And With Blood....

My naked feet touch the ledge, they cannot feel a thing. Its winter and frost bite has already hit its early stages. I take note of this in my head. They burned at first but now they are replaced with an awkward silence of my senses. I look down deep into city. The lights are bright illuminating the streets, they remind of my childhood. I think of those Light Bright toys and how small the world looks up here. It's as if I could fit this entire city into that tiny machine for me to plug each little translucent peg into. I don’t know why. It sets off a chain reaction in my brain.

Mother.
Doctor.
Sadness.
Despair.
Enlightenment.
Inspiration.

I stand twenty stories high above the cityscape; it’s close to midnight, late January. It's been reported to be the coldest day of the year. The local weather man with the tired brown suit and thick mustache said this morning that with the wind-chill it could hit a negative fifteen degrees. That’s down there at street level; up here it probably hits negative thirty. I welcome the daunting cold, for now it is my only friend.

My clothes are left on a pile by the fire escape that led me here. I stand naked, open for the world below me to see. This is me as vulnerable as ever, giving my entire essence to this place. Naked in the bitter cold winter night. This is my last testament of art, my way of giving back the shit stained world something beautiful, something real. It is my carnivalesque nod to Mikhail Bakhtin and all his glory. To know the things I know, and the things I know those petty people below me will never come to realize. If my tear ducts weren’t probably frozen, I still wouldn’t have any tears to shed for them. Little old me, a colossal nothing in this world of nobodies, now stands before you all, all-knowing and omnipotent.

Omnipotent, truly I am and you will never reach my height.

Not that it should matter, In fifteen minutes my naked body will be a bloody mess on main, the cold harsh streets will be my canvas. My blood, my bones, and my flesh will by my paint. It is not suicide when you’ve seen the things I’ve seen. It’s not suicide once you’ve come to be enlightened. It's not suicide when you've heavily taken into consideration how cliché an act of suicide has become in this art form.

Perspective, all truth in reality is inherited through the eyes of one.

A young lady walks beneath me, for her to see my body standing fifteen stories above her naked as the day I was born in this bone chilling weather would strike horror in her heart. A teenager with skin tight jeans and scars on his wrist might pull out his phone and hit record. Horror for one is another’s curiosity. None of you know true horror, not until you’ve dissected my brain, raped me from my memories, inherited my thought processes, and cracked the perplexity of my newfound knowledge.

I asked for enlightenment.

I received total nihilism.

This world, these streets that I stand high above are all a part of this 'pop-art' carnival, a puppet show of grandeur scale with no puppeteer. No divine hands with strings attached to its fingers. Below me, those lights are nothing more than a sensory reaction sending electric impulses from my brain to my eyes. Once my body becomes one with my canvas it will no longer cease to exist. All existence will end in a flash. Your life will be over as quick as mine. Once I die, so does the universe, complete entropy.

Nothingness.

The entire nature of the universe is completely centric to the nature of humanity, more importantly it is centric to the 'self', to our senses, our knowledge, our meager and wasteful lives, and by 'ours' I truly mean mine.

I once read on a bumper sticker on a dirty run down old flatbed truck that 'To err is to human-" but I always believed to human is to play God. We are all Gods, Gods of flesh trapped in a one hit wonder game of life.

Two days ago I woke up from a dream where I sat in a fun house trapped within a room filled with mirrors. Staring into the infinite window of selves I got lost, and I no longer knew which version of my image was in truth the true and real copy. An infinite loop where all the creations before it had a creation behind it with no creator to begin the creation. I somewhere at the center, the true and original copy lost in the reality of perspective. I laid in bed and for the first time in my life I knew I had finally taken that last step into enlightenment. The world never was the same again. That is to lay claim that the world was ever the world at all.

What is a world, beyond a container of a billion other worlds, all that which centered around centers, who center themselves on a fallacy of a higher realm beyond our understanding of reality.

I’m talking of God.

I’m talking the lack thereof.

I can't help think of my mother.

Twenty-eight years, six months, and fifteen days ago a boy was born to a mother who was poor and shallow, whom also was morally and physically raped from her pureness. As that child grew his face resembled more and more into his unknown father. As he grew his mother filled more and more with disdain and horror at his very site. A young boy raised by a mother who secretly hated her son for looking like the man who raped her. She saw it in his eyes, she knew her soon had the same eyes of that man who took her innocence. Her hatred for her child turned physical. Even in his young mind he knew the disgust that hid behind his mothers eyes. Rape, as cliché and over used as it may be, destroyed two lives.

Rape. She was on the way to her car after work.

Rape. Brutally beaten and sodomized with a tire iron.

Rape.The left side of her face was left disfigured. Her body left naked behind the dumpster found by a morning jogger the next day.

The man left behind her with a child. She had just turned sixteen.

It's sad when such an act is common referred to as cliché.

She beat the child’s face over and over again. Every time she looked at her son with those eyes peering back into her, made her stomach curdled with disgust. Memories of that night haunted her forever.

Rape.

Twenty-four years after the boy's first severe beating, that boy will stand naked atop of a building, his toe’s frost bit. That boy was me, Jacob Friedrich.

Cliché.

