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.
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
1.23.2010
7.29.2009
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.
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.
7.21.2009
Another Self-Induced Sleepless Night
So, I have a tendency, sometimes, to fall into a bad pattern of insomnia/mild caffeine abuse that just perpetuates itself and becomes an annoying vicious circle. I'm on, I don't know, day four or five of running with three to five hours of poor sleep per night. This isn't terrible, but it isn't exactly great. I can feel myself headed for a monster crash... it will most likely involve a crippling migraine, hallucinations and a whole hell of a lot of being ridiculously crabby.
I almost feel like insomnia is a character trait of mine, a sort of shorthand for the type of person that I am. I know that's a bit silly, but it reflects two important things about me: When I'm excited to do something, I will put everything else, especially sleep, on hold to do it; and, when I'm dreading something, I will do everything I can to postpone it for as long as possible. These two facts, flaws you might call them, create a sort of perfect storm of insomnia.
Currently, I'm working on consolidating all of the creative aspects of my life into one nifty little website hub (www.jasondangerblock.com, of course). And it's going pretty ok. I like doing it and I feel like I'm accomplishing something and I like that there will be something to show for my work when it's done. It also means I want it to be done as soon as possible. I'm not patient, especially when it comes to my output, and I am a much bigger fan of the product than I am of the process. So I want to finish it. So I've been putting in late nights trying to get the thing to work and drawing up nifty little pictures for it and reconfiguring it and so on and so forth.
This, coupled with my increasing disdain for the vapidity and stagnation of my day job (and the rapidness with which slumber brings on a new morning), makes sleep seem like an obstacle to my goals and any hope of a measure of success. So I stay up all night, working on things that will likely only ever be seen by a handful of people, trying desperately to keep my dreams alive while staving off another fruitless day of mediocrity. Eventually, of course, morning does come, and bleary eyed and still gauzy from my ceaseless parade of whacko wee hour dreams, I wake up, muddle through a shower and riddle myself with caffeine in an effort to join the living for the day. This, of course, isn't novel or unique or anything, but it does, I think, go a long way, in tandem with the factors listed above, toward hampering the next night's sleep and the cycle continues undaunted and unbroken until I have a whopping meltdown and fall into a twelve hour coma. This can take weeks. And when the coma ends, the whole process starts slowly up again.
I wonder, sometimes, if the majority of my normal waking hours were spent doing something even mildly fulfilling, would I still have this problem? Would I still push myself in an all-too-likely futile march toward some sort of achievement? Or, would I be content with my day's accomplishments and go to bed looking forward to the possibilities of a new morning? I can't even fathom what that would be like... the concept is so alien to me. I imagine, though, under those circumstances, that my output would be quicker and far more competent. But maybe it's the feeling of being trapped in such abject mediocrity that spurs me to try to do more, even if there's little hope of success... I'd like to think that I'd try to do better no matter how well I was doing. And that, I suppose, is good and bad. Contentment is murder to improvement, but it's still something we all strive for, isn't it? Is a life of always pushing against what you've done to achieve something more inherently better than just accepting a life that's fine, but not as good as it could be? My official goal, I guess, is to aim for the middle of those extremes, but I can't really see ever being content even if I wasn't just treading water every day.
Still, this sort of behavior, as self-aware of it being self-induced as I am, probably can't continue. I need to find a better way, at least for now, to balance what gives me substance with what pays the bills. Luckily I've got all night to think about it! Just let me crack open another Diet Coke...
I almost feel like insomnia is a character trait of mine, a sort of shorthand for the type of person that I am. I know that's a bit silly, but it reflects two important things about me: When I'm excited to do something, I will put everything else, especially sleep, on hold to do it; and, when I'm dreading something, I will do everything I can to postpone it for as long as possible. These two facts, flaws you might call them, create a sort of perfect storm of insomnia.
Currently, I'm working on consolidating all of the creative aspects of my life into one nifty little website hub (www.jasondangerblock.com, of course). And it's going pretty ok. I like doing it and I feel like I'm accomplishing something and I like that there will be something to show for my work when it's done. It also means I want it to be done as soon as possible. I'm not patient, especially when it comes to my output, and I am a much bigger fan of the product than I am of the process. So I want to finish it. So I've been putting in late nights trying to get the thing to work and drawing up nifty little pictures for it and reconfiguring it and so on and so forth.
