Remedy

Minutes tick by and Benjamin sits in the dark, listening to the motion on the clock and checking his wrist, every so often, for a pulse. This fear of dying, it's irrational, he knows it, but it's all he's dreamt of, all he's imagined, now (against his will) for so long. It's gutted him. Once that realization of mortality (an honest realization, not the sideways and muted understanding that most people give it, but the very visceral and powerful fact that his life is ebbing away, tick by tick, tock by tock) set in, it wriggled its way into his consciousness, laid parasite eggs and took over. And now he's literally listening to life end. In any moment of concentration, any moment where he is not distracted by hunger or lust or something interesting on the television, he imagines scenario after scenario after scenario and he wonders how his imagination will dovetail with his actual demise. He fears his fear most of all. Second to that, he fears that he will die before he accomplishes anything. Sometimes, that fear is mutated into a palpitation-worthy worry that he will die JUST as he accomplishes something, thusly being robbed of its reward. However, at three in the morning, with work mere hours away and no sleep in sight, it is unlikely that Benjamin will need to worry about the latter case.

His life, he sometimes realizes, is a monument of incompletion. He has three quarters of a necessary ambition, and it serves him well, up to a point. Beyond that, boredom sets in. Or, rather, what Benjamin calls boredom sets in. What it is, really, is worse. There is another horrible realization, similar to the gut wrenching knowledge of his own mortality, that plagues Benjamin. Unlike many successful people, Benjamin is all too aware of his own mediocrity. And so, as a project winds down, as a genuine accomplishment nears, Benjamin takes stock of his work and he dismisses it as too banal, too mundane, too pedestrian, too dull to be meaningful. Completion, he decides, is only a waste of his precious, dwindling time. And he surrenders progress for depression, vowing not to try again. His projects, like hunger, lust and good television, are a very viable distraction from worrying about death. The abandonment of his work, then, opens the door to these long, interminable nights of irrational terror. The whole of it is compounded, then, by the lack of accomplishment, the surrender which pushed him down in the first place, and an increasing amount of crazy brought on by the resulting insomnia. He finds himself in the middle of a vortex of self-created lunacy, and he struggles to free himself of its hold. He spends waning minutes of his life (waning, in the fact that he is on a slow march to the grave... there is no valid reason to believe his ending is coming soon, although he can cite, with chilling detail, how very thin the line between life and death is, and he will expound in unpleasant volume about how no one is guaranteed an average lifespan) fretting over his seeming inability to do anything of value, and as he wastes those waning minutes, he only has reason to chastise himself more.

He is at a loss. He wonders, then, if he would be better served by lowering his expectations of life, by embracing his mediocrity and enjoying the bland pleasures that seem to sustain most people. He has a hard time swallowing it. He wants to offer up something, to create something of substance, to be known, to be admired, to be respected. He does not want to just give in to a daily grind of punching a clock and being told what to do by an army of superiors all working to keep some indifferent and colossal cash machine running, oiled with his blood and sweat. But, given his lacking skill, given his inability to rise above the middling, he wonders if he really has any choice at all. Maybe he's only making himself ill by peppering everything with expectation and a desire to elevate. Maybe he's killing himself with delusion, losing time that he could appreciate the simple things of life. Without the constant want, perhaps he could settle into a pleasant rut and develop a comfort that would mitigate his menial and unimportant place in the world. That thought is both seductive and the most absolutely depressing thing he's ever considered. And so he continues on, stuck in a stasis of his own creation, unable to live up to his own expectations. His ambition is outsized. His capability is puny in comparison. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to remedy the situation.

As time slips by and daylight creeps up, he thinks there might not be a remedy at all.

Change

As the darkness of night closed in on Marshall, he sat on his bed, his head in his hands, and a sort of monolithic sorrow crushing his chest. He was certain, now, of his own stupidity, his absolute lack of grace. He had ruined everything and he was sure it was never going to be good again.

The sun set, and dark rolled in, and soon, Marshall was illuminated only by an orange glow of parking lot lights streaming in through the half-open slats of his blinds. A desk fan oscillated and hummed. Dogs barked outside. Every now and then, he could hear a couple pass by on the sidewalk or a car drive past. He felt sick. Isolated. Alone. He replayed the day’s events in his head, over and over, and with each successive viewing, the error seemed more obvious. It seemed more egregious. A cool breeze blew in through the window and jostled the blinds. There was a mild din of plastic on drywall as the treatment slapped around. He didn’t know what to do now. He felt paralyzed. Abandoned.

Nothing good, he decided, came from expressing emotion. Nothing good came from telling someone how you really feel. All it does, he decided, is shatter finely built illusions. All it does is force reality to come charging through like rhino. When people ask you how you’re doing, they don’t really care. Nobody wants to hear about your fears or your worries or your hopes or your dreams. That’s what therapists are for. People want the artifice of intimacy without really knowing a thing about one another. That’s what she had wanted. And he wrecked that. He wrecked it and he didn’t know how, of even if, it could be rebuilt.

At some level, of course, Marshall knew she knew. She had to know. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t blind. She saw him fawn over her, gush over her, leap to her defense, beg for time. She saw all of that. She knew he was in love. But she was lucky enough to not really know. She could believe anything she wanted. She had nothing but circumstantial evidence… just an idea of it, no proof. Before he felt the need to upend his guts and tell her, breathlessly, just how in love he was, she could claim blissful and beautiful ignorance. Her reality was constructed in such a way that she and Marshall could be friends and nothing more, because Marshall never made the demand of anything else. She was fine pretending at closeness, and assumed that he was too. But inside, he was dying. Inside, he was clamoring to expel the truth.