Twelve years earlier that boy sat in Dr. Weather’s office, the large burley man who spoke with a raspy voice. The boy was smart, some even considered him borderline brilliant, but he was self-indulged. He kept to himself, had no real friends, and vastly socially ignorant. In retrospect he realized this even as a child, he always felt different from others. An outsider looking in, always asking the questions why, why, why? His mother a year earlier overdosed. He was only fifteen when he found his mother face down on the bathroom floor. Her tongue sticking out of her mouth, her face blue and covered in filmy vomit. The only feeling he felt for his dead mother was how ridiculous she looked dead with her tongue hanging out like that.

Dr. Weathers asked him how he felt that night he found his mother. The visits were court ordered. The boy was in and out of trouble. The boy answered simply with 'embarrassed'.

Dr. Weathers asked him lots of questions, this is how therapy works, questions about this, questions about that, answers for nothing. The boy already asked a lot of questions, he found it somewhat relieving to be asked for answers instead of him asking and receiving none.

"Have you ever heard of narrative therapy?" Dr. Weathers clicked his pen and began jotting notes onto his legal pad. The boy hadn't. Dr. Weathers basically described the therapy as a concept that everyone's life is one long story being told, it has its characters, plots, settings, all the basics. The therapists acts as a narrator, asking the patient questions, pushing the story foreword. The catch is all based on 'perspective'. The narrator pulls the story into these different perspectives of the patients life, to open up different values, concepts, and ideals that perhaps the patient didn't realize, turning a positive spin on an otherwise negative perspective. The boy played along, and in the end, even if Dr. Weathers never knew how much he had influenced the boy, he was changed. he set out to write his own story, and to be aware of how he wanted it to be read.

Two years later from the boys last therapy session with Dr. Weathers, that boy hit a tree at sixty-five miles per hour. The metal frame of his small cutlass wrapped itself around the earthy wooden trunk of the thick oak tree. His body was crushed, he flat-lined and died momentarily in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The paramedics revived, him but Jacob Friedrich never came out of that state, that young boy died and I was reborn. We shared the same name, the same past, but I never looked at the world the same again. You may think an event like that would be life altering. It was. it was the beginning of my enlightenment. I realized then, I really had no control of my life story. I was not the artist paving away my narrative. I knew sure as hell there was no God acting as some muse inspired artist. It was chaos, single and utter chaos.

My life? The sentences is posed as a question, because all life is, is a series of questions, unknowns and variables, it's the blind leading the blind. As soon as one opens his eyes and see's this place for its truths -like I have- we become exiled. We become Satanists, unchristian, evil-warmongers. Give me peace of mind, and you can keep your warm puffy heavenly gates.

Dr. Weathers, that old fool who taught me life's a series of stories. Stories are meant to entertain, to teach, to speak volumes about this world, to trigger your brain into thinking deeper about life and its mysteries. Then if we are all stories waiting to be heard, why do so many of us live such useless lives adding nothing to this world. Dr. Weather's life written in synopsis form would sounds something to the likes as: a man raised in a middle class average family lives an average life where he falls into debt through his gross gambling addiction, who eats his days away through fast food and drinks his nights away drowning in bottles. He will have one unsuccessful marriage with no children and will die at the age of fifty two from a heart attack sitting in his recliner while fornicating with a barley legal aged prostitute. And there, only in his last few moments of his life, where in the comfort of his own home can he truly live a few moments of a poetic life. Self indulged into the very essence of his instincts, a broken man socially, finds his release both in the form of an awe-inspiring orgasm, and in the release of his heart's strength to continue to beat.

Dr. Weathers, you were a fool. We are no more stories then we are children of God.

Mother was no more innocent before the rape, then she was after, nor is she anymore innocent in this imaginary heaven we've all come to bank on after our death. To this day my left eye is blurred from the beatings of my childhood. I have lived twenty-eight years in the world. I have found no God, I have found no storybook love, I have found no true good natured people. The only beauty I have found worth knowing is this wonderful thing called art. Our inner beauty reflected outwardly for the world to take in and take away with them hopefully something called inspiration. Art, the only thing man created that is worth all their effort they put into it. We as humans, with our collective minds, can create such extraordinary beautiful things with our minds and hands.

Three days ago I awoke from that dream with all those mirrors, and the air smelled hollow, the sunlight seemed to dim just a shade darker from the day before. Everywhere I looked, everything seemed just that much darker. These streets below me filled with all those meaningless chaotic nuisances, these billions of people wandering around aimlessly on mother earth, poisoning her essence with their defecating ways. Passing by all the true beauty in the world without ever even really taking notice of its wonders. How many people will ever see all our great monuments of as race have created? How many people will ever witness all the glorious beauty mother nature created for us. We are minute men, who live our lives based on the next second, the extra five minutes of internet surfing we can squeeze in before our mundane eight hour work day. Single serving uninspiring people who are pawns in this social structure of capitalism. We are all meek and docile pawns in a game where we never get our chance to roll the dice. I will not miss this place we call earth. I will honestly not miss one second.
And with blood, the street beneath me shall become my greatest art form. My canvas, my Mona Lisa. My work of art will become the third segment on the local channel twenty-five news broadcast.

And with blood, I shall sleep forever. Darkness will be my covers, and the dirt my pillows.

And with blood, I shall eliminate existence as quick as my flesh meets the pavement. For when I die, at least through my perspective, this world dies to.

My feet frozen, now my body is numbed completely over. It truly is beautiful. in five minutes I will be falling.

