Johnny rode into the city every day with his mother, where she dropped him off for exactly two hours. Johnny liked his mother. Johnny’s father had left them when Johnny was seven. His father left because Johnny’s mother cheated on him with a younger man. Johnny was sixteen now, and he lived with his mother in Pacifica, because his mother had married a rich man. She wasn’t attracted to Ken, but he loved her intensely. They had been in Pacifica since Johnny was twelve, but it was a month ago when he started riding into San Francisco every day with his mother. Johnny had a problem with stealing. He stole almost everything he could and sold it at school. He stole Ken’s watches, his new shoes, money clips and rings. Ken was eighteen years older than Johnny’s mother, a beautiful blonde with the face and body of a woman half her age, and it had Ken trapped. They pulled Johnny out of the system for home school, which really meant he was done with school. Jenny wasn’t a teacher. She wasn’t much of anything. She was restless in her marriage after trying to play it straight for three years. Johnny knew she had a guy downtown, but he didn’t care much about Ken. Ken was an old man screwing his mother, plain and simple.

Jenny would drop her son off at the wharf with forty dollars. She would pick him up at the same place in two hours, because she said to be there. And like clockwork she was there, Monday through Friday. Weekends were spent taking long drives or flights with Ken in his small plane. Johnny understood why his mother stayed with Ken, but he was apathetic, even while flying above the grids of trees, precipices and jade green fields of California’s coastline. He didn’t care. And Ken was pissed because when Johnny quit school the stealing stopped, and he was convinced that Johnny wasn’t a troubled teenager, that he was nothing but a fucking little con-artist. But there was Johnny’s mother, vibrant and gorgeous. And Ken knew that even the birds in the sky wanted to fuck her, and that he was lucky to have her, even if she had no true feelings for him. He’d already been down that road with his ex-wife after thirty years of agonizing bullshit and arguing. Johnny’s mother was a nymphomaniac, it was no secret. Ken reaped the rewards of it. He knew he wasn’t her dream guy or anything, but he would never do any better and he was smart in that regard, and knowing this only made Johnny care less about him. Not that Johnny mattered.

But what mattered to Johnny was Chinatown, and the glory hole in Chinatown. He’d made his way there out of boredom with the tourists in the wharf, with the boring food and the fucking sea lions. And walking down a street in Chinatown, a dirty old man had talked him into stepping inside, into giving him twenty dollars for a woman to wrap her lips and tongue around Johnny’s sex through the other side of a hole in the wall. Johnny could hear the women moaning and sucking him. The only rule being he couldn’t seek contact with the woman on the other side, which was fine with Johnny, because it was a way for him to remain unabashed on his own, though it became an addiction for him. He learned the schedules of the women, and sometimes he would go back in half an hour and spend his other twenty. The old pimp started calling him Johnny Rocket, because his favorite glory hole woman had told the pimp that Johnny’s cock was tall and red and perfect, but Johnny took it as a nickname because of his speed in getting to the spot from his drop-off point, and it never occurred to him that the pimp had no idea where he came from.

What Johnny couldn’t do was come up with a reason for his mother to drop him off closer to Chinatown, so he told her that he had met up with some friends from the old neighborhood on Fillmore, and that they’d been meeting up there every day and walked the streets and talked to girls. Jenny bought his story, and dropped him off there while she continued on her way, sometimes giving in to him and handing over an extra twenty of Ken’s money. And there Johnny walked Chinatown waiting for his time slot with his favorite girl, who sucked him dry with her mouth and hand, whose teeth he never felt once, who got him so hot he would masturbate at night to her, sometimes three or four times before he went to sleep. In his heart he felt she was a black girl, because he had seen her walking from the back of the building once after he’d been there, and the feeling was undeniable, but in his mind the woman had long red curls and electric pink lips, and he would kiss her while she touched him, then she would turn around and press him into her, before she appeared on the other side of the wall to finish him off in her throat.