As he sat on his bed in the dark, he wondered why he did it. He couldn’t adequately explain it. His stomach had been in knots around her. His brain hemispheres fused together in awe and lovestruck idiocy whenever the two of them were together. He cherished those moments, like rare stamps in some collection of time. Those moments stood out to him, and he wanted more. She was clear in her boundaries, but it didn’t stop his ridiculous heart or his ridiculous head from wanting, so badly, to cross into her borders. He kept it in check. He convinced himself, for a while, having her affection in any way was enough. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t close. It only whet his appetite. Every minute with her called out for duplication, for exponential growth. Every blush of something more only made the gulf between his hope and his reality that much more pronounced. He began to loathe the situation, the limits, the constraints and he hated himself for being cowed into action by his own asinine feelings.

He laid down then, on top of his blankets, in his clothes and tried to sleep, but he failed miserably in the attempt...

As night fell, Meredith was laying on her bed, struggling with a headache and pressing down on her eyes with her forearm draped across her face. She was sad and she was tired and she was angry that she wasn’t going to get to sleep tonight. She wished, somehow, she could go back and erase the last few hours, or that, at the very least, she could get a do-over. With her eyes shut so tightly, all she could see was the look of heartbreak on his face as he whispered “I love you,” and she responded with, “No you don’t.”

He did love her. She knew it. She didn’t want to know it and she certainly didn’t want to admit it, but it was doubtless. There was a polished sheen to the way he treated her… there was, in his words and his actions, a sort of barely contained admiration that both flattered and frustrated her. She knew. She could even pinpoint when his affection changed, when it grew it something unwieldy and larger than life. She saw the difference. He struggled with it, she could tell. And she wanted, badly, to somehow put him at ease. But she didn’t know what to say. The idea of it scared her to death. The idea that things could sour, that the status quo, a good status quo, might change made her sick to her stomach. So she ignored it and prayed that he would latch his attention on to somebody else. The idea of that made her queasy too. She liked things exactly how they were, but nothing stays the same for very long. Today she felt like she was watching a distant tornado, admiring it from her roof before realizing with dawning horror that it was headed straight for her. Now things had changed, and badly, and he was hurt and she was hurt and she didn’t know how to soothe any of it.

It wasn’t exactly that she wasn’t interested. She was. As much as she gagged at the idea of a soul mate, he was awfully close to that ideal, and she felt better with him than she did without. For Meredith, that was about as high of praise as any potential mate could get. But she squirmed, sometimes, at the idea of it as well. She would imagine the awkwardness of a first real date, a first real kiss… she would cringe at the thought of actual intimacy with someone she genuinely cared about because it just left so much room for things to go awry. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, so she kept up as many walls as possible and expunged any romantic notion of him from her head. Every now and then, her heart would twinge as she felt the flush of his kindness, of his compassion, of thoughtfulness she didn’t believe she’d ever be the recipient of. And she would crumble, a little, and try desperately not to let on.

Now, as the moon rose and she downed a cocktail of too many aspirin and too much Diet Coke, she was struck by just how off the rails it had all gone. She wished, then, that she could cry, because it seemed like other people in similar situations always felt better after a good cry. But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t even know what muscle to flex. She felt sad enough, certainly, but it just sat on her shoulders, heavy and damp, and she slumped back onto her bed and covered up her eyes again and pictured him, standing there, trembling with emotion and rejected wholesale by the girl he adored. If it had been anyone else she would have chastised their weakness, she would have mocked how much they cared. But she could feel it from it, waves of heat like the warmth of a campfire, and it was sincere and it was directed at her. She wanted, at that moment, to wrap her arms tightly around him and press her lips against his and tell him, madly, that she loved him too. She imagined it, and it seemed strained. It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t the response she could ever muster no matter how deeply she felt for him. It was too much, too theatrical… too showy. She did love him. If she was honest, she had to admit it, but she’d never love him in the same way he loved her. He’d never believe it because she’d never be able to show him. She convinced herself that, bad as this was, it was better in the long run.

But the long run seemed awfully far off on the horizon, and the here and now sucked. She hated knowing how badly he felt and she hated, even more, how badly she felt, herself. She tried, again, to picture the two of them, together, actually together, holding hands or sharing popcorn or driving late at night to faraway, star spackled beaches, content in a lovely silence and happy just to be with one another. And all of it fit. She didn’t retch, she didn’t recoil. The kissing, the sex, the gangly retro-teenage awkwardness of a burgeoning relationship was surmountable. It would, she was certain, be enjoyable at some point, even if it took some getting used to. So why did she balk at it? Why was her reaction so harsh and so cold and so damning? She knew why.

To let him in, to open that door and start something new would mean a drastic change. And Meredith saw all of the potential pitfalls... whatever he had to offer, she couldn't see the benefits being worth the trouble. She was angry at herself for admitting that, but she was, at her core, a brutally honest girl. She struggled with the loss and desperately searched reason to find a decent way out... but she couldn't think of anything to do or anything to say to assuage the situation.

She let out a soft painful moan and tried to sleep. She couldn't do it. Her brain wouldn't shut the hell up.

