Spin You a Daydream →
This is a series devoted to the daydreams in all our lives.
This is a series devoted to the daydreams in all our lives.
…and civilization is just an illusion. A concoction of our feeble minds that tries to make the world seem wholesome, right. Each era in history makes its people believe they have it better than the rest. And each era eventually realizes the truth. But what is truth except something to be molded, to be shaped into something new and shiny.
Each unsatisfied era spins into a new version of the same damn thing. No matter what is going on. It’s always the same. Don’t kid yourself. The presidents of today are given princely homes, servants at their beck and call, dozens of underlings to kiss their asses daily. The English kings wish they had it so good. The czars are tempted to rise from their disintegrating gravesites and run for election. It is all just a thick, black, curtain hiding the bloody tragedy of the human condition. The mistrust, the massacres, the general animosity toward so-called brothers and sisters in this dysfunctional family. And not a damn thing can be done. It’s all so ingrained. The strongest backwater moonshine cannot hide this apparently self-evident truth from me any longer. Trust me, I have tried. All it does it trap me in my helplessness. I can do nothing. And so it goes in our time. We drink of the wellspring of life and than shit upstream. We think anything we do can change the course of history, even destroying it, but its just rehashing old lies. Yes, destiny is ours. Yes, the past is something to pay no heed to. Yes, we are our own masters.
…James and I travelled continuously. We went to London, to Prague, to Berlin, to St. Petersburg. We saw the decay of them all, as well as Moscow and Paris and even Washington D.C. They all hardened our resolves, made us believe even stronger in our plan to destroy history.
We felt it was our calling. Our DESTINY, even though we denied this very thing. History was destroying al the cities of the world. It was breaking them down, brick by brick dynamiting their foundations. Like the vampire that it is, history was draining the lifeblood of the world, letting its wounds fester. We spoke and people listened, some in amusement, but most in the rapt attention and awe of a man about to be reborn in the Christian sense. Someone being made privy to the very secrets of god. So, we had our converts, our underground following of social elite. The after parties, of course, are where we earned our real followers. Booze makes for easy arguments. Nothing goes over better than the radical idea with a Cosmopolitan chaser.
Forget yourself. Remember only me.
And we roamed and spoke and made use of unrest. We also made use of our followers. I did, at least. James was like a damned monk. It spooked me, how anyone so alive could be so dead sexually. I chided him nightly for this, but his replies were always that mysterious smile of his, and that stare that seemed to take no notice of your existence. It was this way last night, and so I left him alone, walking to my hotel room with two of my devotees on either side, giggling and rubbing their ample chests against my arms. Many hours later, I was shook from my slumber, waking to a cold bed and James staring down at me, his eyes glazed and wild, his tongue lolling and threatening to fall completely out of his mouth. I muttered a curse and reached over to check the hotel clock. It was 4:30. Damn it, what could possibly be so urgent to rise at this hour? I asked him as much and he merely said “You’ll see.”
He led me by the hand like a lost child, down through the red and gold trimmed lobby, sparkling with richness and radiating sensuality. We exited the lobby by a grand side door, leading to a magnificent bar darkened to an almost midnight atmosphere, the long, low light behind the bar the only brightness, like a welcoming porch light on a cold December night, welcoming you and beckoning for you to come home. Calling out that all is well here, no harm can come to you. But we did not heed this call, not this time.
With a hand on my shoulder, James directed me away from that lovely home to a table in the shadowed corner, already occupied by a hunched over man in an evening suit. I was still slightly drunk, and wanted to point out that it’s morning, , that his apparel was completely wrong, but I was satisfied to just think it at the moment, and chuckle to myself.
“Sit,” James said, motioning me to the empty side of the table, taking his place next to me after a moment. We got settled, again he spoke. “Have you begun preparation for what we discussed?” James fit in perfectly here, quiet and reserved as he was. He belonged in the shadows, soft-spoken and slipping under the radar of oh-so-many. But I saw him in a new light, something hard and unseen underneath his reserved exterior. He was a conspirator, and I his co-conspirator, as apparently this stranger was, and you need more than meekness to conspire against the world, right?