Weekends were torture for him. His mother was more collected about it, because she had Ken to tie her over. Ken sensed that Jenny had something going on the side, but never mentioned it. The truth for Ken was already real enough, and his love for a woman who didn’t love him back was the ceiling for his reality. Johnny knew his mother’s type, the lost artist. The young painter, sculptor, the singer or the writer, and most of them had been in and out of his life for the five years after his father left. They moved in for a month, drained the bills and the fridge and his mother’s pocket, didn’t work a real job, took up the living space with canvasses or instruments or typewriters, while Jenny either tended bar or answered phones, or both. But Jenny needed Ken, and Johnny needed her. But Jenny also needed other men to keep herself floating mentally. Johnny had heard her tell his aunt over the phone that Ken was a great lay, but never turned her dial all the way around, and Johnny understood it.

Monday came again and again Johnny was there with his twenty ready for the pimp, who took Johnny’s money and opened the door for him. The pimp looked in and told Johnny he had to walk up the street, because the pimp had grown to trust Johnny, and his favorite lady had become used to him, and had even missed him on a certain level. The light flipped on next door and he heard her purse hit the floor. The pimp was gone now, there was no door cracked, nobody to be just outside to look in on him if they chose to. He saw the light from the bare bulb come in from the hole at his waist. He felt her turn to lock the door on her side. He dropped to his knees there. He got an eyeful of her from back to front, from face to feet, and he heard the pimp unlock the door. Johnny stood straight and stared at the wall in front of him, his cock through the hole, his eyes closed and his brow filled with sweat, him harder than ever down there, as Jenny worked her mouth, tongue and hand over and around the hard, young sex she had become addicted to since before her first husband.

the wavering thinness of her sanity

rivaled murderers and

kidnappers and

politicians

reality for her

only came along

with a cup of

coffee

and

Xanax

without her reality

wounds

like scars and scabs and scratches

transformed into

ocean currents

waves of hysteria

she confused the coldness

for blistering heat

and would scream

about how her

skeleton

was prying away her memories of

him

the wavering thinness of her sanity

was a post-it note

at the back of her mind

secluded and sometimes forgotten

but always there

inscribed

"reminder

Zoloft

200mg per day"

"Albert Einstein said once that sanity was repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results," said Alex. He looked up at me with a look in his eyes that showed me an innocent boy who had everything ripped away from him.

"So?" I asked. I didn't understand where he was going with that.

"So by that definition we're all insane. We're all lunatics who have convinced ourselves that we're perfectly fine."

We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments while I thought of something to say, and he just played with the brace on his wrist.

"Maybe so." I said, just to fill the empty space.

He looked down at the ground and said, "Then I'm not crazy like everyone thinks. In fact, I am the only sane person I know." He looked deep into my eyes. "Why don't they all realize that?"

My heart sank, and I felt as if nothing I said would help. But I had to say something. "I don't know," I said.

He lightly chuckled and looked back at the ground. "Neither do it..."

it's always been bridges to me

if it was fabric then it

would be long ago ripped

but I'm just standing here

gazing at the other side

as the sun sets into madness

truth is I've never met anyone like him

there's something brutal in insanity most fail to mention

the way he cannot reach my eyes with his

and the mumbled excuses

reality is perceived

it was never a given

watching him stand over the river

and I can't help but wonder

what he sees past the fog

past the daydreams

and I'll never know what it's like

to have a whole world against me

he's living in defensive

trying to protect me

from the world and from me and from he

I want to patch up his worries

but I'm watching the river rush

knowing to meet him

I'd have to get close

to the running water

I wake up, with your breathe still blowing on my neck. You are him, but she is her. She wakes up next to me, but you were there in my dreams. My baby. Our baby, sat on my lap and smiled as I read to her. Now all I hear is the bleep bleep bleep of 6:30AM alarms.

I question everything. I feel unsettled down to my very bones. I feel tossed about like the ocean is allowed to have its way with me. Like I am just a paper cup afloat in rolling lunar waves. I don't know how to behave.

During the day I don't know which way to behave. Should I follow mind or heart? Should I go with the musings of my unconscious brain? Should I speak your name out loud?