At around three in the morning, both Marshall and Meredith were bleary-eyed and wild with insomnia. Both of them thought fondly of the other, and then coldly, and then angrily and back to fondly again. Both of them felt bound by arbitrary rules, bound by some unwritten etiquette, bound by limitations and expectations they had set for themselves, and they were suffering because of it. Both of them felt hollow, out of sorts with the circumstances and lost in some sickening, confusing sea. Both of them wanted nothing more than to call the other, to hear the voice on the other end of the line and say, without hesitation or fear or anxiety that they loved one another. Both of them wanted that vocal embrace, that reassurance that despite a wretched day, things between them would be just fine.

Both of them stared at their telephones, paralyzed by the moment, and unable to act. They were certain things had changed forever.

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t take my education seriously enough. I bumbled my way through high school, only graduating because of a kindly English teacher who didn’t flunk me even though it would have been perfectly understandable and defensible if he had. I was, however, still a walking disaster through most of my junior and senior years, and the whole concept of college eluded me. I just never applied. So, after my inauspicious graduation, I stumbled through a terrible semester of menial labor and then enrolled in the local community college. I actually excelled, there, in what I affectionately dubbed “high school part two.” As bad of a rap as community colleges get, however, I met wonderful people there, students genuinely interested in learning and professors genuinely interested in teaching. Most of my classes eschewed busy work and rote memorization for honest-to-goodness discussion, understanding and intellectual growth. It was a wonderful environment where I developed a passion for ancient history, philosophy and western literature. And then I decided to take the plunge into the larger university system where I failed as miserably as I’ve ever failed at anything ever. Several factors added up to this spectacular educational cataclysm, but all of those factors were well within my control. At the core of it, I was bored with what school could teach me and I was arrogant enough to think I could learn it all on my own. I skipped classes to do personal projects, to fret over a suicidal girlfriend, to waste the opportunity laid out before me in an effort to preserve a life I didn’t even want to lead. I was put on academic probation, lost my financial aid and dropped out unceremoniously and so abruptly that I had to sublet my room in the apartment I’d leased for the forthcoming year. I went back to work, returning to the place that had employed me in my initial school-less gap, and quickly lost even the idea of returning to college.

The chip on my shoulder became unwieldy and huge. I was angry. I was angry at my brilliant friends with their fancy degrees and interesting, well paying jobs. I was angry at the vague system that had allowed me to fall through its cracks and wind up as laboring detritus still living with my parents. I was angry at employers for demanding some sort of proof of intellect before opening their doors to applicants and I was angry at society for valuing a piece of paper over actual reasoning assets. But mostly I was mad at myself for frittering away my youth, for squandering my abilities and for just surrendering because I was too lazy, proud and stupid to do what needed to be done. And I’m still mad at myself for it a decade later. The idea of returning to school crops up periodically, but it feels hollow to me now. I respect and admire adults who work their rear ends off and hold down and job and get a new degree, or finish an old one, I really do. But for me, I feel like the victory would be lacking. At this point, I feel like all I’d get is a participation ribbon years after the golds, silvers and bronzes have handed out.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I lived past thirty. I never really planned on that. Honestly. I just assumed I wouldn’t make it. I felt like a weakling, a runt kicked around by circumstance, too lacking in form and structure to hold up under the seemingly continuous bad weather of my youth. But time has a way of blunting disaster and eventually I just stood up, brushed myself off and continued on with my life. But the time spent in fetal position depression, or trying in vain to shake off crippling anxiety or just accepting the sub-mediocrity of my post-dropout days left me with very little infrastructure for success. Had I crumbled when I assumed I would crumble, it would all be moot. I always lamented all the preparation my brother put into his infrastructure. He worked hard to build up, brick by brick, the foundation of a successful life. And when he had gotten to the tipping point, the rollercoaster crest where all of that labor and tedium was about to pay off with almost limitless possibility in front of him, he got cancer and was slowly killed. His hard work evaporated in a steam of medical bills and handicap. It all vanished and he died and he never got to really enjoy the fruit of his labor. My assumption was I, too, would be gone before my thirtieth birthday, so why bother? Work was hard. Screwing off was ridiculously easy. I was out of my parents’ house, making a living enough to always eat and have a roof over my head. What more did I need? As my friends developed adult habits and acquired adult accessories like houses and kids, I withdrew deeper into my menial existence. My twenties slipped by, unremarkable, uninteresting and unfulfilling. I blinked at the halcyon days of my youth were gone. A decade went by with little to show for it. And I was still alive.

And now, of course, I struggle with my mediocrity. Now that it seems I'll be here a while, such a basic life devoid of responsibility, of challenge and of achievement seems awfully horrible. But I have no solidity upon which to erect a more interesting existence. I'm 31, lacking in practical skills and my work experience amounts to that of an industrious teenager. Worse still, I seem absolutely incapable of advancing myself... I sabotage myself under the banner of not being able to fit in with the talking piles of b.s. that make up the majority of management. But in reality, even if I could stomach the non-stop nonsense that goes along with being in the upper echelon of a multinational company, I can't imagine I could ever really succeed in that world. It's nice to pretend there's some nobility in it, but it truly comes down to my utter lack of follow-through, commitment and maturity. I didn't plan to end up this way. And I need to make a change. But I'm not sure how.

It's not a new issue... I've dreamt up more possible futures for myself than I could recount. I've found myself being passionate about a topic for as little as a week, dedicating myself to it wholly and then backing out because it's grown tiresome, stagnant and dull. My poor wife can't keep up with the multitude of lifelong dreams I seem intent on living out for small stretches of time. And while variety in one's dreams is certainly pleasant and makes, maybe, for interesting conversation, my absolute inability to focus is crippling in regards to actually making something out of myself.