Falling.

Falling.

It will be like a dream, my body stiff as a board, perhaps due to some sort of natural instinct preparing myself for my impact, as if it would help. Or maybe, my body is already literally that frozen.

Falling.

Maybe I will hear screams. I won't be able to breathe, falling too fast.

And with my blood... I will find happiness.

And with my blood... I hope you find inspiration.

The Enlightened.

One day Johnny woke up with a smile. It wasn’t a smile that denoted happiness, in fact its actual origin was unbeknown to even Johnny himself. All he knew was that he was a new man, a man that was what he now considered to be “enlightened.”
To look at Johnny you would never guess there was anything extraordinary about him. He was of medium height and of medium build. His face fell into the five o clock shadow and his hair was hardly neat. He wore tore up jeans and a tight off-white t-shirt with Bob Marley’s face painted across his chest. It was cold on this day, so he wore a light fall jacket over top. He looked nice, comfortable, cozy.
If you were to look into Johnny’s history, he did not live a magnificent life by any means. He graduated from a decent sized high school, where he was neither popular or hated. His family life was that of a normal typical American family, parents who fought more with each other than they made love with each other, and who probably should have been divorced ten years ago. He had a little brother who looked up to him, but who hardly played much a role in his own life. He lived on a decent house in a decent neighborhood. He even had the picture perfect tire hanging from the front yard tree.
To look into Johnny’s love life would denote nothing out of the ordinary. He had two loves in his twenty year old existence. Each of which left him hurting more than he had ever felt happy. Johnny knew this was nothing distinctive to his life. However as cliché and corny as it may seem, he carried with him the pain of every tear he ever shed over his broken heart with every step he took. He was in no way suicidal, or even manic depressed. If anything Johnny was better off for not choosing to push away the heartache, he welcomed it and adapted to it. He knew now it was the seed of his new found tree of knowledge.
Johnny felt great as he strolled down the dark stained wooden stairs. He strutted through the living room and took a seat at the kitchen table where his father smoked a morning cigarette and his mother drank coffee. That great feeling suddenly sunk deep into his stomach. He was not ready for the events that where about to happen.
His mother spoke to him, but he heard bullshit.
His father smoked, and he saw clouds of lies.
His phone vibrated with a text from Jenny
He read ugliness.
He left abruptly, without even acknowledging his parents attempt of so called family socializing. Its not as if he hated his parents, he loved them. He knew he was lucky to have grown up with a full family, he had friends who had much worse. His own enlightenment made him look pass his childish perspective and he saw for the first time his parents for who they truly were. His mother a tired old maid whose large bags under her eyes were stained with unappreciated tears. A father whose face was etched with years of over worked wrinkles and the shallow eyes of a wasted youth.
Johnny wept silently, for his unconditional love of his parents tore his heart apart, his superhero image of them from his childhood was shattered. He saw tired old miserable people trying to live an ideological view of society’s definition of happiness. But this new awakening was nothing to do with his family. Johnny knew now for the first time what all the worldly secrets revolved around. He knew the secret of life, of God, of Satan, of every significant God-damned thing worth knowing. Unfortunately for him, he knew the significant things in the world were limited to things man dreamed up in their drunken ancient stupors.
Johnny met Jenny as previously planned a day prior to Johnny‘s enlightenment. Jenny was pretty, blue eyes, blonde hair. For every decent quality about Johnny, Jenny was, -at least in his eyes- perfectly beautiful, inside and out. She was the girl to bring him out of his shell, to open him up once again. There she sat at a small green table at their favorite coffee shop. Even with his new found knowledge the site of her made his chest tighten, and a lump form in his throat. There, picture perfect just like that dangling tire tree in his front yard, she sat with a smile on her face.

She stood up and hugged him.
She kissed his lips.
He felt her for the first time as what she truly was.
Pain, tears, and heartache.