“Well I have, but I’m not sure you understand the implications of this action.” The stranger spoke, his face flushing with a passion that seemed unnatural for such an hour.
“You know I do, Marcel,” James said in his calm, even voice. He was now radiating confidence. I was slightly scared. “And you understood the implications too What changed? What has made you weak and shaking in your loyalty to our cause? Do you not believe in its validity anymore?” So the man had a name, I longed for when I hadn’t known it, I longed for that god’s-eye view of the situation, when I was just a spectator.
I longed for a scotch on the rocks.
“Sir, I am forever loyal to the cause. I have lived, have I not? I know what this blasted plague has done to us. How it has ravaged our minds and sickened our spirits. Instead of looking to the future we strangle on the past. We are like babes struggling from the womb, only to be birthed with an umbilical cord stealing our first breath. We need that first breath, I know that. But the cost of these actions…we need to consider those as well, my friend.: This man, Marcel, spoke with an elegance he looked impossible to contain. And he spoke of James as a friend, as an equal, but he was not. Their coldness towards each other did not lend itself to that idea. It seemed merely a desperate man’s way of imploring his killer’s humanity. It was bait, and James didn’t take it.
“Your weakness does so sicken me, Marcel. Tell me of your preparations and spare me the sickening monologue. I have no use for it.
And so he did. Of the virus under way, the original code lines shortened to fourteen thousand. Of the surgical teams in place.
“Wait, wait please a minute. What is going on here. What missions, what virus? James, why am I in the dark her?” I began to rant, and was only silenced by a glare from James, and a sharp stab in my side from his hand.
“Shut your mouth, idiot. Do you want the entire bar to know? Talk again and I will end your life with this butter knife.” James had never spoken like this before. Not to me, or even in my presence. Its force and brutality made me tense and shudder. I felt the blood drain from my face. Who was this man next to me?
I felt on the verge of releasing my bowels right there, at the table, just like that. The thought sent me into wild bursts of laughter. I was mad, and I knew it, and damned if it wasn’t the funniest thing in the world. I climbed over James and skipped over to the bar where I ordered a double scotch and finished it before I could taste what it was. I ordered another, and allowed myself to be carried away in its possessiveness, like a jealous lover. After many a double, I blinked out. I was in my own world, my vision narrowed to the all-consuming glass in my hand and the lights behind the bar. They were bright, but not antiseptic. They were warm, but the warm of the womb, not of the funeral pyre. I was home all right, and to hell with James and his ideas.
At some point I must have fallen asleep, or fallen down drunk, because in front of my eyes was a world not in existence. It was a world of nothing. No parties, no speeches, no endless debates. Just the peaceful existence of non-existence. The calm of nothingness. There was no god, no angels, no magical clouds or harps being played by large chested, virginal angels. There was nothing, in fact, and it was heaven to me. Oh how I wish al life were as it now. Right now. And so I slept.
I woke up, my clothes saturated from an unremembered shower, my shoes still on, now ruined, and my brain as drenched with alcohol as my clothes were with water. Earthquakes have less force than my headache, its throbbing shaking the foundations and cracking my skull at its seams. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. My entire head felt like that link, I could hear James in the next room, my traveling living room, whistling to himself and drinking coffee, probably. It was so much the normal morning for him, and for myself, really, that it was unnerving. I didn’t even know the person whistling out of tune. He was a mystery to me, as much so as the hunched over figure last night. And yet when I rose from my bed, dripping on the lush gray carpet as I walked into the living room, he smiled and greeted me like I was his brother, his confidant. No hint of the anger he showed last night, none of the impatience, and strangely none of the confidence either. It was the same old James, shy, introverted, loathing the thought of speaking in public and yet captivating when he would. The dichotomy of this man was a case study in Jeckyl and Hyde, and he made me want to understand, made me need to understand.
He also made me nervous, made me want to shit myself, just last night in fact. I needed to get away, but what could I do? I was hooked. This angler had me on his line and I was at his mercy. I could do nothing but help and drink and watch, and we traveled and I drank and preparations were made and it was okay because it was all just a game, all just an illusion, a string of events tied together loosely, with no point…
Red was never my color. But as it stands, right now, I have no choice. Robby made sure of that. My partner in crime, so to speak. Rubber bands aren’t the only things to snap under pressure.