In the end, though, the worst of it is that this is probably where I've topped out. It may not be the fault of my stunted education, my unwillingness to plan, my fear of responsibility or my lack of discipline that is keeping me from excelling. Maybe, scarily, my mediocrity is solely the result of the fact that I'm just mediocre. Most people are, of course. It's explicit in the word. But nobody wants to be mediocre. Nobody pushes ahead with their life's plans thinking, "How wonderful it would be to have my work, my achievements, my existence be basically on par with the rest of humanity." But that's what happens, right? Most of us tumble into the big space beneath the apogee of the bell curve and we never get out. As much as I would like to think my talent or my brains or my encyclopedic knowledge of Beatles' songs would separate me from the rest of the herd, they probably don't.

But as another work week ends and a new one looms just around the corner, I can't help, sometimes, but feel defeated. I can't help but feel like I should be doing so much more. Maybe that's the biggest problem of all.

Monday's Playlist: Hold On

So, I went through a really bad patch (quite) a while back... really bad. I was a total wreck, a big bloody mess of a person wandering through my days in a haze of whacked out depression. I've always had a tendency to romanticize misery, to paint it as something sort of pretty and tragic instead of being honest about just how pathetic I was. Even now, full aware of just how terrible that time was, I still sort of whitewash it for nostalgia's sake. I remember lonely twilight meanderings on streetlamp lit sidewalks listening to sad bastard music and lamenting/loving my indie film isolation. I have no desire to ever go back to the reality of that time, but every now and then I revisit the edited version by replaying some of my miserable music selections from that era. Even just sampling the playlist below makes my heart ache. These songs are exquisitely sad, I think... even if the lyrical content doesn't always match the vibe of the music, it's guaranteed to bring you down. But they're not just syrup thick misery... they're tuneful, sometimes hopeful, sometimes even a bit triumphant in their sadness. This isn't a definitive list of ultra sad songs by any means... it's just music that defined a certain very wretched moment. I think of it, now, as musical sedative for the days when I'm just too darn happy.

1. The Bleeding Heart Show - The New Pornographers (from "Twin Cinema")
2. Hold On Hope - Guided By Voices (from "Do The Collapse")
3. No Signs of Pain - Azure Ray (from "November")
4. Your Ghost - Kristin Hersh (from "Hips & Makers")
5. Suicide Life - Eels (from "Blinking Lights & Other Revelations")
6. Our Time Has Passed - The Pernice Brothers (from "The World Won't End")
7. Mr. Ambulance Driver - The Flaming Lips (from "At War With The Mystics")
8. Salesman At The Day Of The Parade - Rogue Wave (from "Descended Like Vultures")
9. Lonely As You - Foo Fighters (from "One By One")
10. Honey - Tori Amos (from "Cornflake Girl")
11. Except For The Ghosts - Lisa Germano (from "In The Maybe World")
12. Mad World - Gary Jules (from the "Donnie Darko" soundtrack)
13. NYC - Interpol (from "Turn On The Bright Lights")
14. I've Been Waiting - Sixpence None The Richer (from "Divine Discontent")
15. Cut - Plumb (from "Chaotic Resolve")
16. Breathe Me - Sia (from "Colour The Small One")
17. The Movies - Earlimart (from "Everyone Down Here")
18. It's All In Your Mind - Beck (from "Sea Change")
19. Invitation - Richard Buckner (from "Dents & Shells")
20. The Shadowlands - Ryan Adams (from "Love Is Hell")

Creeping Dread

the creeping dread of
old thoughts made new, slink in like a slow crawl of grave-marching ants,
Heavy handed desire rips up the comforting down of a daylight slumber,
holds hostages
breathes like a rain of hot yellow sulfur
Scalds and writhes
partly cloudy, fits of backwards remainder, sort of drill into a skull full up with memory, or dream memory, the kind of memories built out of soot and ash and reconstituted,
rebuilt,
rekindled,
until fires start to dot the shoreline, and pitch
pitch black settles in over the coast.
There is a paleness to it all, a slippery message falling from a chorus of pink lips, of breathy voices gone lost in the silence...
terra
flint hits, spark goes up, and the dry glass shatter stains rise up like clouds of dragonfire steam, of lashes rescued by
harrowing religion and dire circumstances given up
and then
comes
the
slow
slow
drift.

Strangers

This terrible rush comes over, too diligent, too soft-spoken to be heard amidst the clang and clatter of whatever thing he thought to be thinking of falling out. And she wonders at it, whether the voice that sputters out such random and perverse and sometimes, sometimes flattering vapidity is just a construct of her own gray matter folds or if it's coming from anyone's blinking shattered eyes that scream out for a lick of any measure of attention. It's a mess, to be sure, to pull what's real out from what's imagined and she thinks, perhaps, of him doing the same?

She can't be, he can't be
sure.

Oh but this weighs heavily upon them, strangers as they are, struggling with finding meaning in hidden lash bats and bristling mourning as the crowds file up and down like space age computer punch cards... each punch in place bringing the difference to a head until neither can stand it and the one goes in and the other leaps out and there's a vacuum left in the middle again,

like a starry pool of liquid, liquid void
a dead space, hollow and silver and dreaming of

Fists going upward and teeth gnashing and all of this because of a flipped coin or a butterfly's sneeze or whatever it is that causes one foot to turn in one direction and in the blink of an eye everything's gone and changed again.

