered or bribed. There is nothing in this world that will keep him from doing this. Nothing.
Seven people, he thinks. Jesus, this has to be a dream. Seven people. Kill seven people before the sun rises or lose fingers, and then his life. Kill or be killed. Either way, he know he’s royally fucked.
Peter, finding strength he didn’t know existed, stands up slowly, and grabs the knife beside him. The God smiles, like he’s two steps ahead at all times.
“I know what you’re thinking, Peter. Kill me and make a run for it.” He laughs. “You don’t know where you are, but I'll tell you this you're far away from home. And the seven have been instructed to hunt you down if you do not begin your hunt. Like I said, they know every inch of this land. For this is our home.” And he rubs Peter’s shoulder, and looks back at his watch. “Let the hunt begin.”
Peter drags his feet, and opens the door as a soft breeze feels like heaven on his skin. He closes his eyes, and sucks the clean air deep into his lungs. This could be beautiful, he thinks, a world away from the world. And when his eyes open, he hears the rustling of footsteps, and soft giggles from the women, and bird calling from the men. Leaves crackling under foot, and the water streaming until it forks into a river, and leaves this place behind.
He walks with the knife, the grip sticking to his palm, trying to accept that this is reality and not a horrid dream. But it’s too vivid, much too vivid. For a moment before the hunt, he thinks about taking the knife and slicing his jugular. He saw on a crime show once that ear to ear would do the trick. It would be long and deep enough to end his life in a matter of seconds. His wife was gone, his kids gone, finger gone. Was this world worth the pain?
He takes the knife, and gets down on his knees. He holds it just under the left earlobe, hands shaking, eyes again closed, clenching his teeth. Can he end his own life? Can he actually do it?
Then the loud noises from the woods snap him out of his intrusive trance, and Peter realizes he can’t.
And if he can’t end his own life, then he needs to try and rationalize the taking of these lives. Tell himself that the people out here want to die. Is that murder? Murder is the taking of a life, but what if the life is handed to you. Then were you really taking it?
Not fully convinced, not even close, He gets up, and heads left into the dark woods of maple trees, birch trees, oak, and pine, towering high above, planted hundreds of years ago in some cases. Life that was here long before people massacred this world, and many would still live to see people become the massacred.
In the darkness of the woods, he’s reminded of the basement. Darkness like thick cement walls, impossible to escape. He breathes as deeply as he can. Telling himself there’s air in here. That darkness doesn’t devour oxygen, just light. Just illusions.
Giggling. Two voices. One says,
“Are you going to send us home? We’re so excited to go home, mister. We can hardly wait. We’re trying to hide, sir, but please find us soon. Please, we can’t wait to go home.”
And they both giggle, and he can hear jumping like schoolyard children finding out the cute boy wanted to take them to the spring dance. Jumping, ecstatic. Is it murder, if they are giving you their life? Begging you to?
He can’t see, and he holds his hand in front of his face, searching. The giggling, the laughter getting closer, and then one grabs him by his shoulders, and yells inches in his face.
“TAKE US HOME! TAKE US HOME!”
Her breath decrepit and dying, and she laughs maniacally. Peter screams, and a reflex sends the knife straight into her stomach. She gasps, surprised, and then she smiles. Teeth as dark as coal, with matching eyes, and she falls. And as she falls, she whispers, “
"Thank you,”
And the other giggles,
“Yay, yay, yay! She’s going home. Me next! Me next, mister!”
“Oh Christ,” Peter says, hands shaking. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is this?”
Then something hits him in the side of the head. It hurts, like a small piece of wood. A branch, maybe.
“Me next, mister. Come on, don’t lose your stomach now.” And she giggles, and he knows that after this, if he makes it through this, that those giggles will never leave. That every time he’s in the darkness of his bedroom, he will hear them. “Me next,” and laughter, and he’ll go crazy, he knows it now, he’ll go fucking insane.
Another piece of wood hits him in the side of head, now he’s bleeding above his left eyebrow, and he can feel the warm blood snaking down the side of his face. And then another hit in the same spot, a rock, a small rock and it stings so badly, and he screams,
“FUCK!”
And then the woman appears in front of him, “Me next!” and he tackles her to the forest floor, the crunch of dead leaves under the weight of her body, and he slits her throat. And then he falls on his back, and cries like a child.
“I can’t do this. Jesus, I can’t do this anymore.” And he cries, uncontrollable sobs, and he screams loudly, and the echo is answered only by the sound of the remaining five.
He stares up at the darkness of the towering trees, and hears the breeze, and again wonders if the knife to his own throat is the better option. Then he thinks maybe this crazy fucking cult is right, maybe there is something better because God knows it can’t get much worse than this.
Then his feet are taken. Two men, each with one foot in hand, drags him through the forest. Both of them cawing like crows. “CAW! CAW CAW!” and they drag him over rocks, and branches, and brambles. He screams, his back bleeding through his shirt from the rough ground, bleeding and his head is smashed off the side of a round boulder, before he exits the wooded area, and is dragged through the rocks of the river’s edge and into the water.
His head is held under, and then pulled up, “CAW! CAW” and then put under again. Then pulled up, “CAW! CAW!” then back under. He screams, and inhales cold lake water deep into his lungs, and when they pull him up again, they throw him to the pebbles, and he tries to breathe, but the water is caught deep in his lungs, like the whole world is a ziploc bag placed over his head. He wants to live. He knows at that moment, if air will return to his lungs, he will kill these two fucks. He wants to live.
And then he throws up water, that splashes on the rock in front of him, and some hits his face. And it’s a revelation. This is a religious experience, he thinks. And he looks at the two men in front of him. Both in long white clothing, like Scrooge’s pajamas.
Smiling delinquent, insane smiles, knowing that they did their job. If they wanted to be killed by the hands of another, then they needed to dig deep inside of his soul, and pull out his heart. Create a killer. And they could see in his eyes that that’s exactly what they’d done.
And they close their eyes, as Peter lunges at them, taking them both down and stabbing at both of their chests. A dozen times each, and he’s sweating, and they’re laughing. They hold each other's hands, and look into each other's eyes, and one says,
“See you on the other side, my brother.” And the other smiles before his life is cut out of him.
Four down three to go.
He lies by the water, and in the exhaustion of the game, closes his eyes. Like cement.
And when he wakes, two fingers are gone. Blood leaks heavily from them, and he can feel heat. Heat behind him. A small fire, made with two logs crossed like an x among the stones, and he knows what it's for. The blood loss is making his head light, and the water is salt, as good as poison, and he will do more damage if he drinks it.
He crawls to the fire, holding his left wrist, which now consists of a thumb, and a pinky, and nothing else. He places it in the fire, and again falls unconscious. When he wakes, his head throbs like a construction crew on the largest highway on the planet is fitted directly inside his skull, and they’re all working the jackhammer. A river of water next to him, but it would kill him, and wasn’t that God’s great joke.
He doesn’t know how long he’s out, but he’s sure it doesn’t matter. He needs to get up before he can again hunt. He needs to get up.
“You’re doing well.” The God says. “Three more, and you’ll have your life.”
He cranes his head to the right, and sees the God in the water up to his waist, wading his hands.
“That time you were only out for 20 minutes. You still have time.”
“I’m going to die.” Peter says weakly.
“It’s not God’s will, my son. You will live, if you decide to finish your work. That I promise you.”
And he closes his eyes again, “I will finish the job,” he says weakly, and when he openss them, The God is gone.
He pushes himself to his knees, and then to his feet and heads back towards the woods.
The sun rises above the water, and Peter looks at it. He dreamed about Melissa sitting on the hood of his car, smoking cigarettes with a black leather skirt. So many years ago, God she was beautiful. And he dreamed about his son being born, cutting the umbilical cord, and holding him and whispering in his ears that he’d never let him go.
His left hand is wrapped in gauze, and it looks like there are no fingers left. But he’s alive, at least he thinks he is.