Why is this happening now? I could glide into 30 with a marriage and two dogs and piece of mind. Instead I am a hot mess and I just want to be a piece of ass. I am never glad for what I have. I may never settle down.

Why are you always on my brain? Why are you so obviously exactly like me. We are kind, but hide behind a fog of our real flaws. We both lie about the details, but give everything else up for examination. I made the worst mistake.

I let my dreams consume me. I should be an arm's length away. My heart, it is Velcro and I've fucking gotten stuck. Now I'm still. I'm stagnant. Dreams of you set me alight. I will burn myself out, and away my light will go. My dreams will leave me burnt out, pitch black, alone. But I can't fucking drive away.

The avalanche buried her deep in crystalline beauty. Death crept closer on every frozen marvel, crushing weight evaporating too slowly for life. Her eyes followed tiny worlds melting in front of her face and she thought she'd scream if her mouth weren't full. She commanded herself to swallow but the thought of mountains to ingest before moving carved deep.

Books said to urinate when trapped in avalanches, to tell which way was up, so she tried. Warmth traced its fingers over her belly, across her throat, over her chin. She felt it begin to cool, to stick with a finality that reminded her of the time she almost drowned as a child. The sense of moving in the wrong direction, being powerless to fight the pull of gravity, the inevitability of water. A pool of empty space widened around her nose, her mouth. Hope flooded her lungs for a moment. Extinguished in the shifting snow pushing her down. So close. Dry. Gorgeous. Endless. A foot. Ten meters. She thought she felt heat, lunged for it. Moved deeper. Screamed. Choked. Tried to breathe. Swallowed. Thought, "This is not so different from life above ground."

We were lost. I told Sargent Michaels that, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept hacking his way through the brush and I gave him a wide berth; that machete would have been just as good at hacking through me.

"The rendezvous was here,” he insisted, smacking the map into my chest. “I know it was. It was.”

I took a look. Oh, sure, the path was clear enough on paper. Get your head beneath this god-damn canopy though and good luck with it. The trees looked so innocent and ordered painted on the map, but never was there a falser lie. I swear we were stuck in one of those enchanted forests I read to my sister about. There’d be a gingerbread house up ahead and before we could high-tail it these trees would cut us off.

“Well, Private?”

I snapped to attention. "Sergeant Michaels, sir!”

He sliced through a sapling palm. “I don’t fucking need that, Daniel. What do you make of it? We there? We been bamboozled or what?”

I sure hoped not. They’d taken my best friend in their last raid. I’d never let them keep hold of Teddy. I can’t count the nights we’ve spent jawing off about this and that, alone beneath the tent with nothing but a flashlight and some blankets. No way I’d ever give up on him. Besides, he knew way too many of my secrets.

"Daniel!” Michaels thumped me with the hilt of the machete. “Focus, damnit! If this is a trap we’re as good as dead, now where…”

Something growled. The fronds of the giant fern beside him trembled. It happened before either of us could react, before he could even turn to meet his death head on. The jaguar burst forth, all teeth and claws and calico mottling. It sunk its teeth into the side of the Sergeant’s neck and stained its white paws with his blood.

The machete whipped through the air and landed in the trunk beside me. The great hellcat tore its gory maw from Michaels, fixing angry eyes on me. Its pink tongue licked along its lips, its tail lashed back and forth as it crouched down, its ears flattened tight against its head.

No way was I going to die here. They still had Teddy, they were probably waterlogging him somewhere trying to force out the location of our camp. I wrenched the machete from the tree and held it out. The jaguar’s claws flashed in and out, in and out, and we danced around each other slowly, moving in a circle.

Then it moved. It flew at me, hissing and snarling. I brought the machete up to meet it, driving the blade into its chest. It pierced through and the thing let out an ear-splitting yowl of pain. The force sent us tumbling back, and I didn’t stop. I pulled it out and sunk it in again, again, again, before it could get up and come back for more, before it could do to me what it did to Sergeant Michaels-

"Daniel?”

Oh, god, they’re coming. They were hiding in the trees. They’re getting closer. I have to be prepared, they’ll jump be before-

“Daniel, dinner’s ready! Come on, stop playing now!”