They don't KNOW each other, and never will, not because of fate or destiny or anything large, but, because of small things, tiny things, microscopic things pushing them one place or another while halfway across the world or halfway across town they are frozen with fear and with disbelief, searching the source for transmissions or heartbeats or something that sings with the primal energy of a calling, one brain to one brain until, zombie-like, they move in a straight line, one point to one point... they wait for it

And wait for it
And wait for it

There might be a telephone call in her head or a letter written out on his desk, but they don't know the numbers or the addresses or even, by God, the recipient. They are throwing the words, the message, the missive, the correspondence and the very thought of it into the atmosphere and praying for some sort of long traveled balloon postcard response from that ideal that's been etched in white hot acid on the leathery flaps and armor of their slowly fading hearts.

Silver

Remember:
This silence is just a bit of the
Mourning,
Coming down in waves of amber on the hilt of her dark eyes.
These days, I forget so easily the cowering nights spent
Waiting to die on elixir,
She was there, like an angel, wings unfurled and her
DARK eyes fogged with some weird drug. I scanned the breadth of her for cunning, and she sought out chalk and dust and put me down onto paper. I couldn't even breathe.
Still, there were words and a song between us,
And she was gorgeously lit by the silvery moon.
It's just so easy to forget these days, now hushed and normal in my calm life...
There was a CAGE
Screaming and it was spent like dust. I fell off
because of it, bruised knees, bruised egos, bruised EVERYTHING.
But I find these hours just pass by without much
Crushing anymore.
I try to thank her in
these poems.

The Monster's Bedtime Story (from "The City")

Once upon a time there was a beautiful and brilliant Princess. She was the pride of her mother and the joy of her father. A prodigy with a big heart and lovely brown eyes, she was the delight of the entire kingdom, the envy of every parent and the beloved of many a hopeful prince. She spent most of her time, however, alone with her thoughts and a friend no one else could see.

Many years had passed since the day her mother, the Queen, had found her wrapped in black blankets and whimpering outside of the palace gate. Attached to her basket was a hastily written note from the babe's mother. The letter explained that the poor child had been born to such ravaging poverty that any hope for her future would lie in the kindness of the royal family. The barren Queen had secretly prayed for a daughter to love and to raise. As she swept the baby into the castle, a tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the rosebud lips of her newborn charge.

The King was also ecstatic at the foundling's arrival, and he made sure to celebrate the royal family's new addition in a fittingly grand way. Musicians were called from the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Jesters and jugglers and acrobats performed, tirelessly, for hours in front of the assemblage of courtesans and peasantry. A wave of happiness spread throughout the realm. And the Princess, even in her tiny and infantile stature, was somehow aware of what was transpiring. Even as a little baby, it somehow made her very sad.

This preternatural child, with slender brown eyes and a wisp of curled black hair peeking from
under her bonnet, watched as her family and their attendants prattled on into the night, boundless in energy and drunk on joy. This preternatural child watched all the revelry and song and could not help but think of its end. She could not help but realize that at some point the celebration would dwindle, and in its wake would be disappointment and sorrow and heartbreak. This tiny baby, cuddled in her soft black blankets, somehow knew that all happiness was eventually rendered obsolete by the introduction of sadness. And she knew that history was nothing but the expanse from tragedy to tragedy. So as the congregated mass around her danced and laughed and gave way to all their mirthful abandon, the adopted Princess, too aware for her own benefit, softly wept.

As she grew, those who attended to her realized that the girl was gifted. Even before the Princess could speak, the aged and wise could see a sort of kindred spark in those dark eyes of hers. She seemed endowed with monumental intellect. She seemed to be cognizant of the minute workings of her universe, and could, as if by instinct, see how the tiniest pieces of her world fit together. And she was compelled to paint and to draw as soon as her miniature fingers could grip a pencil and brush. So she was an artist first, and when words began escaping her lips, she uttered nothing but poetry: ballads and songs so dense with meaning that most of her caretakers had only a notion of her brilliance without really understanding a word of what she said. She would walk the corridors of the castle, humming her own symphonies and daydreaming about the end of the world.

And though she was unfailingly polite and generous, and though she was sweet tempered and genteel, her parents fretted over her. They worried at the lack of smile on her lips, the lack of laughter from her throat and the expressions of concern that the beautiful child so often wore. The Princess, their beautiful gift, always seemed so burdened, especially for one so small. And the Princess knew of her parents' worries, and she did her best to alleviate them. When smiled at, she would smile in return. And when surrounded by laughter, the child would also laugh. When in the company of her family or her army of nannies and wardens she would contort her face into an uncomfortable simulation of peace and ease. Only in the solitary confines of her bedroom did she allow her lips to rest in their natural frown.

So as the Princess came of age, she was paraded amongst her peers, displayed for various suitors, all of whom were quickly enamored of her startling beauty and enchanted by her demeanor. They would fall into raptured spells as she spoke, her mellifluous voice florid with natural wonder and shimmering fantasy. She would speak, and they would listen and watch her with expanding eyes and racing hearts. But though she would never dare let on to them, these princes were, to one as bright and as old a soul as she, nothing but dullards. At the end of her brief engagements, she would return to her bedroom to drift into the seas of her saddened mind. She would lay in her bed and sleep and she would dream.

And all this isolation may have sparked a minor sort of madness, or perhaps her imagination was powerful enough to bend a small bit of reality to her will. Whatever the cause, one day the Princess woke to find she was not alone in her bedroom. There, at a tiny table where she had stationed a silver toy tea service was a guest. The Princess, without the provocation of placating the fears of her family, smiled. And her guest smiled in return. She noted the strings of blood that plied between the spiny, splintered teeth in its grin. And she realized it probably should have frightened her. It didn't. The Princess was not afraid of anything.