Johnny knew she had done nothing to deserve such feelings. But Johnny was enlightened. Johnny knew more about the world than anyone else alive and breathing. Johnny knew one giant secret. The fucked up thing about all that Johnny was enlightened with, was that this poor girl, pretty and well-intentioned, was indeed the secret to everything significant worth knowing. He also knew that this girl was the future of all his pain and agony. If God existed and was an Artist, his mastery would no doubt dabble in the cruelness of irony.
“Are you okay?” her soft voice whispered. She was in all honesty worried. He knew this. Things weren’t perfect between the two, nothing in the real world is ever perfect. She had a large part of heart destined to for ever to be in debt with a man who she left years ago. She was honest and pure with Johnny, and they worked their best around it. This is what Johnny now knew of. To be able to look and see people for who they truly are. Not that these things are bad, but he knew above all else, what it was to be human.
He sat down next to her.
“last night I wondered out into the night. I found something out there.” Johnny tongued the top of his mouth as he spoke. A habit he picked up in his youth to calm him down when he was nervous.
“What are you talking about? Is this about last night? I told you, I’m still confused. You’re such a sweet guy, just be patient with me.”
“That’s the thing about going out where the sun doesn’t shine. If you’re sitting there in your room, with the light on, you can see everything around you. You’re content because, well you don’t know what else is out there you’re missing.”
“Johnny, you’re not making any sense at all. I don‘t want anyone else.” there, Johnny knew she would never understand. To her, this was about her. Much like the self centered society in which we live, she is sitting alone at the center, unable to see a perspective that does not stem from her own eyes.
“You’re not listening…people get caught up in all this God and Devil bullshit. Religion, politics, when the whole time everything they ever needed to know sat right there, just outside of their little precious light. In the dark.” Johnny spoke, his eyes budded with tears. It anything Jenny had done or said. It wasn’t even a tear shed for her. He spent enough nights dedicating his tears to her. This tear came from him, the last tear he would ever shed.
“Look, things are just moving too fast, I mean if that’s where this is going I’m telling you, I just need some time to cleanse out my heart . I can’t be with him, I just need time to allow you the same feelings.”
She doesn’t think Johnny understands. Johnny knows all to well what she is saying. He understands. He wishes he didn’t understand more than anything. He wishes he could be ignorant, young, and unwise. He will never be able to feel that again.
“You’ll never know the truth until you are willing to step outside. Sit in the dark, because in the dark, you’re eyes adjust, you can see what’s there, all those little lies, all those daily masks we as people put on exposed. You’re eyes adjust and everything opens up, sitting in the darkness, babe, that’s where you’ll see everything you never thought possible.”
“Johnny, you’re being weird. Like seriously, you’re not making any sense.” There he saw her for what she truly was, her human form. She was as beautiful as ever, but she was soaked in tears, painful sorrowful tears.
“I love you Jenny, whether you are ready to hear it or not. Goodbye.”
Johnny stood up. Threw his cellphone into the trashcan and never looked back. He found a cozy place in the dark and sat watching the world.
Johnny chose knowledge over life, becoming enlightened ruined any chance of Johnny ever truly feeling anything ever again. He grew old in that dark spot, lonely and shallow. He never received loved, he never cared, he never dared to immerse himself in the light. He held Jenny in his heart until the day it stopped beating in his fragile chest. He saw the world for what it truly was, filled with shallow, self centered, ugly people. Yet he died the fool. A life wasted without ever truly living.

The Last True Love Story

I really like this piece. Its actually one of my favorites that I've posted on this blog. I think what i fancy the most is the dual layers it works in. There is a few different lens' you can read this through, most of it depending on where you fall on the spiritual spectrum. I would like to say -as always- this is a work of fiction, and although those of you who know me well, will see a lot of truth to this story in certain aspects, it is by and large purely fictional. I don't want to get too detailed about the spiritual aspect of the story because if i reveal too much about it, i fear it will potentially alter your reading. There are certain techniques at play that i try and cater too, all of which depend greatly on the readers perception of the world (i attempted to write a story that could be read on either side of this spectrum). A few things to think about as you read: the title is meant to be much more then what it merely suggests, almost everything important in this piece is dual layered, finally please respond and just give me what you 'think' the story is about and what it is trying to portray. Alas, here it is, i hope you enjoy.

The Last True Love Story
By J.L. Hickey

Tears stained her red cheeks with rivers of salt. We stood together for the last time outside of my parent’s house in front of her heavily rusted grey le saber Buick. It was late; a fresh layer of snow covered the road. Her watery eyes glistened with the glare of the street lights. These cold city streets never looked as beautiful as they did within the reflection of her eyes. That night marked the last night I was to ever truly feel alive. She kissed me there for the last time. Her lip quivered as we touched. She spoke to me with her soft broken voice.

“This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. But I have to do it.”

That’s what she said, that’s it… she had to do it. I’m sure the pain I felt that night could be felt across the world. My stomach knotted, my knees were weak. I felt as if I was dying, literally.

The soft snow fell onto my shoulders as I watched her turn off my road for the last time. I thought this may have been an attempt of God to console one of his lost children. His way of holding me when I needed it the most. When I walked back alone to the side door of my house I remember looking back and seeing my lonely footprints behind me. I thought of the poem that was read at my parents funereal, about how in our darkest times there’s only one set of footprints. How that man looks at God and asks him why he was not their walking beside him during his time of need. God replies that he was there, that those were his footprints carrying him. I wanted to smile, but then I remembered, I don’t believe in God.

If you measure life by moments of happiness, then that was the night I died. Those were the lasts breaths I would ever breathe worth the effort inhaling and exhaling. I had felt too much pain already in my young life. If you think God has a plan for us all, and that this heartache only makes you stronger, then you have lived a sheltered life, because that’s bullshit.

That snow on my shoulder melted as quickly as my faith did so many years ago.

When I die, and if I am proved wrong about this God character, and I get the chance to stare God in the face during my so called judgment, I’m going to let my fists do the talking for me. I’ll easily go to hell for the chance to kick his elitist ass.

Years later I am nothing. I work a shit end job. I pay my bills and my taxes. I spend my nights alone drinking. I spend the day alone working. It’s snowing out on this particular night that I stumble into my old church. It’s been a long time since I’ve stepped foot into this or any church. I don’t even know its Christmas Eve when I take a seat in the backroom. No one notices me sitting there, or the grudge that I hold tightly in my clenched fist.

I see her.

Twenty some years later, and it feels like yesterday. She’s only two pews in front of me. She is beautiful, angelic even. A small child is sitting on her lap staring at me. He’s resting his young chubby face on her shoulder. She is with her husband, who I dare not look at. The child has her eyes; I notice this and cry silently. The boy looks up at me and with his rosy red cheeks he faintly smiles. Across his neck is a cross and chain that lays over his navy blue tie. He is happy, she is happy, they are happy, I am lost.