He gets to his feet, and walks through the woods, and as he exits, there are seven bodies lying in a row in the open field next to the barn. By the door of the barn, The God claps slowly.
“I did it?”
“You did.”
“Only lost four fingers.”
“Not bad.”
And he looks at their faces, there is peace in them.
“Is this real?”
“It is.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s my home. I’m here to find those who are in need. Do you want a
home?”
He looks at The God, or the man, or whoever, or whatever he was. And before he can speak his head is bobbing slowly up and down, and he’s on his knees. Crying.
The God walks up to him and places his hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll need a new congregation. Would you like to join me on a recruitment mission?”
“I would. And then I’ll get to go home?”
“You will, son. You will join them in due time.”
--------------------------------------------------------------
Title: A Game of Faith
Genre: Fiction/Crime Fiction
Age Range: 18+
Word Count: Approx 40k (Not finished yet)
Author Name: Eric Johnson
Why It’s A Good Fit: This is a short story collection that mainly connects via the same small town. After checking out the Trident Media website, I see an interest in connected short fiction which I believe this collection falls into. It focuses on the absurd, on characters in difficult positions, and also on blurring those lines between good and evil, right and wrong.
The Hook: What would you do if you were put in these positions?
Synopsis: In this collection of short stories, you’ll find characters, many outsiders, put into positions that would question anyone’s faith and sense of morality. In an industrial town hit hard by the recession, the shockwave that is sent through Annandale has no prejudice. It affects everyone in different ways, some worse than others. The positions that many are put through will leave you asking what you would do in their position.
Target Audience: Lover’s of crime fiction. I’m heavily influenced by the works of Dennis Lehane, David Adams Richards, and Stephen King, among others. The target audience is not those who are looking for stories that are wrapped up pretty with a bow.
Bio: Eric Johnson is the author of the short story collection, There’s Gold In Those Hills. Growing up in a small post-industrial town, and reading the works of authors such as Dennis Lehane, Stephen King, David Adams Richards and more, has influenced his characters and stories. Eric writes about characters who face moral dilemmas, and asks the reader to think about their positions and what they would do in their place, because as we all know, good and bad aren’t black and white.
Education: BA (Journalism, Communications)
Experience: Published one short story collection with Ibis Publishing titled There’s Gold In Those Hills
A Game Of Faith
He doesn’t feel any pain initially. Just shock, as the finger is cut from his hand and lies on the dirty barn floor separate from the rest of his body. But the shock is quickly replaced, and he screams. A scream that hasn’t emanated from the back of his throat since he was a boy, and his older brother locked him in the basement for six hours as he went out drinking with his friends. Darkness and cold, and all the monsters that kids imagine in their heads to the point where the distinction between those fears and reality begin to run perpendicular. The noises, the sounds, the foundation of the house are all ghosts who have been waiting for a moment alone with a ten year old boy who is locked, without sight, and without hope.
But now he sees true evil standing inches away from his face, smiling with crooked teeth and an emptiness in his eyes that make him feel cold, helpless, like there are no succession of words in the English language, or any language for that matter, that could get him out of this. He’s here, wherever here is.
And the man talks to him in riddles. He presents himself as a God or a brother, or son, or emissary. He talks about a God who enjoys death, hunting, enjoys blood that soaks into the dirt until it can’t, and then floods the earth. He’s speaking about man. The duality of man. The breaking of man’s spirit, and how many things a man will do that he swore he’d never do. How many ways he can make a man question his faith, his judgment, and his whole world. He tells Peter to simply call him, the God, for that is what he is playing.
“These eight behind me, know this is just the beginning,” the God says, as he grabs the finger from the floor and taps Peter on the forehead with it. Then he points to a row of four men and four women standing behind him in dirty clothes. Dirty white clothes, streaked with dirt and mud, and their faces, the same.
The God takes a knife from the back of his pants, and stands up slowly, a crack of his knee is heard. The screaming has stopped, but now the pain begins to throb like a speed induced heartbeat. The heartbeat that’s about to come out of his throat any time now.
“Faith is broken too easily. We believe until someone gets sick, and then we blame. We believe until we lose love, then we blame. We believe until we’re robbed of our humanity, one limb at a time,” The God holds the finger up, and smiles. “And then we blame. But these folks here are believers. Their spirit cannot be crushed. It cannot be broken. And a faith that absolute, deserves divine reward. And tonight they shall receive it.”
The God grabs the knife and walks to the far end of the row. There’s a man with a shaggy beard of matte black, with white strands down the middle, under his chin ,and eyes that are staring straight ahead, no fear that Peter can see.
The God rubs the man’s hair, and kisses him on the lips. A deep one, and he slips his tongue into the man’s mouth before slitting his throat and watching him drop to his knees.
“You see this?” The God says, “This woman next to him is his sister. They shared a womb, and shared their 37 years on this planet together. Not a single evening spent apart. Now, this would crush you,no?”
Peter is panting now, and he can feel acid and bile climbing up his stomach, slowly but surely. His eyes water, pushing out and down his cheeks and oxygen refuses to enter his body. He feels like he's on the moon, or another planet. He feels like he’s in the dark basement, and everything is closing in on him. The world is closing in on him.
“This would crush you, no?” The God repeats. And Peter nods his head. It would crush him. He’s already lost his faith. Most of his faith left with his finger, and the rest just exited the strangers throat. Spilled on the barn floor. Liquidated.
“Now look at her?”
He does.
“Nothing. She cannot be shaken because her faith cannot be shaken. That is divine faith, sir. Faith is the belief in something that you cannot see. It is the belief in something no matter what goes wrong on this planet. If you believe, and you have faith, it isn’t a matter of what can keep it. It’s a matter of what can break it. And for these here, the answer is simple. Nothing. Now, let me ask you? How is your faith since losing your finger, and watching this man die?
Peter’s jaw feels wired shout, and he stares.
“You must answer before we begin our game of faith.”
He tries to speak, but his throat is dry and closed and at first the words come out in an unintelligible croak.
“Try again,” The God says.
“I-I still have faith.” He doesn't know why he says that, but he does. A last feeble attempt at rebellion.
“Do you?”
“Yes”
“Well we will see at the end of this evening, whether you lose your faith, or your head. Because sir, you cannot keep them both.” And he laughs. “Follow me my loyal servants.” He says and opens a large steel door, and allows the remaining seven to leave.
“Start running.”
And they take off. The God closes the door, and returns to the nine fingered man. Returns to Peter.
He leans down in front of him, his finger still in hand. He looks around, and up at the steel rafters and around the old barn, like he’s deep in thought. Peter is shaking, and now the pain is deep, and he feels sick, drenched with sweat. The God hauls a black lighter from his breast pocket and lights it. “We’ll need to cauterize that wound before I explain what’s going to happen.”
“Please, no. God, no.” He sobs like a helpless child. “Please.”
The God grabs his hand in his, and his grip is tight, and mean, like he could tear his arm from the rest of his body without trouble. His hands are calloused and rough, and his knuckles have strands of dark hair. He smells like turpentine, mixed with sweat, and other God awful scents that make him feel sick.
He holds the flame from the lighter, and stares into the man’s eyes as he places the flame on the open wound. The nine fingered man screams with primality, like an animal. Screams loud. And after five seconds, the God takes the lighter away, and Peter finally throws up in front of him, before falling in the puddle. The God stands up, and drops the knife that he used to cut his finger, to the ground, inches from his face. A splash of vomit, hits his cheek and crawls down.
“God has asked me to find you, Peter. He’s asked me to find you, and see if you’re worth saving.”
“W-why me?” He says weakly. “Wh-y me?”
“Well now, isn’t that a question, Peter. Isn’t that a question. It is five minutes to 11,” The God looks at his watch. “At 11, we will start a game of faith. A religious experience, if you will. That is if you want to live. Do you want that, sir?”
He looks down, and Peter nods his head, slowly rising from the puddle of bile, and chunks of previous meals. He’s on his knees, his face caked in slime, tears in his eyes, but now obedient. No longer screaming, no longer hoping. He’s listening.