She sat across from him, the tea set in between, and she stared. The thing stared back with eyes that seemed to flicker from inside. They sputtered from gray to blue to green, and then would die to black before sparking away again. It had great claws, yellowed ivory talons that clattered away on each other, and clinked against the silver cup it took in its hand. It sipped at imaginary tea. This monster was playing with her.

The rest of the creature was something she would scarcely, if pressed, be able to describe. It was slick, like oil, but misty, like smoke. It had no shape, just a vague Shadowy outline that, for the most part, was nearly paper thin. It hardly looked like it took up any space at all aside from its grinning gnash of fangs and it's decayed, marbled claws. It took another fake sip from the silver cup.

The Princess, quite aware of the horrible countenance of her guest, was nonetheless pleased with its appearance in her room. She had felt so very lonely, stranded amongst a wasteland of friendly but alien beings who seemed not even of her species. Despite its fearsome form, she saw in the strangely flitting eyes of the thing a sort of understanding. Whoever this was, now, pretending to drink from a toy cup, was someone, some thing, the Princess felt was an equal. Her smile did not fade as she took one of the taloned paws into her hand. Her guest's grin quite widened.

So for days on end, the Princess would quickly attend to matters outside of her bedroom, and hurry back to her newfound friend. She imagined that she must have seemed unusually buoyant and light to those around her. But that was not the impression she gave. Instead, what her nannies and wardens saw was a very stark grimness overtake their lovely charge. It was as if a specter of gloom constantly clung to her, a vampiric force sucking away at her life. Her flesh grew pale. Her eyes drowned under a heavy weight of sleeplessness. Her posture slumped. Her walk became slow and defeated. But in her heart, she was aloft. What appeared to her companions as a practical crawl to her bedroom after lessons or after dinner or after a social engagement felt like flight to her. She beamed as she rushed to the side of her new companion, wanting nothing more than to just hold its hand.

The days stretched into weeks and months, and her contingent of caretakers grew more concerned as outwardly, their vibrant, if odd, child descended into a very murky depth. The Queen took occasion to speak with her daughter, and the Princess tried as best she could to convey her disinterest in the dealings of the kingdom as well as her elation over the world in the monster's fluttery eyes. She tried to convey how, within the terrifying visage of some imaginary beast, she had somehow found a sense of wonder and peace that seemed to be completely non-existent anywhere else. She pleaded for her mother to understand that a life demarcated by benchmarks of conformal behavior and personal loss held no interest for her. She begged to be released into the custody of her new guardian, that Shadowy figure that without any spoken word promised so much more within its authority. But, of course, the pleas fell on deaf ears. The Queen was horrified and flustered. The King tried desperately to wedge in some wise words to aid his wife and alleviate his daughter. He, of course, failed.

The Princess' Shadow company was a powerful bit of witchcraft. It welled up from somewhere inside the girl herself. A reflection, distorted and magnified and then breathing. The monstrosity that sat across from her at tea was more than just an imaginary friend, then. It was the avenue for an escape from a life of good natured and well meaning tedium. And so the Princess found it beautiful. The Queen, terrified at the madness her daughter seemed to be overtaken with saw it too. But she saw no beauty in the thing. Just an ugly, scary, fang riddled horror. The Queen demanded the Princess stay away from the Shadow. She stood between her precious daughter and the monster, praying for some end to the magic it had ensorcelled the Princess in. The creature, fearing an end to its newly discovered friendship begged the Princess to leave the palace together. And the Princess, torn between the understanding of her friend that only she seemed capable of, and the knowledge of what her abandonment would do to her already grieving parents stood paralyzed in her bedroom, guilt ridden and miserable.

Finally, she kissed her mother's cheek and grasped onto the talon hooked hand of the beast. The Queen, so overcome, fell to her knees, wept and realized what her daughter had known all along.

History is merely the expanse from tragedy to tragedy.

(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block

Disaster

The impending disaster was spelled out in a flurry of yellow Post-Its and ragged edged notebook paper. It was nonsense to any outsider looking in, certainly, but as it was my hand that scratched the angry words in ballpoint, I had a different perspective. This is not to insinuate that I was, in any way, in control of what was spilling out from my clutched pen. I was not. But I was there, inside of my eyes, watching it all happen. And I understood it. I understood what it meant and I was scared.

Despair is a rotting disease, culling the tissue from your brain and melting it into a sort of useless, frightening sludge. I could feel it burning away. I could feel my sensibilities crumbling like termite-infested timber and as it gave out, any hope of my escape was thwarted. I was trapped within the confines of a mind unfit for piloting. This part of me, this reasonable, normal part of me, was lodged within a splintered, broken mess of a structure fully decimated. Debris should have been falling from my ears. Smoke should have belched from my mouth.

The process of degradation was slow and nearly imperceptible. It came in inches. I had begun with such a slew of hope raging around in my guts. I wanted nothing more than to do well, to provide for my family, to do an honest day's work for an decent wage. The money, at first, was slight... but it was understandable. They had taken, I assumed, some pity upon me. They had propped me up, given me a chance and so it was only fair I proved my capabilities to them. I wanted, desperately, to show them that I was worthy of the kindness that had shown me. I worked hard. I tried to do well. I assumed that competence and loyalty would be appreciated and repaid.