Routine, by the numbers. Everything was what you would call normal, at least by our standards. Anxiety was getting to me though. I wasn’t prone to panic attacks, so this wasn’t exactly business as usual. In my line of work, panic, faltering, one odd move can get you killed.
“Easy man. Nothing to it,” Robbie says to me. His red hair, a mane, flowing like fire in the high winds by the water. It was high tide, and no place for someone who can’t swim. I shivered for a moment. “You got yourself worked up over this? Think of what a gazelle feels like, man.” I picture this. Picture this weak, pitiful creature. Being watched, being stalked. No match for the cheetah. This is not exactly a comforting image. The cheetah, it leaps, without warning, at the gazelle. I empathize.
I must be going soft.
The emptiness I feel does nothing to quell the nerves.. neither does that Xanax Robby is force-feeding me by this point. One by one, little blue tablets race down my throat. Coating my insides with tranquility. Numbing my brain. Tricking me into a field of wildflowers and grass.
But right now, in this state, the flowers are dying; the grass is burning. I’m thinking this is maybe what a nervous breakdown feels like. I’m thinking, I should have retired while I still had the chance.
But Robby assures me that he feels like this all the time, hence the Xanax. I’m thinking maybe the coke he takes through his nostrils like air, but I don’t say this.
We get into his van, charcoal gray, the kind only pedophiles and Mexicans drive, and we hurl toward our destination at a speed I thought impossible for this heap. My hands shake as I light a cigarette. Another blue pill chased with what I think is vodka. At this point I’m not sure of much.
The music blaring from the radio does little to soothe me, and I attribute my rising nausea to it. This ans maybe an overdose, but I keep downing the little football shaped saviors anyway.
“Oh so many ways for me to show you how your savior has abandoned you Fuck your god!” Robby screams this line at me along with the radio. It feels personal, but I’m not sure why. The chorus keeps running through my head even after the song is long finished, and our journey half complete.
It’s not like you killed someone. It’s not like you drove a spiteful spear into his side. Praise the one who left you broken down and paralyzed. I’m not sure why, but this strikes a chord in me at the moment. Panic grips me just a little lighter. Hope all systems are go. I hope things go as planned.
We drive, a dark blanket of night surrounding us save two cones of light leading the way. Dionysus and his lantern. Searching for that one honest man. The meaning of life all boils down to a fruitless
Search. We’re all liars in the end. We pass a billboard, glowing under its own lights, and I just make out the words YOU LOSE as we speed by. I chase more Xanax with liquor and light another cigarette; try to clear my head of that image.
By now the vodka and Xanax cocktail is working its magic, casting its spell of confusion and well-being on me.
“You’re right, Robby. This job will go off without a hitch,” I mumble. I don’t think he hears me over the blare of the radio, but he smiles anyway. I grin drunkenly back. I’m getting confident, my cigarette gets shorter, and I sing “You never thought to question why.”
“What did you say man- oh shit, that song ended like twenty minutes ago. Snap the hell out of it. We got work to do.” This while he’s shoving Xanax into my greedy little palm.
Home free soon. One last job and I’m home free. He’s right; we have work to do. Some more than others, I chuckle under my breath. Lines from the long finished song, ‘Judas’, ‘Judith’, something like that, continue to flash through my head. Even though he’s the one, who did this to you, you never thought to question why.
Just one more job.
Never- choke on a lie.
We arrive, my head swirling but my intent, my goal, still intact, still rock-steady. I yank open the van door, a little too forcefully, a little too carelessly. I step out, drop my cigarette and stamp it out til it’s cold. For some reason I feel a sense of accomplishment. I hear Robby’s door slam, and I reach for my mask. Clouded. I’m just coming to the realization that the surroundings aren’t familiar. This isn’t the building we cased. All our planning gone to hell.
“What the hell, Rob. What are we-“ Cracked in the skull from behind. Confusion, pain, a concrete bed with my name on it.