“The seven out in the field want to die, Peter. They want to because death is but just the beginning. They’re happy to die at your hands, Peter. So, you will have to kill them. They will make a game of it. They will run, and they will hide. They know these woods, and these fields, and the river’s edge. They know the grass, the wheat, the pebbles on the shore. They know it all. So they will make a game of it. And you sir, will have the evening to kill all seven. And every hour, you will lose another finger, if the seven are not dead. Do you understand?”
Peter stares at him, stares into his eyes to see if he can find any humanity, to see if there’s anything at all except an empty void. And there’s none. This man, this thing, this God, can not be bartered or bribed. There is nothing in this world that will keep him from doing this. Nothing. Seven people, he thinks. Jesus, this has to be a dream. Seven people. Kill seven people before the sun rises or lose fingers, and then his life. Kill or be killed. Either way, he know he’s royally fucked.
Peter, finding strength he didn’t know existed, stands up slowly, and grabs the knife beside him. The God smiles, like he’s two steps ahead at all times.
“I know what you’re thinking, Peter. Kill me and make a run for it.” He laughs. “You don’t know where you are, but I'll tell you this you're far away from home. And the seven have been instructed to hunt you down if you do not begin your hunt. Like I said, they know every inch of this land. For this is our home.” And he rubs Peter’s shoulder, and looks back at his watch. “Let the hunt begin.”
Peter drags his feet, and opens the door as a soft breeze feels like heaven on his skin. He closes his eyes, and sucks the clean air, deep into his lungs. This could be beautiful, he thinks, a world away from the world. And when his eyes open, he hears the rustling of footsteps, and soft giggles from the women, and bird calling from the men. Leaves crackling under foot, and the water streaming until it forks into a river, and leaves this place behind.
He walks with the knife, the grip sticking to his palm, trying to accept that this is reality and not a horrid dream. But it’s too vivid, much too vivid. For a moment before the hunt, he thinks about taking the knife and slicing his jugular. He saw on a crime show once that ear to ear would do the trick. It would be long and deep enough to end his life in a matter of seconds. His wife was gone, his kids gone, finger gone. Was this world worth the pain?
He takes the knife, and gets down on his knees. He holds it just under the left earlobe, hands shaking, eyes again closed, clenching his teeth. Can he end his own life? Can he actually do it?
Then the loud noises from the woods snap him out of his intrusive trance, and Peter realizes he can’t.
And if he can’t end his own life, then he needs to try and rationalize the taking of these lives. Tell himself that the people out here want to die. Is that murder? Murder is the taking of a life, but what if the life is handed to you. Then were you really taking it?
Not fully convinced, not even close, He gets up, and heads left into the dark woods of maple trees, birch trees, oak, and pine, towering high above, planted hundreds of years ago in some cases. Life that was here long before people massacred this world, and many would still live to see people become the massacred.
In the darkness of the woods, he’s reminded of the basement. Darkness like thick cement walls, impossible to escape. He breathes as deeply as he can. Telling himself there’s air in here. That darkness doesn’t devour oxygen, just light. Just illusions.
Giggling. Two voices. One says, “Are you going to send us home? We’re so excited to go home, mister. We can hardly wait. We’re trying to hide, sir, but please find us soon. Please, we can’t wait to go home.”
And they both giggle, and he can hear jumping like schoolyard children finding out the cute boy wanted to take them to the spring dance. Jumping, ecstatic. Is it murder, if they are giving you their life? Begging you to?
He can’t see, and he holds his hand in front of his face, searching. The giggling, the laughter getting closer, and then one grabs him by his shoulders, and yells inches in his face.
“TAKE US HOME! TAKE US HOME!”
Her breath decrepit and dying, and she laughs maniacally. Peter screams, and a reflex sends the knife straight into her stomach. She gasps, surprised, and then she smiles. Teeth as dark as coal, with matching eyes, and she falls. And as she falls, she whispers, “
"Thank you,” And the other giggles, “Yay, yay, yay! She’s going home. Me next! Me next, mister!”
“Oh Christ,” Peter says, hands shaking. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is this?”
Then something hits him in the side of the head. It hurts, like a small piece of wood. A branch, maybe.
“Me next, mister. Come on, don’t lose your stomach now.” And she giggles, and he knows that after this, if he makes it through this, that those giggles will never leave. That every time he’s in the darkness of his bedroom, he will hear them. “Me next,” and laughter, and he’ll go crazy, he knows it now, he’ll go fucking insane.
Another piece of wood hits him in the side of head, now he’s bleeding above his left eyebrow, and he can feel the warm blood snaking down the side of his face. And then another hit in the same spot, a rock, a small rock and it stings so badly, and he screams,
“FUCK!”
And then the woman appears in front of him, “Me next!” and he tackles her to the forest floor, the crunch of dead leaves under the weight of her body, and he slits her throat. And then he falls on his back, and cries like a child.
“I can’t do this. Jesus, I can’t do this anymore.” And he cries, uncontrollable sobs, and he screams loudly, and the echo is answered only by the sound of the remaining five.
He stares up at the darkness of the towering trees, and hears the breeze, and again wonders if the knife to his own throat is the better option. Then he thinks maybe this crazy fucking cult is right, maybe there is something better because God knows it can’t get much worse than this.
Then his feet are taken. Two men, each with one foot in hand, drags him through the forest. Both of them cawing like crows. “CAW! CAW CAW!” and they drag him over rocks, and branches, and brambles. He screams, his back bleeding through his shirt from the rough ground, bleeding and his head is smashed off the side of a round boulder, before he exits the wooded area, and is dragged through the rocks of the river’s edge and into the water.
His head is held under, and then pulled up, “CAW! CAW” and then put under again. Then pulled up, “CAW! CAW!” then back under. He screams, and inhales cold lake water deep into his lungs, and when they pull him up again, they throw him to the pebbles, and he tries to breathe, but the water is caught deep in his lungs, like the whole world is a ziploc bag placed over his head. He wants to live. He knows at that moment, if air will return to his lungs, he will kill these two fucks. He wants to live.
And then he throws up water, that splashes on the rock in front of him, and some hits his face. And it’s a revelation. This is a religious experience, he thinks. And he looks at the two men in front of him. Both in long white clothing, like Scrooge’s pajamas.
Smiling delinquent, insane smiles, knowing that they did their job. If they wanted to be killed by the hands of another, then they needed to dig deep inside of his soul, and pull out his heart. Create a killer. And they could see in his eyes that that’s exactly what they’d done.
And they close their eyes, as Peter lunges at them, taking them both down and stabbing at both of their chests. A dozen times each, and he’s sweating, and they’re laughing. They hold each other's hands, and look into each other's eyes, and one says,
“See you on the other side, my brother.” And the other smiles before his life is cut out of him.
Four down three to go.
He lies by the water, and in the exhaustion of the game, closes his eyes. Like cement.
And when he wakes, two fingers are gone. Blood leaks heavily from them, and he can feel heat. Heat behind him. A small fire, made with two logs crossed like an x among the stones, and he knows what it's for. The blood loss is making his head light, and the water is salt, as good as poison, and he will do more damage if he drimks it.
He crawls to the fire, holding his left wrist, which now consists of a thumb, and a pinky, and nothing else. He places it in the fire, and again falls unconscious. When he wakes, his head throbs like a construction crew on the largest highway on the planet is fitted directly inside his skull, and they’re all working the jackhammer. A river of water next to him, but it would kill him, and wasn’t that God’s great joke.
He doesn’t know how long he’s out, but he’s sure it doesn’t matter. He needs to get up before he can again hunt. He needs to get up.
“You’re doing well.” The God says. “Three more, and you’ll have your life.”
He cranes his head to the right, and sees the God in the water up to his waist, wading his hands.
“That time you were only out for 20 minutes. You still have time.”
“I’m going to die.” Peter says weakly.