Gotta make sure it’s dead. I’ll never make it out between the two of them. One more slice, Jesus, but this thing bleeds, I’m getting it all over the carpet-

“Daniel, have you seen the cat?”

The TV mental illness

public service message

said:

"You wouldn't make fun

of cancer."

I laugh

because

I can.

Monday, 8:48am

Jack was walking briskly, as he always does, from where ever the thirty minute break between his first class and second allow him. He's headed back from the coffee shop, pointed towards the south wing of the main building. His ear buds are buzzing with a medley of punk songs, mostly by Screeching Weasel and The Adolescents. The concrete stairwell just inside the doors are the indicator to Jack that it's time to doff his buds and steel himself for another lecture that doesn't really ever stick in his mind. He marches over the polished floor of the stairwell, and takes the left into the main hallway off the second floor. Just as Jack gets his bearings in the hall, he can hear shouting coming from a classroom next to his. It doesn't sound like a tired professor beating his still dead horse. This is something completely different. He cautiously approaches the door, and peaks through the glass porthole. Instantly, Jack is set on edge by all of the faces carved in absolute fear and terror. There's a person in a mask next in the front of the class. There's no sign of the professor. Jack takes cover and grasps his dog tags. He exhales slowly and pulls out his phone. "911, what's your emergency?" "Yes, I'm at the city college in the north hall on the second floor. There's a person with a gun that has taken over a classroom. Please send some officers quickly. I don't think they'll be-" There's a quick, loud burst of shots. The two students in the front row tried to make an escape and paid with five .762 rifle rounds to the face. The classroom erupts in a chorus of cries and yells.

Jack swings the door open slowly and stays around the corner. "Listen man, I don't want this to get any more bloody. What do you want?" Two rounds sink deep into the door and spray splinters all over the floor and on Jack. "WHAT I WANT IS FUCKING TO BE HEARD. THESE ASSHOLES AND THIS PRICK OF A PROFESSOR WON'T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY. THERE'S SOMETHING COMING AND IT'LL TAKE US ALL TO HELL." Jack's forehead just above his left eyebrow is bleeding, a few splinters found their way under his skin. "Okay, buddy, just keep it cool and I'll help you out as much as I can, alright?" Jack slowly turns the corner and keeps his hands held up above his shoulders. The masked man keeps the end of the barrel trained on dead center mass, as Jack walks in between the rows of desks filled with frightened students. "YOU BETTER NOT BE TRYING TO FUCK ME, MAN. I'LL KILL YOU RIGHT WHERE YOU STAND. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THOSE INFIDELS. YOU FUCKING TERRORISTS!" The masked man takes a step forward and pokes the business end of the rifle into the throat of the woman in the front row and forces a yelp from her lips.

9:05am

Jack is standing there, with his arms still up, and now he's acting as a barrier between the masked man and the students. He's not a hero by choice, but by circumstance. "What is it you want to say? Just say it, I'll listen." Jack says behind his gentle yet fiery brown eyes. "ALL THESE FUCKING IMMIGRANTS COMING INTO OUR COUNTRY ARE WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. THEY COME AND TAKE THE JOBS THAT WERE MADE FOR HONEST AND HARDWORKING WHITE AMERICANS. JUST LOOK AT ALL THESE FUCKING CHINKS AND SPICS IN THIS CLASS. THEY'RE TAKING UP SPOTS THAT COULD'VE BEEN FOR ACTUAL CITIZENS THAT PAY TAXES AND BILLS. THEY ARE ABSOLUTE SCUM." Jack could see something dripping from the chin of the mask. It could've been tears, snot, or sweat, he couldn't be sure. "Okay, that's understandable, but did you ever think that maybe some of these people here were born in America? That would make them citizens, just like you and me." The masked man jumps towards him and points the rifle into Jack's right eye. "ARE YOU SAYING THAT THESE NON-HUMAN SCUM BUCKETS ARE JUST LIKE ME?! THEY'LL NEVER BE ANYTHING CLOSE TO WHAT I AM. I AM A FUCKING DEMIGOD COMPARED TO THEM. NONE OF THEM WOULD EVER HAVE THE BALLS TO EVEN STAND UP FOR ANYTHING THEY BELIEVE IN." Jack hasn't budged. The barrel rests in the air just an inch in front of his eye. He know it wouldn't be long before this psycho snapped and shot everyone he could see. "I didn't mean that in a bad way, we're all Americans here. It's a wonderful place we live in, and we should try to keep it-" Jack slammed down his right arm and caught the barrel just in front the sight. As the gun tipped down towards the carpeted concrete ground, Jack brought up his left foot and forced it into the stomach of the masked man. While surprised by the quickness in which Jack acted, the masked man was able to keep a grip on the stock and a finger on the trigger. He sprayed rounds towards Jack's lunging body. Three sunk deep into his stomach and another two hit him in the right thigh. Jack landed on top of the masked man and wrapped his arms around the head and neck of the shooter. He squeezed and twisted like a python taking down it's prey. Before long, there was a snap and gurgling coming from the masked man. The mask had been ripped off from Jack's assault, and they could all see who it was. It was someone from the class who hadn't shown up. From the bloody pocket in Jack's jeans, there was a small voice. "The officers are entering the building, everyone get somewhere safe."

