Resentment: Sam Moore

01. Writer

Sam Moore


02. Theme

Resentment


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Ryota Kozuka:
Camp Ichigaya


04. WRITING

     When I woke in the morning, there was a large black egg resting on the kitchen counter. It was chalky and scuffed, like an oval-shaped chunk of moon dipped in dark ink. The sight of it was jarring among the rest of my tiny apartment in a way that made it difficult to register. It looked wildly out of place here, but I can’t imagine a place where it would look like it belonged. 

     I carefully lifted up the object and found the touch of it surprisingly warm. It was about the size of a squash and equally heavy. You’re certainly not a rock, I thought, and I don’t think you’re a seed. But you’re no sort of egg I’ve ever seen. What are you?

     My mind started backtracking, running through any and all possible explanations as to what this was or how it got here. Was it some sort of prank? Did I bring this home in a drunken stupor from some strange vendor? Did I simply forget that this object has been here with me this whole time? The problem was, of course, that none of these explained it away. There was no sign of entry--no windows or doors left open or unlocked, nothing stolen, nothing else out of place. I wasn’t drinking last night, so my memory was in fine shape. I had a perfectly normal day. Worked, grabbed a few groceries on my way home, and read in bed until I fell asleep. 

     I wracked my brain further, but it got me nowhere. Besides that, I didn’t have time to think about it now. If anything, I was now a few minutes behind schedule and I found myself unnerved by the sudden appearance of this thing I couldn’t deal with. I scarfed down a quick breakfast (a slice of toast, an orange, and half a cup of coffee), and got ready for work. As I hurried out the door I thought I saw the object on the kitchen counter wobble ever so slightly, but I could have been mistaken as I was in a rush and didn’t get a good look.

     The subway was crowded, too crowded to find a seat. I stood between a man who kept sniffling loudly and another mouth breather with a bad case of morning breath. At least I could drown out some of the annoyance with my headphones--if I didn’t forget them at home while I was frantically trying to get out the door. I groaned. The ride lasted too long and everyone seemed to be on edge the entire way, packed away tightly like gunpowder ready to go off.

     As soon as the doors opened I pushed my way through. A brisk walk later and I was at work, slightly out of breath. Nobody said a word when I rolled in, so I assumed I wasn’t late. This was a mistake, of course. As I was draping my coat over my chair and getting ready to start, someone coughed behind me. It was a “trying-to-get-your-attention” cough. Nothing good ever follows those coughs. I contemplated ignoring it. My day would be objectively better if I didn’t receive whatever news was coming. I knew this wasn’t an option, however.

     “Morning, Mr. Brock,” I said.

     “What time is it?” His question came the split second I had finished saying his name, as if these few precious seconds were being stolen from him by having to interact with me.

     I glanced at my watch. “8:02, sir.”

     “What time does your shift start?”

     “Right now, sir.”

     “No,” he said firmly. Brock barely moved a muscle when he spoke. It was like watching an old statue learn how mutter sounds. “It starts at eight o’clock. Don’t make a habit of this.” And then he left.

     I sat down and began taking calls. 

     Most of the people I talk to fall into one of three categories. There’s the abhorrent, horrid customers. These are the ones that have a knack for exploding over things that are wildly out of your control at the bottom of the proverbial food chain. Then there’s the casually-cold, unfriendly types. They won’t curse you out or raise their voice, but you can tell they’re just looking for a reason to. And finally, there’s the ones that prefer to make the calls as quick and painless as possible. These types still aren’t a joy, but they at least get it over with fast. 

     The vast majority fall in the first and second categories.

     Selling insurance is the equivalent of being a punching bag. Follow the script, take your blows on the chin, and keep it moving. Nothing more than bodies to take the verbal abuse that the higher-ups deserve. 

     It’s a gig, right?     Several hours later and I’ve been berated enough to nearly forget about the black egg that appeared on my kitchen counter this morning. Can’t really stop and worry about it when I have to keep the calls, and the money, coming in. Worry about being able to pay your bills first, I tell myself. And then worry about your boss, about whether you’re expendable (I am, we all are), and what you’d do if something happened.

     Treading water, indefinitely. That’s what it feels like.

     My brain is cluttered enough with other things to worry about. There’s no room left for whatever it is that’s back at my house on the kitchen counter, waiting. I take another call and am immediately drowned out by the angry wailing of an old man, upset over something several leagues out of my control.

     For some reason I stop for groceries again on my way home despite the fact that I went yesterday. I tell myself I’m just being responsible, that I had forgotten a few things, that it’ll save me a trip later. It works to an extent, but deep down I know I’m putting off going home for as long as I can because all that awaits is one more problem to deal with. 

     The egg is still on the kitchen counter when I return. It hasn’t moved an inch. The sight of it, especially after today, makes my stomach sour. I realize now I didn’t truly have any time to process its appearance this morning, almost as if I could have imagined it in a groggy haze this morning. Now that I’m home with time to digest this fact I feel a thick, syrupy claustrophobia just being around it. Like I’m trapped in a sinking mire, slowly plummeting with nothing to grab hold of. Without even putting the groceries away I feel the object again and wonder if I’m just imagining things or if it really is warmer than when I felt it this morning. 

     I don’t know what to do with it so I don’t do anything. It stays where I found it. Perhaps it’ll suddenly disappear as quickly as it showed up. I tell myself this over and over knowing that it’s foolish, but right now I’m home and I only have a few hours to myself to let my brain shut off and not worry about anything else. The mind only has so much mental energy in a given day and once it’s gone it’s gone. By the time I get home every day I am drained and empty, and you can’t argue with emptiness. 