“It’s not God’s will, my son. You will live, if you decide to finish your work. That I promise you.”
And he closes his eyes again, “I will finish the job,” he says weakly, and when he openss them, The God is gone.
He pushes himself to his knees, and then to his feet and heads back towards the woods.
The sun rises above the water, and Peter looks at it. He dreamed about Melissa sitting on the hood of his car, smoking cigarettes with a black leather skirt. So many years ago, God she was beautiful. And he dreamed about his son being born, cutting the umbilical cord, and holding him and whispering in his ears that he’d never let him go.
His left hand is wrapped in gauze, and it looks like there are no fingers left. But he’s alive, at least he thinks he is.
He gets to his feet, and walks through the woods, and as he exits, there are seven bodies lying in a row in the open field next to the barn. By the door of the barn, The God claps slowly.
“I did it?”
“You did.”
“Only lost four fingers.”
“Not bad.”
And he looks at their faces, there is peace in them.
“Is this real?”
“It is.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s my home. I’m here to find those who are in need. Do you want a home?”
He looks at The God, or the man, or whoever, or whatever he was. And before he can speak his head is bobbing slowly up and down, and he’s on his knees. Crying.
The God walks up to him and places his hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll need a new congregation. Would you like to join me on a recruitment mission?”
“I would. And then I’ll get to go home?”
“You will, son. You will join them in due time.”
Two Lives
We floated lazily along the water in a canoe. The river was calm, and it was August. I smoked a cigar, and nursed a warm beer and looked out at the vast openness of it all.
My skin burning, but I didn’t care.
Maple trees, and oak trees, rose up on either side of the riverbanks like a crowd of colossus onlookers. This town, a prison in so many ways, yet at this time of the year folks would flock from all edges of the world to come and tell us how lucky we were. How we had it all. How we lived in paradise.
One beer after another and soon the prison sentence was over. College awaited, and at that moment I didn’t know how to feel. Comfort and change at odds with each other. Fighting a bloody fight at the center of my gut. This feeling, I thought, this feeling right now, was one that had consumed so many. The ones that almost got out. The ones who were destined to be great, or at least better, stayed behind because it was comfortable. And comfort could easily be disguised as truth, and happiness. I could feel it now. Christ, could I ever feel it.
Greg was next to me, Yankees hat on backwards looking out and looking in. He wasn’t leaving. He was staying, and the openness to him had a different meaning than it did to me. To me it was showing a path out. A sparkling diamond path. A thank you for the years. A bidding farewell. But for Brent, it was something different. His hand brushed the water lazily, and conversation had come and gone. I didn’t know what to say, because part of me believed that he was angry at me. As though he was feeling like a baby left at a stranger’s door. Abandonment. A breaking of the bond. A motherless child.
And so I let him internalize what he needed to internalize and drank beer, and let the sunshine burn my skin.
Once we reached the beach, we paddled to the shoreline, then dragged the canoe to his car, and strapped it to the top. Still quiet. Still distant. Inside, we drove through town, window down and music blasting. Drove down the old roads, we’d driven so many times.
Finally, he said, “You wanna go to The Crop Circle?”
And I said, “What for?”
“I’m feeling like I want to fight. You?”
And as he looked at me, there was something dark in his eyes. Like this was a test. He was telling me to do this, or I was already gone. A liberal pussy college kid, who forgot where he came from. Here, in this town. We fought and we bled. And in other towns, other cities, people read books, talked about their feelings, and expected the world not to hurt them, because they had never hurt it. But they had hurt it, hadn’t they?
And so I said, “Sure man, let’s do it.” And I tried to smile like something wasn’t broken. Like I wasn’t being torn in two. This was a nexus. I was in the middle of two lives. And I was hoping my eyes were camouflaging me from how I actually felt. But eyes couldn’t be camouflaged, there were just those who looked hard enough and those who didn’t.
We crossed the bridge and turned left onto the reserve. We drove for about five minutes before reaching a church of immense stature. A steeple high in the air, casting judgements. Casting aspersions. There we turned right. In the back of a small rundown house, there was a circle of dead grass where two boys hit each other with all they had.
What was going on in their heads? The girl that got away? The absent father? The drug-addled mother? Lack of money? Lack of friends? Lack of hope for a future? This was a prison to them. A prison partially of their own making, but a generational one too. A prison handed down by the father’s of their father’s, like a blood ritual.
Brent walked up to Jerry, who ran the backyard club, and said, “Hey brother, I’d like to get in.”
Jerry nodded, taking a bite out of a hotdog, and said, “Right on, right on, brother. We’ll get you in next.”
“Against who?”
“Uh, how about Jessie?”
Jessie weighed about 90 lbs soaking wet, and he was shadow boxing under the shade of an oak tree about fifty yards away. Greg laughed, and said sure. Greg was bigger. But I’d seen Jesse at school put his fists up against anyone, no matter their size, or their ability to beat him senseless. And a kid who had nothing to lose, was unpredictable. And unpredictability, could win fights. And I could already see Greg palling it up with the guys, and drinking a beer, and eating a hot dog. I thought that was a bad idea, but at the same time, kinda thought that seeing Greg get his nose busted up by Jesse, had potential to be quite a funny scene. And hell, I was leaving in a week. I wanted a show.
Greg won the match, but certainly not by a landslide. Jesse connected two or three times, one of those times busting just above Greg’s left eyebrow, blood leaking down his face. But Greg got the best of him, and Jesse eventually, grasping his stomach, put his hand up to say, “enough,” and went back to shadow boxing under the oak, preparing for his next match.
Greg sat on the deck afterwards, feeling a sense of pride at the display of blood on his face. Like the blood was his cross to bear. The feeling of it leaking down the side of his face, the understanding that the college kids that I’d soon surround myself with would be taken aback, and disgusted at the sight of it. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t, but it provided a sense of relief, thinking that they’d be queasy at the sight of him.
“Good fight, man.” I said, and he laughed,
“Squirrely little fucker is tough. Shouldn’t have drank all those beers.” Then it was my turn to laugh.
Jerry was at the center of the crop circle now, bouncing around with his small mixed martial arts gloves, asking someone, anyone to come and square off against him. Waving to the crowd of a dozen or so guys, who were pretending to be too locked into deep conversation to hear him, or notice him.
Then I thought about Greg, and this town. The mountains in the distance, the water, the bridge, the fights, and all of it. The good, and the bad. And realized that for better or worse, this town had molded me. And maybe I’d leave and never fit in. Maybe the intellectuals would see a fucking hillbilly mongoloid, and send me packing back home, to the wilderness, where I belonged. Or maybe I’d fit in just fine, and forget about this place. But he’d never forget. He knew that.
“I’ll go.” I said, and Jer gave me a look that was a split between feeling impressed, and thinking that I had some kind of death wish.
“Dude, Jerry’s never lost.” Greg said to me, and I told him I didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t here to win. I was just here because this was my home, and I spoke the same language as the rest, because I’d lived the same life.
I wrapped my hands and put on the gloves, and I went toe to toe with a certified killer in a small patch of dead grass known as the crop circle. I looked over at Greg and winked, and he looked pale as a ghost. But what he didn’t know was that I was expecting, I was expecting a scar, and when I left, I didn’t want to hide who I was, I wanted them to know exactly who I was.
The first round started and Jerry landed a brutal jab right between my eyes. The world was distorted, then he landed another. Under my right eyebrow, bursting, blood ran down my face. I laughed, Christ, I hadn’t laughed that hard in years, if ever.
“You’re fucking crazy man,” Jerry said, and I wiped the blood away from face with the dirty glove, and urged him to continue.
With each blow was a reminder of who I was. There was my mom packing up her suitcase and leaving us. My brother or old man not able to stay in the house, so there was me, begging mom not to go, as she cried and said she had no choice. The next blow was me holding her so tight, and squeezing my eyes closed hard enough that they watered, and praying that I was again a child, and my mom was coming into my room to tell me she loved me and tucking me in tightly.