I walk out soon after. I cry harder as I walk away in the snowy night sky. I leave behind the loneliest set of footprints any man has ever walked. I prayed to God to carry me home that night. Then I remembered, I don’t believe in God.

Familial Dysautonomia

This comes from an experiment and playful writing. I'm trying a few new techniques where i take a concept, idea, place, thing, whatever it is, and i try to form a story around it. I spend a lot of time on wikipedia just browsing and learning useless shit. I remembered this disease i saw on an oprah special or a news broadcast and i looked it up and researched it. I thought it might be a good vessel to explore the human condition. I'm not sure how much i like this one, and i'm not sure how well it works they way i was attempting to form it. Ideas? Let me know. And reply please! No one has left anything on my last two posts, even if its not a critique and just a pat on the back, it would be much appreciated. I have no way to gauge what kind of traffic i get on this so just leave me a lil something. Thanks as always! Hopefully you will enjoy.

Familial Dysautonomia

I’ve been told I look deranged. That hurts. I understand though, half of my upper lip is gone. The fucker got torn off one night as I was hopping a barbwire fence when I was a kid. Didn’t even realize I left my lip dangling on the razor wire until I hopped into my friend’s car. I was bleeding everywhere, a stupid prank gone wrong. That was a fun night though, despite my future deformity.

I’d do it again, no doubt.

I already know what he is thinking the second I stepped foot into his office. They all think the same. I’ve grown used to it over the years. I’m not exactly ‘attractive” to say the least. My face resembles more of a jigsaw puzzle from the scars and scrapes that decorate my flesh. I try and tell myself they build character.

When I walk into the room he immediately begins to stare. It used to bother me, now I feel a sense of manipulation over people like him. They stare, because the site of me causes them discomfort. Anything not of the norm frightens the majority of society. It’s no wonder why I do. Its one of those things you just learn to live with.

He sits comfortably behind his large desk on his leather recliner. His office is large and filled with many thick books, I doubt how any one man could have the time to read through them all. I settle on the notion they are there purely for aesthetic reasons. He is writing notes merely on my physical appearance. We haven’t even spoken a word yet.

Who the fuck is this guy anyway? I doubt my reasoning for seeing him now. Seems like a pompous fuck.

“My name is Anthony Klein. You are here because you suffer depression, or so I’m told. Is that correct?”

He speaks slow and methodic. I’m not sure if this is his usual speech pattern or if he is purposely slowing down his speech as a way to send off a subliminal message that my many scars do not bother him. I know doctors, I know body language, I know people usually better then they know themselves.

He shakes my hand and looks me directly in the eyes.

“Yes, I suppose that is correct.” I take a seat in a dark leather chair that squeaks noisily as I find my way into comfort.

I speak awkwardly, an impairment I have due to the stub of what is left of my tongue. I wasn’t born this way; it goes with my “special” talent. I wasn’t always like this; I used to have a normal tongue. By the time I was six though, I had bitten the majority of it off. It’s to the point now where I can no longer extend it far enough to bite down on it anymore. I have lived with imparity for the majority of my life, I can speak most words with no problem, but I always sound a little weird.

“Before we begin I must tell you I am no Doctor, I am in no way licensed or state approved. You were brought to me through a mutual friend who knows of my work. I don’t believe in prescription medication nor am I licensed to give you any, understood?”

“Yes.” I reply. I’ve already made my mind up, this guy’s an ass.

“I am a little shocked. I was told you have had a share of injuries and that you would have scars, but…”

I only vaguely listen to his words. He has pictures of his family on his desk. A beautiful wife with shoulder length auburn red hair and a young daughter, probably eight or ten, she looks more like his wife then himself. She has her mother’s nose, her smile. I only see her father in her eyes. The three of them actually smile, not one of those fake smiles you see in family portraits, theirs is real -caught in the moment of- not pitiful reenactment of. Its clichéd, but the photo is of them on a beach, probably up north somewhere. I see their smiles and I go numb. Something I have known far too well and for far too long.

“No worries,” I finally reply “I have looked like this the majority of my life. You see this large scar running down my forehead and through my eye? Grade school -fell off the monkey bars and split my face open- straight to the bone. One of my favorites.”

“That must have been quite a traumatizing experience.” He says with no emotion. He hardly looks at me, focusing on his bright yellow legal pad full notes.

“Especially when I stood up like nothing had happened, unknowing my left eye had been basically mutilated. I’m blind in it now.” I continued.

“I’m sorry to hear that. You say you were conscious after the fall?”

“I got right up and walked into the principal’s office. Told them I think I may have hurt myself. I left a trail of blood the whole way. I’m special. At least that’s what the told me when I was a kid. More of a curse I would say.”

I can’t help but to stare at the photo. I stare at it as long and hard as he stares at me. I see him reading me, noting where my eyes lay. I don’t want to stare, I know it’s rude. Despite how often I am on the receiving end of such rudeness, I try not to myself. Yet I keep going back to that photo. I can read his uneasiness with my infatuation with the photo. This tells me this photo is much more then it seems.

“I’m sure the adrenaline masked the pain quite a bit. Even still… judging from your scar it must have been quite serious.” He continued, ignoring my fascination.

“No, no adrenaline. Like I said I am special.”