This, coupled with my increasing disdain for the vapidity and stagnation of my day job (and the rapidness with which slumber brings on a new morning), makes sleep seem like an obstacle to my goals and any hope of a measure of success. So I stay up all night, working on things that will likely only ever be seen by a handful of people, trying desperately to keep my dreams alive while staving off another fruitless day of mediocrity. Eventually, of course, morning does come, and bleary eyed and still gauzy from my ceaseless parade of whacko wee hour dreams, I wake up, muddle through a shower and riddle myself with caffeine in an effort to join the living for the day. This, of course, isn't novel or unique or anything, but it does, I think, go a long way, in tandem with the factors listed above, toward hampering the next night's sleep and the cycle continues undaunted and unbroken until I have a whopping meltdown and fall into a twelve hour coma. This can take weeks. And when the coma ends, the whole process starts slowly up again.
I wonder, sometimes, if the majority of my normal waking hours were spent doing something even mildly fulfilling, would I still have this problem? Would I still push myself in an all-too-likely futile march toward some sort of achievement? Or, would I be content with my day's accomplishments and go to bed looking forward to the possibilities of a new morning? I can't even fathom what that would be like... the concept is so alien to me. I imagine, though, under those circumstances, that my output would be quicker and far more competent. But maybe it's the feeling of being trapped in such abject mediocrity that spurs me to try to do more, even if there's little hope of success... I'd like to think that I'd try to do better no matter how well I was doing. And that, I suppose, is good and bad. Contentment is murder to improvement, but it's still something we all strive for, isn't it? Is a life of always pushing against what you've done to achieve something more inherently better than just accepting a life that's fine, but not as good as it could be? My official goal, I guess, is to aim for the middle of those extremes, but I can't really see ever being content even if I wasn't just treading water every day.
Still, this sort of behavior, as self-aware of it being self-induced as I am, probably can't continue. I need to find a better way, at least for now, to balance what gives me substance with what pays the bills. Luckily I've got all night to think about it! Just let me crack open another Diet Coke...
3.23.2009
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
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
3.10.2009
Radha & Faron
Faron's friend had pointed Radha out to him, saying correctly, "There's a girl you think is cute." But Radha was more than just cute. Her bright green eyes were almost always hidden by a lovely, soft mess of scarlet hair. Her smile was rare and stunning, and her skin was flawless and cream white. She was gorgeous, and even before speaking a word to her, Faron had fallen madly and superficially in love.
Radha had kept mostly to herself, purposely distancing herself from the unpleasant masses surrounding her. Still, there was something about Faron that appealed to her. She wasn't all that impressed by how he looked or dressed, and she didn't know much about his personality, but she liked him without any provocation. He seemed kind, maybe, or compassionate. She couldn't articulate why, exactly, but she liked him well enough to sometimes seek out his company. She didn't know quite how ecstatic that made him feel.
It wasn't long before study breaks and intermittent McDonald's lunches gave way to long dinners and movies and nighttime drives to nowhere in particular. Radha found she had an easy rhythm with Faron, and Faron found that he had very real reasons to be enamored of the pretty girl. They grew closer as they pushed the rest of the world aside. They began to orbit one another, to become the center of each other's universe. They began to adore each other. And their love blossomed and it grew and it became the most wonderful thing either could imagine.
And one day, Faron bought a ring and asked Radha to marry him. She said 'yes.'
They were swift in their plans and marriage followed mere weeks after proposal. The ceremony was without frills and without audience. There was no reception. Neither felt to the need to celebrate in public. It was enough to just be wed. So they were. And they were happy. For a moment.
Almost instantly, however, cracks began to surface. Things had been rushed. They didn't know each other well enough at all. Radha found she hated Faron's taste in television. Faron discovered his beloved wife was a virulent racist. Radha was an unrepentant gun nut. Faron was a pathetic momma's-boy. The two found they were incompatible. They loathed one another. Their marriage floundered. Their time together was brief and unpleasant. They decided, as quick as they had forged their bond, to get divorced.
There was a mutual dissatisfaction that made the ending easier, but it still led to hurt feelings, to sadness and to loneliness. On their first night apart, each felt the absence shaking in their stomach, rocking their nerves and leaving them frayed and irritable and angry at each other and at themselves. It was a horrible thing, like being poisoned or diagnosed with cancer. They felt like they were dying. Their union had been shattered, their lives were tossed into a tizzy of disarray. It was a good decision they'd made, they both knew it. But it was a good decision under the worst of circumstances. Radha wished she'd never met Faron and, of course, Faron felt exactly the same. It was a wretched time.
They had pressed on past the worst of it, though. Radha made an effort to send all of the wedding gifts back to their friends and families. Faron found a lawyer who would help them on the cheap. Faron made his announcement at work, issuing a sort of press release to let everybody know at once. Radha let people know in a more private manner. The sympathy was slight; everyone knew they had rushed things. There was a vehement rush of "I told you so" to the poor exiled couple. Faron and Radha had expected it, though. It still didn't make it any easier.