Then I felt anger flush in my face, the laughter gone. The memories so close they were like a shadow over the present, like an eclipse, and I didn’t know where I was, or when I was, or what the hell was going on. There was just blood and memories, and I landed a hook right under Jerry’s jaw that had him stumbling back, outside the ring into the green grass, the living.
And there was a memory in his eyes too, and they flashed between anger and sadness, contempt and denial. The fight wasn’t me against him, it was my pain against his pain, my hurt against his hurt.
Then he hit me again, and I was standing at the edge of a great field, a hundred acres or more. Playing a game of burning the dry grass and stomping it out before it took off like a flash of lightning. I had a brand new shirt bought for my birthday and a bottle of gatorade. I’m too slow and like an inferno the field is set on fire, flames higher than my head, smoke as dark as midnight. The older guys, who I thought were friends are bailing, running down the street leaving me. I’m taking my shirt off, brand new and helpless smashing it against the flames, my gatorade bottle doing nothing, but I’m trying. I’m helpless, friendless, and in fear of lighting the whole town of fire, I’m crying.
And each hit brings pain and stinging, and memories. But it’s nice, it’s freeing because they’ve been locked up for so long. The wind and the summer, and the people, they’re all real but mirages as well because soon they’ll be in the rearview, and soon I’ll see once and for all, if the grass is truly greener or if every town, every city, is just different shades of same damn colour, and if it isn’t actually location that changes a person, because in reality we’re running from ourselves. I’ll find out soon, if the problem is the town or the person.
I make it two rounds, and Jerry ends it with a shot to my midsection, which instantly swells my ribs and I hit the burned patch hard, on my knees, and tell him to stop. “I’m done,” I say out of breath, “I’m finished.”
Jerry reaches out a hand, and pulls me up. “You’re crazy you know that?”
“I do now,” I say and we laugh, and he pats me on the back. Then Greg hands me a beer, and looks at me with a new found respect, like he never could have guessed that I’d have it in me.
I sit back down on the deck, putting a paper towel up against the cut.
“You might need stitches,” Greg says,
“Worse things than scars.”
He goes quiet for a minute, and I lay back on the deck staring up at a sky of unbelievable blue. Clear. No clouds. Just endless blue.
In a few days, I’ll be rolling along highway 11, looking back, and wondering at which road side sign it’ll be before this town leaves me like a possessed spirit, and I’m reborn.
“You better come back and visit.”
I tell him I will.
“Don’t forget about this place. Don’t forget about who you are.”
And I think about the deep gash above my eye, and I think about stitches, and scars, and realize that this place will be on my skin for the rest of my life.
“I couldn’t even if I tried.”
Invisible Hands
He was growing tired of this town. The way the quiet was the quiet of unrest, not of peace. Annandale felt like an old school bomb in the seconds between the end of the countdown and the explosion. Like it was waiting to blow out the windows and throw shards of glass all over these dirty streets, and through skin. And the problem was that he didn’t know why he felt like this, or when the explosion would come, just that he was sure it would.
And the unrest he felt while patrolling the streets, carried with him to his home. Jeffrey Peters pulled into his driveway just after 3am, and sat there for a while. His hands gripping the steering wheel, not wanting to go in, but not wanting to stay out. He was caught in a limbo that was getting harder and harder to pull himself out of. Angie was sleeping, and so was Catrina in her princess bed, and bright pink bedroom. And he told himself he’d grab a quick shower, and then he’d hop in Catrina’s bed and sleep there for awhile, and try to sneak out before Angie awoke.
He just couldn’t deal with her anymore. As strong as a person as he thought he was, she beat him. She defiled him, and weakened him, and broke his spirit. And what came flooding out of that broken spirit, was exhaustion, not exhaustion of the eyes, and the need for sleep (though a good night’s rest wouldn’t hurt any) but an exhaustion deep inside. One that just didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to try, an exhaustion that made it hard for his feet to move, one after the other, and take his body from one point to another. It was an exhaustion that made breathing tiring, and living often unbearable. And he’d never felt that patrolling the streets, even after the shit he’d seen, he could pull himself out in time, but Angie, Angie would kill him and break him far before any low-life small town gang banger would, that’s for fucking sure.
Jeffrey took a deep breath, ungripped the steering wheel, opened the door and walked into his house. Angie had left a note on the kitchen counter telling him that there was meatloaf in the fridge if he was hungry, and there was a small heart on the bottom of the post-it note. He crumpled it up, threw it in the garbage and grabbed a bottle of beer and planted his ass on the couch. He didn’t turn the TV on, or even bother looking at the remote, he just stared into the blackness and wondered if this was what death felt like. A quick thick darkness of nothing. But then he figured death didn’t feel like anything, the pain of feeling was a curse of the living. Death was unburdening yourself of those curses. Then his next thought was, whether or not this was what depression felt like. Not sadness, not waterfalls from the eyes, just a loss of meaning, and a loss of caring whether you ever found that meaning. Because wasn’t that what hope was? Happiness. It wasn’t just being happy during every waking moment, it was the knowing that something that could make you happy was just around the corner, and that saved you from despair. But what if nothing ever made you happy again? He took another sip of his beer.
Upstairs Angie wasn’t asleep. She too, felt like this house was becoming more of a catacomb then a place to breathe, laugh, and escape from a world that was often too cold and too fucking mean. But it wasn’t the meanness of this house that made her sick, and it wasn’t the meanness that had her debating whether or not to take Angie to her parents' place in DC. It was just cold, like the flame had died. And she didn’t know when it happened, but it happened and she couldn’t get it back.
There was a part of her that wanted to walk down those stairs at that moment, and sit on the couch and just put her head on his shoulders, and tell him that whatever was eating him alive, that she could take some of the burden, she could carry some of his poison in her veins, and though they’d both be sick, neither would be dead, and that love would ultimately, in time, push the poison out. But she couldn’t. There was some kind of barrier keeping her from doing what she knew was the right thing to do, what she knew could save their marriage, but she couldn’t, or she didn’t want to. And maybe that was as sure a sign as any, that there was nothing left. She cried silently in bed, and told herself in the morning, she’d call her parents.
After two beers, Jeffrey got up and looked at the stairs leading upstairs. And he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t bring himself to carry his body up there, and so he didn’t. He grabbed his belt, his keys and he left. And it saddened him to realize that the walk away from the house was much more liberating than the walk to. And as he backed out, he felt he could breathe again. Like those invisible hands that were gripping his throat moments ago, had let go, and decided to let him live.
Empty Bottle Saviors - Chapter 1
They parked in front of The Dollar bar on the corner of Main and King. Chris in the front seat smoked Indian cigarettes from across the river, his veins protruding from his neck with each deep inhale as Trai waved the smoke away next to him. “How do you smoke that shit?” He asked, and Chris shrugged his shoulders, looking out the driver’s window, waiting for the man they were here to see.
In the back, Jake was seated in the middle, and snoring away, dreaming of bathtubs filled with money, and big burly men, and a world where he didn’t have to lie about who he wanted to fuck. A world where he wouldn’t be persecuted for the thoughts that made his dick hard.
“Where’s Luke?” Trai asked, and Chris sighed deep, feeling that all too familiar blackout anger, coming closer like a thick black storm.
“With the bitch, I imagine.”
“Fucking dude is whipped.” And Chris thought about that term, and he was going to give Luke a whipping alright, he was going to pistol whip his mouth, and watch that fresh scarlet blood drip into the snow, and he’d watch his eyes go big and face pale, and he’d watch that cocky smirk he wore like a badge of honour, disappear into the cold hard ground. If he didn’t smarten up soon, Chris would kill him, as simple as that.
“Oh, shit, C, I think that’s him?” And Trai pointed to the man exiting the bar, and then he slapped Jake’s leg, and Jake bolted awake. “Is that him?” Jake asked, half-asleep “Is that the fucking Piano Tan?” And he laughed, and then Chris laughed, letting Luke fade into the back of his mind for a while.