“Well I must tell you; because I am not a doctor I have no charts or files on your history. I know nothing of your family or health, or you’re so called special-ness. I am a spiritual healer and I will cleanse your pain through my own method.”

“Pain? Well that won’t be hard fix.” I laugh under my breath, this goes unnoticed.

He knows nothing of me. I am not sure what our mutual friend has told him, obviously not much. He seems confident of curing me. I know he can’t, I know there is no cure.

“So why are you here exactly? Do you have a problem with the way people look at you with all your scars? Low self esteem? Did you loose a loved one to illness or death?” he asks questions, shooting them off like rounds from a six-shooter. He doesn’t leave room for answers, he doesn’t need them, he is making a statement… that is all.

“These are all things I can help with. I specialize in cleansing your mind, in making peace with these hardships that sicken so many people like yourself.”

He is much older now from the picture. His hair has thinned and the shades of gray have overcome the majority of his brown hair. His face has also thinned out. He looks tired in comparison. I would wager theirs almost a ten year difference between the two.

“No, none of those...” I answer. “Well, actually maybe all of those? I don’t know, that’s my problem.” The tension in my voice begins to change, this he does notes and I can see his posture alter. He sits up in his chair and places the yellow legal pad from his lap down onto his desk. He squares himself with me.

“You can call me whatever you like. So long as you our comfortable with me and our time together. I am here to help you, I want to reinforce that. May I ask what you do for a living?” he finishes with a smile.

“Well for the majority of the time I made my money as a traveling carnival act.” I do not return the smile.

“Excuse me?” His left eyebrow lifts slightly and his head cocks to the right faintly. I can tell I’ve sparked his interest.

“I said I made money traveling with a carnival, I was a sideshow.”

“What did you do?” he continues on with his never-ending notes.

“I was dubbed the “Human Punching Bag”.

“Human Punching Bag?” he looked confused.

“Do you mind?” I pulled a cigarette from my jacket pocket and a matchbook from my jeans.

“No, go right ahead.” He replied.

“Yea, you heard right.” I lit the match and took a long drag from my smoke. “People paid to kick my ass.” I inhale the smoke deep into my lungs. “Anything they wanted to do, obviously the more intense it got, the more I profited.” I exhale slowly allowing the smoke to escape my body.

“Why would you do such a thing? Do you not care about your body?”

“Care?” I asked with a smirk. I take another long hit from my cigarette and lay my arm out on his desk palm up. I knock the ashes off into the tray and slowly put the burning cigarette onto my skin. You can hear the flesh burn, I do not flinch. You can even smell the stench of burnt skin. The site is gruesome, I seen someone do this in a movie with a cigar, you can see similar scars on my arm where I have done it before.

“What are you doing?” his face squints in pain for me. I see that look more on people’s faces then actual smiles. Its apart of the curse.

“Punch me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Go ahead I’ll give you a free one. Right in the face, go for blood.”

“I can’t…” he looked appalled at even the thought of him to do so.

“It’s to prove a point. If you won’t then I guess I will my self.” With the same arm as the burnt scar I clench my fist as hard as possible; squarely I sock myself in the nose. I hear a crack and I see the flow of red pour onto his desk.

“My god!” he screams with wide eyes. From underneath his desk he pulls some napkins and hands them to me.

“How old is the photo?” I nod towards it spewing my blood everywhere as if it were no big deal. Honestly it wasn’t to me. I’ve seen my blood more times then most people have seen movies. It’s a daily occurrence; it goes with my job, with my life.

“Excuse me?” he’s rushing towards his bathroom. He comes back with a roll of towels and begins to clean up the pool of red.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to make a mess. How old?”

He seems visibly shaken. The blood now was spilling over onto his notepad, all his lengthy hand written notes were now mixed with the thick blood, the ink bleeding into it.

“Three years ago.” He muttered as he cleans up the mess in a panic. “Why do you care?”

“No offense, I would have guessed it was like ten years ago. You’ve aged.”

“Why did you do that?” he ignored the statement.

“Why not?” I answer.

“What do you mean why not?” he is baffled, it’s not his fault, he doesn’t understand anything. This act was not socially acceptable, but like I said I don’t exactly fit in with the norms of society. I am their burden, I am their whispers in their ears and their constant stares, I am the freak who moved in next door who’s not allowed to banter with their children.

“I guess what I mean is, Familial Dysautonomia.”

“Excuse me?” He tosses a blood soaked paper towels into his small desk’s trashcan. He looks furious, but still his curiosity overcomes his anger. 

“Familial Dysautonomia.” I repeated, this time speaking louder and as clearly as my stubble of a tongue will let me.

“What are you talking about?”

“You ever hear of those Scandinavian triplets? The ones who wore born and all died before they were twelve due to that disease? They had this damned curse too, that wasn’t that long ago actually? What, back in the late eighties maybe, I think there was a special on sixty minutes about them?”

“I’m vaguely familiar with it. They had some strange defect. I can’t really recall much about it.”

“Yea, that defect it what I have. The average lifespan is twelve years young. Somehow I’ve managed to live past twenty.”

“You don’t feel pain at all then?”