There were gifts left over, too, that had no card or giver's identity attached to them. The remainders were nothing spectacular... a puke green blender and a small powder blue iron. Radha gave them to Faron. He didn't want them, but neither did she. So he took them back to the store, a twenty-four hour monstrosity, in the middle of a sleepless night. He felt like a zombie, shot through with insomnia and depression, wandering about endless aisles in a stupor. He knew he looked a fright... hair in a rat's nest of discontent, stained white t-shirt, dirty jeans, flip-flops and bright red lines variegating his bleary eyes. He was hallucinating, he assumed, but he couldn't be sure. A dour man was giving him advice as he stood by a display case full of watches.
Horrible chintzified versions of good songs played overhead as janitors scrubbed the linoleum around him. This dour man, another shopper, was speaking over Faron's shoulder. He was a bit taller than Faron, but hunched and sallow. His face was sharpened like a vulture's beak and he wore tiny round glasses with milky lenses. He was missing teeth, and looked somewhat, Faron assessed, like a modern day warlock. Faron didn't like him. He didn't like the man's cackling voice or his beakish nose or his dry-rot coffee breath. But he stood still and listened to the dour man's advice. It was horrible advice. Faron's brain was too addled and sleep deprived to process it, anyway. He waited for the dour man to stop sputtering. And when the man had finished talking, Faron began to walk away.
The dour man grabbed Faron's shoulder and crazily demanded some sort of payment, some sort of tribute for the advice he'd so generously offered up. In a daze, Faron turned around and shoved the old man square in the shoulders. There was no anger to his assault, just a mechanized motion that took the dour man by surprise. The man stumbled and Faron moved in. Inexplicably, Faron snatched the little round spectacles from the dour man's face and mangled them in his hand. He didn't change his expression or his posture. He just calmly wrecked the old man's glasses. And his victim was stunned. His brown teeth and empty gum sockets were exposed in surprise. He was horrified. Faron dropped the mangled mess of the man's glasses onto the ground and stomped a few times upon the remains for good measure. The glass popped and made satisfying grinding noises as Faron dug his heel in the twisted metal. The dour man, absolutely mortified, fled the strange scene and left his assailant to himself.
Faron looked down at the old man's smashed glasses. What was there, in place of hunks of wire and shards of lens gristle, was a tiny tribe of spidery men, hairy and many-limbed and barely as big as Faron's thumb. They were obviously the product of an overtaxed mind, but they seemed real enough to the mummified divorcee. He crouched down by them, watching them leap like trained fleas and squeak out echoes of what the dour man had said. "Go back to her," they shouted, but it was the advice of the insane. Faron took a deep breath and tried to disbelieve the tiny creatures' existence. It didn't work, but it's failure didn't surprise Faron in the least. "Go back to her!" they shouted again. But Faron wasn't stupid enough to listen to them.
He decided to go home and try, in vain, to get a halfway decent night of sleep. As he made his way to the dimly lit atrium, he saw Radha walking in. And his heart began to race. He felt guilt swell up in his belly, the guilt of having surrendered so easily. He suddenly felt as if the entire conflagration was of his own design. He wondered what he could have done better, what he could have done to avert this disaster that their lives had become. And so he approached his soon-to-be-ex-wife with a heaviness in his heart and a sincere and worthless apology on his tongue.
She didn't even look in his direction as she walked on past.
Radha had kept mostly to herself, purposely distancing herself from the unpleasant masses surrounding her. Still, there was something about Faron that appealed to her. She wasn't all that impressed by how he looked or dressed, and she didn't know much about his personality, but she liked him without any provocation. He seemed kind, maybe, or compassionate. She couldn't articulate why, exactly, but she liked him well enough to sometimes seek out his company. She didn't know quite how ecstatic that made him feel.
It wasn't long before study breaks and intermittent McDonald's lunches gave way to long dinners and movies and nighttime drives to nowhere in particular. Radha found she had an easy rhythm with Faron, and Faron found that he had very real reasons to be enamored of the pretty girl. They grew closer as they pushed the rest of the world aside. They began to orbit one another, to become the center of each other's universe. They began to adore each other. And their love blossomed and it grew and it became the most wonderful thing either could imagine.
And one day, Faron bought a ring and asked Radha to marry him. She said 'yes.'
They were swift in their plans and marriage followed mere weeks after proposal. The ceremony was without frills and without audience. There was no reception. Neither felt to the need to celebrate in public. It was enough to just be wed. So they were. And they were happy. For a moment.