By this time, a few brave souls had ventured to the front of the class where the little battle had taken place. They were crying and attempting to stifle the bleeding in Jack's leg, but his blood still continued to pour out.

Friday 1:45pm

Jack woke up. He wasn't too sure where he was. There were white walls and curtains all around him. He finally looked over and saw all the devices attached to him and realized it was a hospital he was in. There was a nurse who just came through the door, carrying a tray of food in from a cart. "Look who is up! How are you feeling?" She asked with a huge smile on her face. "I feel like I have a rubber tube up my dick, and I'm freezing in this paper gown and IV fluids surging into my arm. How're you?" The nurse shot him a stern look and slid over a rolling stand with the food to the side of the bed. "Well, I wouldn't think a hero like you would be so snarky." Jack's bed was positioned into a seated L style. Jack looked over at the nurse and glared into her eyes. "I'm no fucking hero, you got that?"

(Everything I write turns into poetry... this challenge, I started with a poem because I'm absentminded. Then, when I reread the challenge, I tried a bit of some prose at the end... Still, sort of turned into poetry.)

Water like oceans

flying like birds

twisting like dragons

without words.

Too many choices.

Tunnels in caves.

The lists are all voices

that ramble and rave

on and on.

Get to work.

It doesn't hurt.

You aren't afraid.

Stillness like tree roots.

Movement like soil.

The company of fools.

The serenity in toil.

The threat of the morning.

The promise of night.

When the future is mourning

the past is fright.

There was a call. Yesterday. For you. I couldn't take it. I was busy, but they left a message.

No.

I forget what they said.

I must have wrote it down somewhere. I've been looking through these notebooks. Lots of messages. No names. No signatures.

Crying? You have?

Oh... no. I haven't. I mean, I did earlier. I just can't sleep.

You know you really ought to get those lists taken care of... they'll only get longer. You never finish anything.

That's not true. I know. I shouldn't talk like that. I really do love you... but not that part. Yeah, that one.

And that one.

You should have chosen more wisely. It's not like you had it so bad. You can't blame it all on your dad. You can't blame it on the lack of him either. You can only blame yourself.

Talk about something else? Well, what about that fucking electric bill? Or maybe we should discuss how many hours you have until work tomorrow and the sleep you aren't getting? Or the things you put into your body? Or don't? Or all those appointments you haven't kept?

Yes, yes. What about the ones you have? It feels nice to keep one's word, and hold your nerve. It feels good to serve. That's why you do it, isn't it? That's not selfless... you liar and cheat. Using others for absolution. You should be ashamed.

You should be asleep. How many hours was that again? You have to keep this job. Kids aren't cheap. I know you have to know all the things they need.

Okay, I'll calm down. We'll calm down. Let's breathe. Don't forget the mask. Without it, you can't sleep. And that makes you weak.