“I stand in front of a line of people with blunt objects who want nothing more then to cause the most amount of pain to me they can. They already don’t like me because I look different. They pay top dollar to get a crack at kicking my ass. I’ve been hit with baseball bats, hockey sticks, led pipes, hell -some just want to punch me. I always get the biggest guys wanting to show off in front of their college girls, thinking they can be the one to hurt me. They don’t get it. They punch me, I bleed, I smile to them with blood stained teeth, and take their money. In short, I feel nothing.”

“That’s not healthy. There’s got to be serious long term effects caused by all this damage, blood clots, all that has to be taken into consideration.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already doubled my lifespan. Anyway, have you ever gone through life with in inability to feel anything? It’s not much of a life. I should have been dead a decade ago.”

“It can’t be all bad.” he simply replies.

I look back at his photo with his family. They are happy. They are everything I have never known, everything I have ever wanted.

He notices me staring at his photo again, this time he lays it face down. He grows more uncomfortable, I can tell as he crosses his leg and angles himself differently as he sits back down into his chair. His eye contact becomes lesser; he is also fidgeting with a pen. All signs.

“I’m sorry I don’t mean to be rude. Its just you seem so happy.”

“We should focus on you. Not me.”

“Okay whatever.”

“I want to help you. I just… I’ve never helped anyone such as yourself. I don’t even know where to begin. What is it that you want, where do you hurt emotionally?”

“I would give anything to feel that way, the way you do in that photo, with that smile. That’s all I want. You know how it feels when you love a girl so much that just the mere touch of her skin makes you so happy you could die that very moment and be happy? Not me, no fucking clue. I can’t feel anything; I have no idea what it feels like to feel the women you love in your arms.”

“You should feel blessed. You’ll never know the feeling of loosing that touch forever either. ”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve known that feeling, the completeness that comes with the warmth from your loved ones touch. It’s enough to make you withstand all the evils in this world. But once you’ve felt that, you have the uneasiness to know that it can be lost very easily. You may never know the warmth for the short amount of time that feeling lasts, but feel lucky you’ll never know the bitter cold that replaces it once you’ve lost it. Trust me, that last much longer.”

Although he doesn’t say how, whether they were killed, or whether she met some younger richer man and left, but it is obvious, he no longer has that warmth either. I don’t ask either, in all honesty I don’t care. I hate him for ever feeling that.

“I would take the bitter cold over pure numbness. I would take anything over nothing. You give me one day to feel that way, and I will take an eternity of that bitterness.”

He shakes his head as if he is ashamed of what I’ve said.

“You only say that because you’ve never known it. Trust me, you have no curse, you are blessed. You are spared from the pain the rest of us have to deal with. You are spared from the turmoil and despair my other entire clients struggle with when they walk through those doors. If all people were like you I wouldn’t have a job. People fall out of love, people cheat on their spouses. If no one felt anything physical then their emotional attachments wouldn’t be hardly as strained. ”

“That’s bullshit, I’ve spent my whole life as an outsider, both physically and emotionally. I feel pain, I feel hurt, when someone looks at me with disgust, I still feel that. When that one person looked at me with love, and when she went to hold me and I could not even feel her, that is a curse. I want to feel that! I feel all the bad, all the evil, all the negativity, but I get nothing else. Nothing.”

“I can’t help you, I’m sorry. None of my techniques will enable you to feel anything, physically or emotionally.”

“Fine.”

I walk away. I slam the door behind me. I can’t help but to think about that photo. I wonder how a man filled with so much pain can comfort others anyway. I wonder about what he said. I wonder how the pain would feel over loosing that feeling. I wonder what kind of man he was when he had it. I wonder what kind of man I would be if I ever had it.

I wonder a lot, but I’ll never know.

The Canvas

This story came from a well received poem i wrote a few years back. I'm not into poetry but i knew something good was there, so i decided for my second short story post to play around with it. I like this story, it has some heavy imagery and metaphores that i am not sure will be picked up on. Maybe i am giving myself too much credit though. As always i wrote this in about two hours and is a first draft. Comments? Ideas? Possitive Criticism?

The Canvas

He is old now, completely grayed and his face was no longer lined with vibrant colors. Instead, it’s been replaced with dark shades of black. His hair has thinned and his beard grew into perfect harmony with a brilliant mix of white and black. His life is empty now; with nothing left for his old and wrinkled paint stained hands to create. He is slipping rapidly out of health. When I visit him in the sterile white stained room of the hospital, and I look into his once dark brown fleeting eyes, I know deep down, he’s already dead. He has been for a long time.

When he was younger he was always in his studio. I remember when I was a real young kid; he would be in there sometimes for hours. I knew this because my adolescent mind gauged time through the half hour episodes of television programs. I always wanted to watch him turn those oily blobs of paint into massive city landscapes or rusted out Chevy truck beds hauling mounds of dirty trash bags into the desert.

He told me once, that when he stood before his canvas, he felt like God.

“I control what happens here. I turn this white bleak canvas into anything my mind can imagine. No one has any control over what I decide to make with these paints and my hands. Its freedom boy, pure unrestricted freedom, it’s the American dream.”

In real life, it was complete opposite for him; I know this now looking back in retrospect. He had no control over anything, in fact everyone had control of him. The government controlled his income due to debt. Mother controlled where he went and what he did during his little spare time. His job controlled the majority of his time. He was a product of those around him. He was the canvas; all those other parties took turns with the brush creating him.