Almost instantly, however, cracks began to surface. Things had been rushed. They didn't know each other well enough at all. Radha found she hated Faron's taste in television. Faron discovered his beloved wife was a virulent racist. Radha was an unrepentant gun nut. Faron was a pathetic momma's-boy. The two found they were incompatible. They loathed one another. Their marriage floundered. Their time together was brief and unpleasant. They decided, as quick as they had forged their bond, to get divorced.
There was a mutual dissatisfaction that made the ending easier, but it still led to hurt feelings, to sadness and to loneliness. On their first night apart, each felt the absence shaking in their stomach, rocking their nerves and leaving them frayed and irritable and angry at each other and at themselves. It was a horrible thing, like being poisoned or diagnosed with cancer. They felt like they were dying. Their union had been shattered, their lives were tossed into a tizzy of disarray. It was a good decision they'd made, they both knew it. But it was a good decision under the worst of circumstances. Radha wished she'd never met Faron and, of course, Faron felt exactly the same. It was a wretched time.
They had pressed on past the worst of it, though. Radha made an effort to send all of the wedding gifts back to their friends and families. Faron found a lawyer who would help them on the cheap. Faron made his announcement at work, issuing a sort of press release to let everybody know at once. Radha let people know in a more private manner. The sympathy was slight; everyone knew they had rushed things. There was a vehement rush of "I told you so" to the poor exiled couple. Faron and Radha had expected it, though. It still didn't make it any easier.
There were gifts left over, too, that had no card or giver's identity attached to them. The remainders were nothing spectacular... a puke green blender and a small powder blue iron. Radha gave them to Faron. He didn't want them, but neither did she. So he took them back to the store, a twenty-four hour monstrosity, in the middle of a sleepless night. He felt like a zombie, shot through with insomnia and depression, wandering about endless aisles in a stupor. He knew he looked a fright... hair in a rat's nest of discontent, stained white t-shirt, dirty jeans, flip-flops and bright red lines variegating his bleary eyes. He was hallucinating, he assumed, but he couldn't be sure. A dour man was giving him advice as he stood by a display case full of watches.
Horrible chintzified versions of good songs played overhead as janitors scrubbed the linoleum around him. This dour man, another shopper, was speaking over Faron's shoulder. He was a bit taller than Faron, but hunched and sallow. His face was sharpened like a vulture's beak and he wore tiny round glasses with milky lenses. He was missing teeth, and looked somewhat, Faron assessed, like a modern day warlock. Faron didn't like him. He didn't like the man's cackling voice or his beakish nose or his dry-rot coffee breath. But he stood still and listened to the dour man's advice. It was horrible advice. Faron's brain was too addled and sleep deprived to process it, anyway. He waited for the dour man to stop sputtering. And when the man had finished talking, Faron began to walk away.
The dour man grabbed Faron's shoulder and crazily demanded some sort of payment, some sort of tribute for the advice he'd so generously offered up. In a daze, Faron turned around and shoved the old man square in the shoulders. There was no anger to his assault, just a mechanized motion that took the dour man by surprise. The man stumbled and Faron moved in. Inexplicably, Faron snatched the little round spectacles from the dour man's face and mangled them in his hand. He didn't change his expression or his posture. He just calmly wrecked the old man's glasses. And his victim was stunned. His brown teeth and empty gum sockets were exposed in surprise. He was horrified. Faron dropped the mangled mess of the man's glasses onto the ground and stomped a few times upon the remains for good measure. The glass popped and made satisfying grinding noises as Faron dug his heel in the twisted metal. The dour man, absolutely mortified, fled the strange scene and left his assailant to himself.
Faron looked down at the old man's smashed glasses. What was there, in place of hunks of wire and shards of lens gristle, was a tiny tribe of spidery men, hairy and many-limbed and barely as big as Faron's thumb. They were obviously the product of an overtaxed mind, but they seemed real enough to the mummified divorcee. He crouched down by them, watching them leap like trained fleas and squeak out echoes of what the dour man had said. "Go back to her," they shouted, but it was the advice of the insane. Faron took a deep breath and tried to disbelieve the tiny creatures' existence. It didn't work, but it's failure didn't surprise Faron in the least. "Go back to her!" they shouted again. But Faron wasn't stupid enough to listen to them.
He decided to go home and try, in vain, to get a halfway decent night of sleep. As he made his way to the dimly lit atrium, he saw Radha walking in. And his heart began to race. He felt guilt swell up in his belly, the guilt of having surrendered so easily. He suddenly felt as if the entire conflagration was of his own design. He wondered what he could have done better, what he could have done to avert this disaster that their lives had become. And so he approached his soon-to-be-ex-wife with a heaviness in his heart and a sincere and worthless apology on his tongue.
She didn't even look in his direction as she walked on past.
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