Looking back, it's all my own naivete that led to this point. It was silly of me to believe in some sort of reciprocation, especially from people so assured that they were my betters. Degrees hanging on their walls and beautiful cars in their driveways, I suppose, easily led them to the conclusion that I was less than they were. And in many ways they were right. My assets were intangible: a mind willing to dissect their problems, however menial, and solve them; an ability to untangle logical knots; a genuine desire to help my benefactors in any way I could. It was easy enough for them to pluck the thoughts from my brain and steal the credit. But I didn't mind. It was only a matter of time, I figured, before the truth would come out and I would be acknowledged for my utility. I toiled away for them, a minion at a flourescent lit desk, watching their conversations drift to the edges of bad taste and moral delinquency. These were not good people. But that was unimportant.

Imagine a dog being kicked for so long that the abuse becomes baseline, so that a lack of pain is translated as a shower of affection. I became accustomed to their rudeness, to their snake-tongued lies and manipulations. They all hated each other. My peers were little more than chewed-up waste, barely there bodies punching clocks at very regular intervals. They were chair-fillers and everybody knew it. The drones were content in their sub-mediocrity. Their superiors were thrilled to have such a vile pool to elevate themselves above. I was locked, however, in the space between. My competence and my ethic led me to easily crawl over the heads of the slaves, but my lack of formal education and politcal savy kept me cowed under the bloodshot gazes of the fraternity of drunkards signing my paychecks. I was kept at bay by their plundering mentality, their casual villainy. They were invested in my work, my usefulness, but wholly disinterested in me as a human being. I was more like a calculator or three hole punch in their eyes. I was, in all respects, a tool.

Slowly, I guess, the injustice of it began to seep into my conscious like a leaking beaker of acid. This was tragically coupled with a new found understanding of just how very trivial my work had been. I was increasingly aware of how worthless my presence was, and how my only impact was to benefit a veritable army of idiots and grotesque pirates who lived solely to grow a business through any means necessary. It was my own fault for being stupid enough to care. The changes in me were not swift or even noticeable. I tried to shift my mindset. I tried to relegate my many hours of labor into the category of unpleasant necessity. But I was failing. I tripped over the ideas and began to curse myself for having been such a company man. I hated myself for ever having worked so hard at something so innately ridiculous to aid a cadre of disgusting people.

My brain began to melt inside of my skull, and I watched it happen, detaching from my day to day life. I was chastised by my superiors. Interest was feigned in my declining well being and I feigned thanks for their fake concern. I saw my projects topple under the weight of my neglect. The niche I had carved between captain and private was being eroded, and so was my peace of mind. I lost sleep, worrying about my past and its wasted years and fretting over just what the hell to do with my future. That lost sleep spiraled into full on insomnia, and this left me further remote and ever weirdening in the long hours of staring into darkness.

This is my life, I would repeat to myself. This is my life and it's draining away. I have so little to show for it. No advancement. No money. No fulfillment. Nothing but the sour taste of being used. I was a whore for a company of bastards, just another means to a higher profit margin. I should never have expected anything to be anything more. But I let them fool me. And that made me angry.

Anger fueled my sleepless nights and the broken part of my thinking became obsessed with the scum that had been cheating me. I became focused on the faceless, foul-mouthed and blatantly horrid executives that had taken advantage of my inexperience and my enthusiasm. I had listened to the outskirts of their talk for so long, listened to their misogyny and ignorance. I held my tongue, kept my thoughts to myself and fretted at the guilt of it all. I let them run roughshod over me and laugh at me. I took their abuse, but I kept record of every slight, every insult, every transgression against my sensibility. I never forgot. Never forgave. And that grudge that I held so tightly, it began to live on its own. It became a rotting thing, a writhing machine of grubs and millipedes squirming around in my skull and sending me into a sort of silent whirl of despair.

And then I began to split.

This living thing, this living despair, hijacked me. It did. The normal, rational and justifiably angry bit of me was pushed aside and control of the whole works was given over to this charred, squirming pilot. It was just handed over. And then, suddenly, I was stuck inside of myself. I was watching as a crazed version of me began to plot.

Post-It notes and scavenged loose leaf started to fill with a sort of anti-corporate manifesto. My hand was writing it, but my head was not. It was someone else. Someone far more bitter and far sicker residing in my brain and making my clutching, aching hand scribble out rant after rant after rant. Most of the words were indistinct scribbles, furious scrawls that looked lifted from a psychopath's case file. But others leapt from the pages. "LIARS." "CHEATS." "BASTARDS." Other expletives stood out. I wasn't writing them but I could sure feel them being yanked from my skull. I wasn't writing them, but I could sure feel them angrily marring the tattered sheets that surrounded me. Cruelties began to slip from my mouth while my hands worked on autopilot. I wanted to make my tormentors suffer. Make them pay. But that's not quite right. I didn't want that. Not this me. The other me. Not my bruised ego, not my sucker punched normal self. The other one. The worm riddled and foul mouthed creature that snuck in, that built itself up from ruins of despair left behind by broken promises and needless machinations. That thing, that living thing of despair spelled out in frightening chaos and pitch black lettering exactly what it planned to do. Disaster. And I was trapped, helpless to stop it, horrified at what was coming in the guise of me.