He loved this shit, and he knew that because he loved it, there was something wrong, something about the internal mechanisms in his head, or the wiring in his frontal lobe that was wrong. He knew that if he were to see a therapist, and let the therapist give him the rorschach test, those black blobs would be busted skulls, and blood red rain dripping down and running heavily into the sewer, and a man with with a blonde crew cut, smoking Indian cigarettes. A man who could be king. A man who could be king of a town that just birthed him in order to watch him die. But he wouldn’t die. His skin, and his muscles, and his blood would be around for a long time, and even when his body eventually committed the ultimate betrayal, his name would whisper in the wind, it would flow through the smokestacks of the pulp mill. His name would be uttered with fear on the playgrounds of the schools, where kids would look around them before whispering, like he was bloody fucking mary or something. They’d tell stories about him, and when they went camping and roasted marshmallows under a starlit sky, and talked about deranged killers with hooks for hands, who dragged themselves across soft summer soil and scraped tents, and killed kids, they’d call that freak Chris. Even if they didn’t know why, they would call him Chris because they’d know subconsciously, that he was the monster that made monsters hide under the bed or inside the closet in the first place.
Piano Tan stumbled down King waving goodbye to no one because no one saw him out. He smiled and laughed at either a joke in his head, or a joke heard back in the bar that had come back up his body like acid reflux. He laughed and whistled, and sang, “Baby all the lights have turned on you, now you’re in the center of the stage.” And he whistled again, and snapped his fingers. He lit a cigarette, and then leaned up on the brick wall of the antique shop, and let it flow down the cracks of the bricks, onto the collection of weeds that sprouted near the entrance of the shop. “Everybody loves you now.”
“Big crowd tonight?” A voice said from behind the man. Piano Tan jumped and turned at the same time. “Jesus, hide your little prick would ya?”
The guys in the car laughed, and Chris smiled, making the man nervous. Nervous for walking in the bar that evening, for singing Billy Joel songs to a few drunken blue collars, and walking out whistling Dixie, when there was a debt owed.
“You look nervous, or maybe you’re just cold. Lucky for you we’re a man short tonight, so why don’t you hop on in.”
Greg Whistler, aka Piano Tan, because of his dark Italian complexion and love for Billy Joel, felt his heart hit the cage of his chest like a feral animal trying to escape imprisonment. Chris stared at him with those psychotic eyes, never wavering, never blinking, just honing in. He continued to smoke his cigarette with his left arm on the door of the car, like he was patience personified, like he had all the time in the world. But that was the most frightening part of the man. Because he wanted you to think that, he wanted you to feel comfortable, so that when he went to town on you, you were shocked, and betrayed, and that mixed with the physical pain of his hard knuckles that never bruised, and his shit-kicker boots with the pointed heels, was made all the worse because you never thought he'd do it.
Uh, I’m alright, thanks guys. I just live around the corner.”
Hey, it’s no problem,” and Jake in the back opened the door and patted the seat next to him. Piano Tan took a deep breath and looked both ways, seeking something. Salvation in the form of a cop car, or salvation in the form of an out. But there was neither. There was just King St. A closed antique shop, closed furniture store, closed post office, closed high school, closed law firm and accounting offices. The world was asleep. The world except for the Saviors. So he hung his head in defeat, taking one last whiff of the cool evening air, and telling himself to remember it. And then he walked into the car, hoping the calmness was real, and that he had a fighting chance to explain himself.
Where The Heroes Always Win
Jacob read her stories of kings, queens, princes and princesses, foreign lands, kingdoms, cobblestone paths, swords of steel, and fire breathing dragons. And even when Cassy began to look frightened, Jacob smiled at her and said, “Don’t worry, Cassy. In stories like these, the heroes win.” And she would relax, the tensity in her shoulders disappearing like smoke in the wind. She’d lay back in the bed, and let her brother finish the story. Sometimes she listened, and sometimes she just looked at him, and thanked whoever resided above those fluffy white clouds, that he was her brother. And Jake looked at her and felt the same way. He loved her, but he wished he were older. He wished he wasn’t flunking out of school, he wished living wasn’t so goddamn expensive, and he wished that they could hop in a car, or find a cobblestone path and disappear.
Things had never been good between their folks, but recently it had reached code red. Jake, as a younger version of himself, would lay in bed the way Cassidy was now laying in bed, and he’d pray that they’d stay together, and he could see in her eyes that she was thinking the same. Thinking that they should stay together because that’s what homes were. That’s what a nuclear family was. It was a mom and a dad, and a boy and a girl. It felt right, or at least, she thought it should feel right. She wanted it to feel right, and Jake wanted to tell her that it would never feel the way she wanted it to, and that their best bet was that the old man fell down drunk one night at the bar and smashed his skull open, or that someone he owed money to decided that he was never going to pay it back, and did the job that Jake wished he could do. If he was older, broader in the shoulders, thicker in the waist. If he knew a martial art, or he owned a gun, or he had an escape plan. But he had none, and so as the screaming echoed downstairs, Jake read her stories, until she fell asleep, and then he wrapped his arm around her and laid, listening to her soft snores, and playing out a fantasy in his own head.
At school, Jake doodled all day in his black notebook. Story ideas for Cassy. Places free of industrial smoke, and devoid of unemployment slips, and decks of cards, and hard liquor, and inflation. Places where people were set up to succeed, not dominos, but stone pillars. And when he came out of his trance and looked up to see University representatives talking about chances, talking about jobs, and money, and handing out plain black or white shirts with the school’s logo, he felt sick. And he raised his hand, as one of the representatives, a skinny, tall 20 year old with greasy black hair, and thick spectacles, and shirt that hung loosely around his waist, said,
“Yes, sir?”
And he smiled, but behind that smile was something darker, and behind those eyes, were cell bars. Jake could see right through it, and he asked,
“How can I afford it?”
“Well, there are scholarships,”
Jake shook his head no.
“Well there are government loans, of course.”
“Oh yeah, so I got to school for four, five years on loans, and then what?”
“Well, you hopefully get a job.”
“Okay, and how much debt will I owe? And will I ever be able to pay it off? And what kinds of jobs will be waiting for me? What will they pay?”
And the greasy representative, chuckled nervously and wiped his acne filled forehead, before Mr. Andrews, told him that was enough, and opened the floor for other questions. Questions about majors, and dorm rooms. And he realized that these people were living in a fantasy world of their own too, they just didn’t know it. At least he knew he was creating fantasies. And did that make him better? No, he thought. Not better, but different. Different.
That evening he heard the door burst open downstairs, and angry slurs coming from the mouth of his drunken father. He heard an empty bottle smash against the floor, and eventually he heard his mother screaming. Cassy heard it too, but she was 10, and Jake told her to close her eyes and tried his best to get her lost, get her lost in the world he’d created. Get her lost so deeply inside of it, that anything outside of the fantasy was the real fantasy, and where she was was reality.
And when dishes began to smash, and when their mothers uncontrollable sobs travelled up the stairs like a demon, Jake told Cassy that it was her imagination. That this was the world, and he improvised talking about a great heroine making her way through a swift and brutal storm, where things smashed, and people screamed, and he made sure to remind her that good won. In the end, it would win but there were challenges that the heroes needed to face first, and once they made it through the many obstacles thrown at them, they would find,
“What?” Cassy asked. “What will they find at the end?”
And Jake looked at her, and he rubbed her soft cheeks, and looked at the innocence in her eyes and her smile made his heart shatter, and it broke him in so many pieces, and he hoped that she couldn’t read his eyes because if she did, she’d know something, something she wasn’t supposed to know. Not yet. Please stay a kid a little longer, he pleaded with himself, please.
“I can’t ruin the surprise, Cass. That’s part of the adventure.”
And that evening, again he laid with her, and he whispered, we’ll get out of here, Cass. I promise you, we’ll get out of here.