I roll over, face my attacker. Robby’s face looms. He looks large from this angle. Goliath getting his revenge.
“No more man. This shit is done. Finite. Comprende, you dumb spic?” He spits these words at me, taunting. He’s won, and the backup is at the warehouse. Barking up the wrong tree. The wrong alley. Everything wrong, gone to hell, and here I am, just another piggy getting slaughtered. His last words; “Oink Oink fucking piggy,” and an agonizing pain in my chest. Not the heart, but too damn close. Wearing red because I wear blue. Footsteps fading, I wonder if the wire is intact, if this tracer really works. YOU LOSE. If I never thought to question why. I stop wondering.
In college, posted almost randomly throughout the hallways, they have these bulletin boards. Little boards of cork keeping the public up-to-date on the goings on of everyone else. Our own little Page Six. Our gossip column of the not-so rich and famous. Here is a notice for a fashion club meeting, almost covering a bulletin for a rally against animal cruelty that was held three weeks ago.
Weddings and new class openings mingle in a montage of nothingness. It’s here that I find, written on a scrap of paper in a hand I don’t know as if an unimportant post-script to life, this message:
‘A memorial service will be held for Nicole Bethany Jackson at 6 o’clock in the main lecture hall.’ The service is slated to happen on the twenty-seventh. Yesterday.
This is how I find out my best friend has died.
An unimportant post-script to a life.
‘Our condolences go out to her family and friends. All who wish to pay their respects are invited to attend.’
Were invited to attend. Her fifteen minutes of fame had run out. The same way painters are only recognized after they die. Nicole was the center of attention for a day.
And just like any other rise to fame, it must have gotten lonely up there; in front of the public mourners, laying in her gold-inlay box.
Maybe fame is just an early look at your death. Each movie premiere and photo-op a snapshot of your funeral. Everyone coming out to weep and love and quietly, in their minds, sigh in relief. One less competitor. One last moment in the spotlight before your taken out of the running. A void quickly filled.
Sorry, but your fifteen minutes are up.
I almost envy her release. I could just see her looking down on the whole spectacle and thinking boy, I’m glad that’s over.
Suddenly there is a void that needs filling and it won’t get filled just standing here. I head out to my car, past the blocks of people looking for fame and fortune in all the wong ways, all the wrong places. Not knowing that they will never be ahead. Going out will be their high note. I’m thinking of this liquor store in a big way.
Nicole and I used to drink together. We used to do everything together but drinking was high on the list. We’d stop at this liquor store with no sign, only a neon LIQUOR glowing outside, and drink before we went out to the bars. We would line the bottles up, proving we achieved something great that night. Proving that we mattered in some way. Our conversations would drift in and out of focus, so that by the next day I could remember nothing but the warm glow of booze and camaraderie. We would jokingly refer to ourselves as the functioning alcoholics, claiming a social status in this whole wide world. Pegs wanting so badly to fit into holes. We would joke about ending up dead at an early age. A morbid way of confronting our mortality. A way to ignore that our fifteen minutes would be just that and nothing more. The conversations got fuzzy right about there. I’d wake up, eternally wondering what did she say?
I’m heading to the liquor store now, ready to hoist a couple in memory of her. In memory of us, and in memory of nothing, I hope.
The engineers of liquor bottles are wonderful geniuses. The way the label lines up to the bottle like traffic lights at a busy intersection. The top line is like a flashing yellow light: proceed slowly, and with caution. I do what everyone does at the yellows: I ignore it, and speed up. Three quarters of a bottle later and the bottom line, the red light, shines bloody and dangerous. It promises penalties and hazards and death. I blast through and horns blare, tires squeal, and I close my eyes as I punch through the glass wall, the bottom of the bottle and I’m thinking I live to fight another day. By now I’ve forgotten what I’m fighting. I’ve forgotten, by now, what I’m living for. Have I missed my high note?
This is all a test though.
Test of endurance, test of recklessness. What are these tests preparing me for? All just unimportant post-scripts. Just fluff, filling up the blank space the writer left in his rush to get to print. In the end, though, these tests don’t matter. Nothing really does except looking good for your public, one last time. Looking healthy, life-like. The final intrusion on your privacy, and then no more.