It took days and days to formulate its plan. And while it did, I was cut off, tossed into some nightmarish cell of gray matter and impulse. I watched from behind those synaptic bars as power struggle dreams flooded my conscious. I watched the thing of despair tower in its ego and its pufferfish pride. It was growing. It was stronger than I was by far. Meaner. Angrier. And worst of all, it was unhinged. It was unbound by logic or threat of consequence. I could see what was happening with all too much clarity. I saw it all through my unclouded eyes and I was trembling, by God. I was absolutely quaking inside of my prison. Outwardly, I'm sure, I showed no signs of anxiety. There wasn't a shred of it to be found in my monstrous pilot. It was moving through my life without a trace of fear.

And then it acted.

The motion of it is still a blur. The logistics of it were simplistic in execution. A gun was procured. It was cheap and it was old. It smelled like oil. It left a strange film, a strange odor on my hands. I've never fired a gun in my life. I've never held one. I don't like it. It's like holding a bomb. Inside of my cell, I shuddered, worried that a false move would send a bullet into God-knows-what-or-(worse)-who. This did not deter my captor. It elevated him. It bolstered him. He took to its use without a problem. Rounds were discharged into a decaying tree stump the night before the disaster. The ejecting shells hit my hand and it burnt. I felt it. He didn't seem to. This was hellish. This was pure torture. I wanted out. But I had nowhere to go. We stayed up that night, awake and wired in my rocking chair. My family was gone. I barely noticed their absence. I was terrified. I was awake and wired and terrified. And when the morning broke, I drove to work like I would on any other day. The gun was tucked in my pants, hidden by a long, black shirt.

And I walked in, a jumble of nerves and sweat, but outwardly calmer and more content, I suppose, than I had seemed in months. My anger had become commonplace. If there was any hint as to my motive, that day, it was belied only by a seemingly better mood. The thing even whistled, nonchalant, with my damned lips. It was grotesque. And I marched, determined and swift, from the timeclock to the big boss' office upstairs. I bounded, two steps at a crack, upward practically in a sprint. And the despair addled thing inside of me, it painted my face with a horrific joker's grin. It moved my arm and it twisted the boss' doorknob and it moved my legs and paraded me in, smiling like the devil, and it used my hand to close the door behind me.

And then, using my voice, it spoke to him.

"How's it going?" it asked, mocking interest. My boss looked up from his big oak desk, his big oak desk covered with important papers and catalogs and stacks of business. He looked up with such a withering look of disdain, of disgust. He was angry that I had barged in. He was angry that I had dared to bother him. His big ruddy face was a mask of sourness. It was jowly and wide and was so much bigger than it should have been. His cornflower blue shirt was buttoned up and practically strangling him. Fat poured over the collar in bulbous tumors. He was an ugly, toadish man and he felt like I had no right to be there. "No seriously," my despair asked again, how's it going?"

My boss did not answer. Instead, he asked who I was.

Years of working with this man, years of toiling for his benefit, of working long hours to sate his appetite for profits and he didn't even know who I was. He didn't know my name. My despair didn't tell him.

Instead, my voice cackled. It was mirthless. It was creepy laugh that even jolted my fat, red faced boss. He sat up straighter when it happened. His eyes opened a little wider at first, and then he narrowed them again and spat out a "what do you want?".

And my hand reached for the weapon tucked into my pants. And, slowly, it curled my fingers around the handle and revealed the gun to the angry man behind the big oaken desk. And then the balance of power shifted. He wasn't going to ask questions in such a disdainful tone anymore. He wasn't going to begrudge my presence in his beautiful office. He was, instead, going to listen. There was a fear in that man's eyes that I would've thought would've bought me an ounce of joy. But it didn't. It made me sick. It made me sick with worry, with guilt. My brain was rocking back and forth as I threw myself against the walls of my cell, pleading with my despair-born jailor to please let me out and end this before it went too far.

"Your life," my despair said to the terrified, sweating man, "is nothing, do you understand? You have elevated yourself above everybody, so proud of your achievements, so pompous in your success. You have stood on our backs and built your miserable little empire out of our blood and bones. You have lied and cheated and stole and manipulated your way to this position. You have kept me under your polished heel, and God, you don't even know who I am! But you are just as pathetic, just as fragile as anybody else. Your money isn't going to buy a way out of this. Your perceived power isn't going to keep you safe from my wrath. Do you understand?" My despair was making my voice absolutely thunder. My cheeks ached from the constant grinning. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

My boss, the imposing tower of masculine rage and bellowing command was sobbing like a little girl. Big, sloppy tears were pouring down his pore-riddled, blotchy cheeks and snot ran free from his nose onto his upper lip. He looked absolutely pitiful. He looked so afraid, probably because I looked so damned crazy. This was not bringing any satisfaction. None. It was horrific. I didn't want to watch it. I didn't want to see this. My despair pointed the gun between the fat man's eyes and I watched my poor, terrified and awful boss follow it, cross-eyed and about to vomit. "Please, please, please..." he whispered. "Don't."

And then: disaster.

I tried to close my eyes, but my pilot, my despair, wouldn't let me. The shot rang out louder than anything I'd ever heard and it rattled every bone in my body. There was nothing to stop it. There was nothing but a thin layer of skin, a bit of skull and then my boss' brain. Hunks of him flew like splattered watermelon, showering me with gore and staining the walls with white, pink and deep red. And it was over. He was just a smoking rind of a person, a mess of busted bone and ripped, burnt flesh and tissue. The smell made me absolutely sick. Inside of my head, I was shrieking. I was screaming for mercy, for forgiveness for the sin that had been carried out with my hands. I was broken, a wrecked thing left behind and smoldering almost like the corpse that spilled over the desktop. The grin stayed plastered on my face.

And my despair fired another shot, just for good measure.

(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block