Then downstairs a gunshot echoed like a thunderclap. Cassy and Jake bolted upright as heavy footsteps climbed the stairs.
“I’m scared, Jake”
“No,” he whispered, “you’re a brave warrior, Cass. You’re an archer. A sword wielder, and this is the dragon, Cass. Once we defeat the dragon, we’ll be free. We’ll be free.”
“Then you’ll tell me what happens at the end, Jake?”
Then the door burst open, and the dragon stood in the entrance.
“Remember, Cass. Heroes always win in these stories.”
Secrets And Silence
Melissa looked into his eyes, making Jake feel warm and whole. Her legs curled around his, and he rubbed them softly, up and down with paint brush strokes, breathing her in. Her mouth only an inch from his, and her eyes locked on his lips, like she wanted to devour him. The winter winds blew outside and the world outside was cold and unforgiving, but inside this room it was just the two of them. And he never wanted to leave this room. He never wanted her face to move or her eyes to leave his mouth. He never wanted to stop smelling her breath and tasting it as it came out from her nose, and the small cracks of her lips in small, short, calm exhales.
But she did move as she climbed on top of him, her back arched, and her skin smooth. Jake didn’t know what to do with his hands because he wanted to touch her everywhere at once. She leaned in and kissed him, and he knew that at that moment he’d do anything she asked. When she kissed him like that, and moved her body on top of his, and let out moans, and rubbed her hair, and looked at him like a vampire, he would do anything. Melissa could lean into his ear, and tell him to kill. Kill the old man across the street, kill his wife, kill the dog that never stops barking throughout the night, kill for me and I’ll make you feel good. I’ll make all the bad dissipate into the air, and all that will remain is this, right here, right now. Will you kill for me, Jake? Will you? And he’d say yes, of course I will, anything. Anything for you.
Then she began to let the spit flow from her mouth into his. Letting it roll off her tongue onto his, and his legs shook from the excitement. “Please, don’t stop.” He said, “Please, God, don’t stop.” And she didn’t, the saliva continued to flow into his mouth and down into his throat, and he was inside of her, and she was inside of him, and he never knew anything could be so goddamn good. It was just a shame that when it felt that good, it wouldn’t last, and he could feel himself succumbing to the pleasure, but Melissa wasn’t nearly ready to end this. So she controlled the movements, and didn’t let him control the pace. Because whenever a man controlled the pace, pleasure only came for him, not for her. But when she was in control, she controlled everything. And her eyes told him that they weren’t finished, until she said they were finished, so slow down, cowboy, and enjoy the ride.
And he did. And when they were finished she rolled off to the side, and he panted, feeling the sweat on his forehead, and his chest. Breathing in deep, long inhales and exhales, feeling the world revolve around him, and she smiled next to him, her hand resting on the side of her face, and her other hand playing with Jake’s chest hairs. “How was that?” She said, and he looked at her, to see if she was being serious, before saying, “Best goddamn sex, I’ve ever had.” And Melissa laughed knowing that Jake said that almost every time. But she was happy, she was happy she could please him and make him pant like a parched dog. She liked that he laid there afterwards staring up at the ceiling, the gears in his head oiled and working, like he was thinking he found the answer to immortality. She could stare at him for half the night when he was like that, but it didn’t last long before his eyes were once again sunken, the bags deep and hollow, and his head a flurry of regrets, and pain. And then Melissa once again felt like an obstacle in his way, and wanted so badly to ask him what the fuck was going on? But she knew what’d he say, “It’s nothing,” or “I’ll figure it out,” And she wanted to scream in his face that that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to know him, and understand him, and tell him that love meant taking in the worst of a person as well as the best. It wasn’t just sex. It wasn’t just physical. It was metaphysical. It was philosophical. It was science and the study of the human mind. But he’d locked that part of himself away so long ago that she feared, he didn’t even know it was there anymore. Or if he did, he didn’t know what to do with it.
Then his phone buzzed, and Jake looked at it, and the calmness left his face like whiplash. And the world outside of these four walls, once again reminded him that it was real, it was harsh, and it was calling for him to get out into it, and brace the storm. So he got up and went to the closet, threw on a pair of jeans, and a black shirt.
“Where are you going?” Melissa asked, and he said, “out.”
“Where?”
“Out, I said. Christ.”
And Melissa could feel the tears begin to form in the corner of her eyes. but she wasn’t going to let them fall. Not tonight. She wasn’t going to be a story that he told his buddies at the bar, about how she was a great lay, but a typical fucking emotional woman. She wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction, because she had just been in control. And she knew that sooner or later she’d hold it, and he’d spill his guts and for the first time, she could look behind those eyes and understand the machinery inside his head.
“What’s going on, Jake? You know you can tell me, right?”
He looked at her and for a split second, she could see the side of him that she wanted, right there in his eyes. A softness, that wasn’t weak, because it pushed its way through the strength of a man’s silence. No, it wasn’t weak. It fought every single day to be seen. But the look was quickly replaced with cold, and he left without saying a word, his head slung low. And as Jake walked down the hall of the apartment building, he said to himself, “Soon Melissa, we’ll get out of here and I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you every single thing you want to know and I’ll look in your eyes to see what they feel and if they can withstand it, and if they can we’ll leave, and we’ll never come back. I just have something to deal with first.”
Jake arrived at The Dollar Bar ten minutes later, and saw Chris sitting at his booth in the far left corner, making the waitress, Angela Caissy feel uncomfortable with the way he talked, the way he flirted, and the way his hands grazed her ass as she walked away to grab him another beer. Then he looked over at Jake, and his eyes made him feel weak, like his knees would give out and within a second or two, his lips would caress the barroom floor. But he tried to remain steady because this man was a wolf, and a wolf loved weakness.
Chris wasn’t tall, he was only 5’9 and weighed about 200 pounds. He had a crew cut, and his hair was blonde. Tattoos crawled up his arms onto his neck with bible verses, judgment, an eye for an eye, and tribal art. His eyes were dark and even when he smiled and joked, his eyes looked like they didn’t belong to the rest of his face. They looked like mini-computers scanning you. Scanning your face, your body movements, the tensity in your shoulders, the hardness in your gut. Looking for enough data, to figure out who the hell you were, today. Because even if he knew you yesterday, he didn’t know you today.
Jake slid into the booth on the opposite end, And Chris asked him, “How’s it hanging, brother.”
And Jake said, “No complaints,” though he had several.
“That’s good. That’s good. Lots of people complaining these days. You know what I mean? Like remember when we was growing up, Jake? Folks didn’t complain, they just got the job done.”
And Jake nodded, though he didn’t agree. Personally he hated the generation strength bullshit. He found the arguments so tired, and full of shit. But he nodded, and Chris’s eyes scanned his, and he let out a small laugh. “Ya don’t agree?”
“I dunno, Chris. I guess.”
“Ah, don’t give me that shit, Jake. Tell me how you feel, you’ve always been smart. No need to be a yes, man.”
Jake sighed. He’d love to tell Chris the truth, the actual truth. That as a kid, he’d only felt bad for him, cause he lived on Hillside above the train tracks. Because he was dirt poor and he hadn’t grown into his thick solid frame, so he looked like an overgrown fat fucking baby, and he didn’t know about his strength, so he thought he was smaller than he was, more timid than he was, and he took shit, and he needed a friend. So Jake became his friend, because he was also an outsider, with a family who was falling apart. And maybe cause he knew when Chris realized his size, and his strength that he would have a great protector to get him through school during the recession, where kids were looking for any reason to fight. Any reason to transfer the hostility at home where they were the small and weak ones, to school where there were kids smaller and weaker than them.
He wished he could tell him that he wanted to leave, because a real friend would want what’s best for that friend, not what’s best for themselves, and he wanted to tell him that they had never been friends because friends didn’t use each other. And all Chris had ever done was use him, and all he’d done was use Chris, but now he didn’t want that, he wanted Melissa and he wanted out. But he was scared, he wasn’t a wolf. He had never been a wolf. Just a dog, who followed his master.