You look at anything as a metaphor for life too long and it loses its meaning, its potency. Longer still, and life follows suit. Slowly and surely going the way of the buffalo. The way of the Native American. The Trail of Tears, ninety proof and hard to swallow.
I go through many red lights before the night is over.
By about the third bottle I hear her.
Coming from somewhere behind me. Nicole is telling me how bad a driver I am.
“Come on alkie, you can do better than that. I could drive better from back here.” Being dead heasn’t dulled her tongue, it seems.
“You think so, maybe I should let you” I mumble, but she hears me anyhow.
“I don’t think so Greg. Where kinda past the point where I can be designated driver- like that was ever an issue.” I mumble something, I’m not even sure what, but Nicole replies anyway. “What do you mean? We always said we were gonna die at a young age.”
“I thought we were joking around. I didn’t know that was your plan!” I shout, getting looks from people in the next lane.
“I wasn’t joking, and that wasn’t the plan. Sometimes you just can’t help but fold. But don’t worry, I’ll be looking for you.”
“Looking for me? You’ve found me! Wait! That’s what you said! That’s what you always said! You think that makes up for=” but she was already gone. So in response I uncapped another bottle. More traffic lights ignored.
This drunk, and parking can only be accomplished in Braille. Struck blind, and feeling with heavily gloved hands toward the curb, toward the cars fore and aft. A new struggle every time. You’ve been bad, and someone has rearranged the furniture to punish you.
Tsk, tsk.
Tap, taop tap, like echo-location, like a second sight you have to acquire.
You wonder if the blind sometimes get that way by stabbing out their eyes, trying to get someone’s attention.
Healthy, seeing people, going to extremes just to get someone to notice. To care.
Self-destruction as a viable means to an end. Romeo’s sacrifice for Juliet. To Juliet. Your own personal hemlock.
Drink deep, and all will be well. My sentiments exactly.
My own claim to fame, my personal bid for power.
My chance at fifteen minutes.
In this way I have a pretty fair chance at getting it, too. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe. A long line of fame, a long line of men blinded and groping their way through life. Great men. Visionaries. Maybe you need to be blind to see anything at all. If in death we see the Big Picture, maybe being blind is like looking through a keyhole. Maybe Heaven is just knowing the score.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. I don’t want to waste your time on something you already know.
‘A man walks into a bar…’ Beginning of a joke, but not the story. Why did he walk into the bar, and that particular bar.? For fun? For profit? For a quick pint of amnesia? Maybe it should go ‘A man had to walk into this bar.’ Nothing is predestined, but life can sure give you one hell of a nudge in one direction.
A man walked into a bar trying to walk out of the world.
Maybe I’m just looking for someone to notice me. Someone who was just recently on the receiving end of the Big Picture. It’s really quite a Large Picture, when you think about it, and to get noticed you have to stand out. Saint or Sinner you gotta have flair. The world as a Where’s Waldo book. Me, jumping up and down, waving my hands, reeking of vodka. Me, stumbling around, wasted in all senses, flailing about and screaming.
Stop me if you’ve heard it all before.
I’m shouting “Find me Nicole!” Lights are blaring, blinding, obstructing my view, her view maybe, too. “Don’t lose sight of me!” Horns all around me drown my please. Tires squeal and with a disappointing thump and roll I fall. My life is spreading out around me and I get it.
A stark, tragic story of four individuals at the turn of the 21st century, and their struggle to cope with a society that abandoned them. Their lives are parties, shows and bedrooms. Their motives are their own. Their mentality is of the coming end. This is the Generation: Broken.
It’s escape that Tiff and Sonny are after. they’re trapped, struggling for their lives, surrounded by a horde of zombie, and they want out!
In this collection, the author touches upon love, and war, and addiction, as well as misanthropy and the feeling that everyone knows something you don’t
Soma-all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.
Write Poetry. Enter the Open Amateur Poetry Contest to win $1,000. 116 prizes to be awarded in this poetry contest.