His creations -as I call them- were gorgeous. I think labeling them as paintings or sketches is too informal. They were much more then that. I remembered when he finished one of my favorites, a magnificent ship with towering sails battling through menacing waves that violently came crashing into its bow. It hangs in my living room above my television this very day.

It’s unfortunate that I am not as talented with writing as my father was with paint. No matter how hard I could try to depict its beauty with words, it would only pale in comparison to the perfection of every stroke of his brush. When I was younger I would sneak into the basement to look at his creations. The ship always gave me goose bumps.

I’m not sure how he did it, but the ocean looked so scary to me. I swear it was as angry as I have ever seen or witnessed the act of anger in my life. Sometimes even in my adult life I dream of being trapped on that boat. I’m there all alone, looking overboard watching as these ten foot waves crash into me. I fight for balance, fight for composure as the violent winds batter my face with the sting of the freezing rain. In my dreams the ship never sinks, but I’m never strong enough to weather the storm. I grab a life vest and I jump into the ocean, fading away into its omnipotent gloom. I wake up sweating with tears in my eyes. I never understood what it meant.

“Son, what are you doing down here?”

I’d heard him walking down the steep creaky staircase but I was too captivated to really take notice until he spoke.

“Its late, you have school.”

I’m not sure my age; I was young though, probably just of out grade school, within my first two years of middle school. I remember I would sneak down after I thought everyone was in bed. Even at that age, that basement scared the shit out of me. To this day I’m not sure how I ever muster up enough courage to sneak down there at nights to look that them.

“Why are you down here looking at these old things?”

Even back then, before he truly physically defined the concept of “old” he had began the process of giving up on his dream. It had been years since he had created anything at that point.

“Why don’t you paint or draw anymore, dad?”

“Oh, I do. Everyday at G.M. you know I draw the manuals for all the stations and their parts.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It pays the bills. You grow up, and you realize the things you love to do don’t pay the bills. I have your mother, you, and your sister to think about.”

“Don’t you miss it?”

“Of course I do. You’re still young. You’ll learn responsibility soon enough. You’ll start by going to bed.”

He’d pick up his paint brush and his pencils every now and then. It seemed that all his years working and raising us tired him out too much to the point that he was never really able to recapture his inner artist. I know now that he chose his family over his creations.

I sit next to him as he sleeps. It’s because I know he will not be with us much longer that I am there with him by his side. It’s been a long time since we really spoke. It’s funny how fast life goes by when you hold a grudge. Even when mom died, we just kind of did our own things.

I never amounted to the success my parents always bestowed upon me. I was always deemed the one to make something of my life. I chose the road less traveled. My father chose the duties of a father, the hardworking backbreaking ethic of putting your family first before your own dreams. I married young, due to a pregnancy that my girlfriend and I at the time were definitely not ready for. We struggled. I worked a shit job at a restaurant and I spent most of my time dedicated to my own creations.

I wasn’t a painter, I was a writer. At least I called myself a writer. I made money here and there, made publications in this journal and in that journal. I never made much money. I never quit though, not like my father. It got to the point that I was forced to choose, I never wanted to. It was between my family, or the thing I truly loved, creating.

I knew then, first hand what my father was talking about. When I looked at that blank white page staring back up at me, I felt like God just waiting to create anything I deemed. It was a drug to me, a release, it was therapeutic. My parents backed my wife’s side. Even my father, who I thought would understand at least a little how I felt. It didn’t matter. I chose to follow my American dream. I chose freedom. I chose to create.

I think of that day he spoke to me in the basement. Sometimes I wonder how foolish I was. I never remarried or even dated. It wasn’t an act of un-love. I just couldn’t give up my dreams; I wouldn’t let anyone or anything write the words on my canvas like he did.

I was going to leave this story uncompleted on his bed. I was going to walk away from my father who lays deathly ill before my very eyes and say goodbye leaving only this behind. I would have ended it with clichés that form our daily lives. I would have said that I love him dearly. That he was a good hard working father. I was going to apologize for our separation and tell him that I still stand by the choices I made.

Instead he woke up and I never got to write or tell him any of that. Instead you get the following events.

His eyes watered upon seeing me sitting there next to him. I couldn’t speak. I folded this up and handed it to him unfinished. He shook his head simply with a no.

“I had your sister bring something here in case you came.” He spoke slowly, his voice had aged and I hardly recognized it. “It’s in the closet.”

I said nothing; instead I placed this unfinished story into my pocket and opened up the small closet within the hospital room. There underneath a clear plastic bag with my fathers belongings sat a large art folder. I opened it up and pulled out a large painting.

“I painted that a year after you left your wife. It was the last thing I ever created. It is my greatest achievement.”

There in my hands was almost an exact replica of that weather worn ship painting that still hung high in my living room. The waves were still as dark and scary as ever. There was one main difference; in this one the ship was well manned. My father, mother, sister, and even my ex-wife and our son Jacob, all manned their positions. They look worn and tired, yet they fought on.

“I love you father. I am sorry.” I walked away and did not look back. I cried harder that night then I had in years. I understood now. I always thought back to that night my father spoke to me in our old basement as a way to justify my choices. I understood everything as clear as day. There was nothing left for me to do. I went to bed that night and I found myself back on that boat. I was alone, and I did as I always do. I jumped into that violent ocean and faded away into nothingness.

Dining Room Table Presents: Addiction

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