And Chris knew he felt this way. Jake knew that he knew, because his world hadn’t been the same since Melissa. There was no escaping that, and there was no pretending that what was happening wasn’t happening.
“I dunno Chris. I think every generation since the beginning of time thought the generation after them was a bunch of pussies. I know my folks thought it was about me. And now here we are doing the same thing. I think there are pussies and strong people in every generation and that there was never just one filled with great human beings that could lift the weight of the world on their shoulders. That’s all.”
Chris thought about this, and then said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just getting bitter in my old age.”
“Maybe so.”
Then the smile faded, and Angela came back with a pitcher of beer and two glasses.
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” She said and rolled her eyes before heading back to the bar. Chris slapped her ass hard, and she turned around and so did a few other patrons of The Dollar, and for a moment, Angela was ready to tell Chris all the things that she was never allowed to say to him because of who he was, and who he knew, and what he could do. And Chris smiled at her, waiting for it, just drunk enough and pissed enough at Jake to have someone start some shit.
A couple young guys at the bar with more product in their hair than Angela looked at Chris, and looked at Jake, guilty by association. With eyes that said, they were thinking about going over there and taking on the king, and Chris stared right at them, wordlessly pleading for them to do so. But Angela said something to them, and then gave them both one last look and turned back around to watch the ball game.
“Why do you do that shit, Chris?” Jake asked, feeling tired of this routine. Wishing her back in bed with Melissa, wishing he were out of this shit town and out of this shit life.
“Oh she likes it, Jakey. She’s just playing hard to get.” Then he winked, and held that cold stare longer than most people could. Holding it until your skin began to crawl, and then adding ten more seconds to that, before turning his attention elsewhere, knowing that he got you sweating, and not sure of what was about to go down.
“Yeah,” was all Jake could manage, before Chris grabbed the pitcher and filled both glasses to the rim, and slid Jakes over to him. “Drink up,”
“Why did you call me here?”
“Just a couple friends getting a beer.”
“Is that what this is?”
“How’s your girl by the way?”
“She’s fine.”
“She is that. She is fine indeed. I’ve heard some stories about her, you wouldn’t fucking believe.” He said, wrapping his arms around the booth.
“Oh yeah?”
“You betcha. Sex must be off the hook, because boy has she gotten some practice.” He winked, and Jake remained silent, looking for a swift exit. Not a wolf but a dog. Not ready to take on the king, never ready to take on the king..
Then the two eyeballers at the bar, who Chris figured were working for Marvin's crew, got up and started for the door. And Chris said, “Let’s go outside for a sec, I need a smoke.”
“Jesus, it’s freezing.”
“Ah, fuck that. It’ll only take a second.”
And like a dog, he got up and followed him outside. The wind was cold and Jake flipped his collar up, and rubbed his hands together. “Hey!” Chris yelled out and the two from the bar who were at the crosswalk next to the Antique shop turned around, and the one on the right pointed to his chest to ask if they were talking to him, which of course they were because the street was deserted.
“Yeah, yeah,” Chris said and slid his glock in the back of Jake’s jeans before slow jogging towards them. He picked up a small piece of brick next to the entrance of the Antique shop, and got close enough to the man on the right to smash him in the face with it, busted his nose, flooding his face with blood. Then he went down, and Chris climbed on top of him, and got two or three good shots in before the friend on the left tackled Chris, taking him to the ground. But the gentleman with the spiked-product filled hair was no match for Chris, and Jake knew it, and before long, Chris was smashing his face off the side of the curb, while the man on the left looked on in horror. Then he took off, sprinting down King, before the blinding snow engulfed him and he was no longer visible.
Chris got up, breathing heavily, and looking at Jake. “Fuckers think they come into my bar and look at me like that. Fuck that, Jake. Fuck that.” Jake was terrified, and his hands trembled and the cold cut through his skin and his core, and Melissa was there deep in his head, whispering and telling him that he has to choose. The life or the girl. And at that moment he was going to run off, and leave, and tell Melissa to pack up her shit and get in the car and they weren’t going to stop driving until the world was new, and exciting and free. But could drive far enough to be free of your sins? He hoped. Christ, he hoped.
Jake looked at the man on the ground, the snow falling hard, mixing the white and the red, and his face was smashed badly, cuts under both eyebrows, and his nose twisted and mangled, and he said, “M-melissa.” It came out weak, and with the air, and the wheezing, Jake didn’t know if he heard what he heard, but he thought he did. “I’ll k-kill that bitch.”
In his peripheral he could see Chris, and he felt a smile. He didn’t want to look at it and acknowledge it, but he could feel it. It was there, and it was Chris, this psychotic fucker. He knew that somehow he had something to do with these guys, and something to do with Melissa. Maybe they were part of Marvin's crew or maybe Chris had put them up to it, or maybe not. But he knew, that’s why he put the gun in his pants, because he was making him choose. Him or Melissa, and sure he could take off like he said. He could leave this guy behind, and grab Melissa and take off. But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? There was always more to it than that. Melissa could say no, plain and simple. She’d lived here her whole life, and what made Jake think that she loved him enough to uproot her life, because the sex was good? Life with them had never gotten any deeper. But then Jake thought that was his fault. She wanted to go deeper and learn more about him and who he really was, but he was the one who hadn’t allowed it. But he would. Goddamnnit, he would.
Then the man on the ground said their address, and hauled a picture out of his breast pocket. Chris grabbed it, and handed it to Jake. It was him and Melissa, making love. Her back naked, and Jake laying there with his eyes closed, dreaming of a different life. This guy knew where they lived, and he knew who she was, and Chris was making sure that Jake never had a choice. He was never going to run away from this life, because Chris would never let him. Or if he did let him, he’d never feel security or safety, he’d never dare have kids, he’d never do anything but look over his shoulder for the rest of his days.
And so, Jake pulled the trigger. Without even realizing he’d done it, the barrel smoked in front of him, and hair products, lost his face. Chris laughed, a huge hearty laugh, and said, “Holy shit, you really do love this gal, don’t ya? Holy fuck. I never thought you’d do it.” Then he wrapped his arm around Jake, and Jake lowered the gun, he could turn it on Chris right now, and blast his fucking head off, and go back to Melissa. But the secrets, the goddamn secrets would tear a hole through his heart and they’d die a slow death of silence, and secrets. Silence and secrets, that was all his life would ever be, unless he let her go, unless he followed Chris into the darkness, and stayed like a vampire.
This kid, this kid who was too big for his own body, this kid who needed a friend and stared at the trains being shunted down below Hillside. This kid who was scared of his own shadow, twisted Jake, and molded him, and when Jake thought that he was helping a kid with nowhere to go, and no one to care about, in reality, Chris was playing him. Seeking out someone weak enough to stay by his side. Someone loyal. Someone he could have around like a shadow. And it was him. He’d never get to stay with Melissa, he’d never get to leave this town.
“I feel like I’m dying,” Jake said.
“Everything is kind of dying, ain’t it? Every breath is a kind of dying. But there’s living too.” And he slapped him on the back and headed towards The Dollar. “Our beers are getting warm, let’s go.”
And like the dog he was and had always been. He slid the glock back into his pants, and headed back towards the bar. A car pulled up next to the curb where the man lay dead, and some of Chris’s goons threw him in the trunk and headed off down Main.
Short Story Collection Being Released
Hi everyone!
I just wanted to share that I'll be releasing a collection of short stories on February 1st. Many of the stories in this collection have been featured here, while others haven't. If anyone is interested, you can find it on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CRQZTJM5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CRDHZ7RB04E0&keywords=theres+gold+in+those+hills&qid=1704751382&sprefix=theres+gold+in+those+hill%2Caps%2C185&sr=8-1
I'm pretty excited about this and I just wanted to thank The Prose community for being the major reason for this collection. Before I joined this community, my writing was directionlesss and you've help me find direction.
So, thanks everyone!