     I watch movies all night. The images flash over my eyes and I register the sounds coming from my tv, but it all washes over me like raindrops down a window pane. I absorb none of it. At some point in the middle of the night I hear a muffled pecking noise, but I ignore it and try to go back to sleep. 

     I arrive at work the next day at 7:57, three minutes before my shift starts. Mr. Brock remarks that I am “cutting it a little close” but turned and left before I could respond. There is no pleasing that man, I realize. It’s the same with sales. Bad sales are, obviously, upsetting. But good sales are just an excuse to push harder and further. They don’t bring contentment or celebration or a moment’s rest. They bring new goals that must be met, but at the same pay and with the same amount of workforce.

     These days it feels like my coworkers converse even less than normal, like anything spoken to someone other than a customer is forbidden. Maybe it is, to an extent. I am not close with any of these people, but I wish I had some meaningless small talk to keep my mind off the crack forming on the outside of the egg I saw this morning. I try to keep my mind off of it but it permeates my every thought, and I fumble several calls as I am unable to focus. Words become noise and lose meaning and these people do not like to repeat themselves if you don’t listen correctly the first time. It’s not that I’m not listening, it’s that I’m listening to too many things at once and I can still hear that muffled pecking like a metronome in the back of my head. 

     After work I desperately need a drink. I tell myself I deserve it, that it’ll help ease my mind for a moment. The dive bar is dark and mostly empty and I spend a good chunk of my night nursing a couple drinks and munching on the complimentary nuts while reading a book I had with me. I don’t want to be at home, so I drag out those couple drinks for as long as I can. A baseball game murmurs on the television and the bartender doesn’t make much noise except the occasional scrubbing of glasses. It’s a decent way to put off things I’d rather not deal with. 

     The crack has grown by the time I return home, splintered like cobwebs around the top of the black egg. I assume it won’t be long before whatever is inside finds its way out. The sight of it makes me dizzy so I turn off the kitchen light and retreat to the couch. Its oval silhouette is still visible against the darkness in the room, a disfigured shadow amongst other shadows. It makes me think of a home intruder hiding in the darkness. I ponder this and decide it’s an accurate description.

     A week passes by in a hazy blur. Mr. Brock reminds me every day that I’m cutting it too close when I arrive just a minute or two before my shift, the calls all blend together, and I barely manage to pay my bills with anything left over. One night I come home to find a paper tucked inside my apartment door. It is the landlord of the complex, thanking his residents for their continued punctuality on rent payments followed by a statement explaining that rent would be going up again in a couple months. This happens once or twice every year. All of the residents here, including myself, have come to expect this.

     Forever treading water. Always back to square one. Nothing on the horizon except more horizon.

     I’m becoming a regular at the dive bar. This should concern me but it’s become the “highlight” of my day. I find that this is when my mind is most shut off, and that’s all I can hope for these days. I order the same thing every time, sometimes mindlessly watching the tv, sometimes perusing my phone, sometimes reading. I still have barely heard the bartender speak a word, and this is fine by me. 

     At the end of the week the cracks have spread down the sides of the strange black egg. At night I hear whatever is inside pecking away, muffled and monotone, keeping me awake. The uneasy feeling it gives me is coagulating with viscous resentment. That gunpowder feeling beneath my skin. I don’t have the time or energy leftover to deal with this burden. 

     In the following afternoon I daydream solutions to this problem in between phone calls. I devise a plan to take the thing far away and leave it. Maybe some woods, I think. Leave it and never think of it again. Effectively turn this entire situation into nothing more than a bad dream that I can forget ever happened. 

     The day goes by normal enough until Mr. Brock announces we have to stay late tonight for a meeting.

     “And before you ask, it is not paid overtime,” he states. 

     The meeting is pointless fluff. All the basics are covered--how the company is doing, things we can do to make the work environment better (none of which include better wages, better hours, vacation time, etc), how to get sales up, and so on. It is painfully obvious that our boss is only doing this because his boss required him to so they can at least pretend to be communicative and care about their employees. Despite making ourselves miserable just to scrape by, the takeaway from these meetings is always that we haven’t done enough. After some time I zone out, my mind having spent all its energy for the day. Maybe Mr. Brock noticed this, and asks me a question that I don’t hear, probably some roundtable fluff where I’m supposed to give a generic answer about the work environment or the company. He calls my name again, snapping me out of it, and I ask him to repeat his question.

     “Are you with us?” he asks instead. “Or has your mind left the building?” His voice remains a lifeless statue-esque tone. “Let me tell you something--these meetings aren’t for me. They’re for you. For all of you. I’m doing this because I care. I want to see the company improve. I want to see you all improve. I already know all the numbers and graphs and data that I’m sharing with you all today. You don’t. So again, let me be clear. I’m doing this for you. Be grateful. And pay attention. Or, I can get someone else to take your spot. It’s that simple. Is this clear?”

     The entire ride home I am too livid to think straight. I resent my job and my boss and the black egg at home. I resent and I resent and I resent. I change course for the dive bar instead. It isn’t until after I’ve slammed a couple drinks and pay my tab that I get a notification on my phone that I’ve overdrafted my account and now have to pay a fee on top of everything else. Being poor is expensive, I realize. I leave feeling even worse than when I arrived. Treading water.

     I stumble inside my apartment, buzzed and angry and ready to pass out and forget the entire day ever happened. Without even bothering to turn on the lights I head straight for the couch, half asleep before I even make it. As I walk past the kitchen something catches my eye in the darkness. I stop. 

     On the counter are large chunks of something I can’t quite identify. They are nearly indistinguishable from the darkness of the room. I pick a piece up. One side is rough and chalky, the other is wet and dripping with something viscous. I realize I am a fool for not piecing it together sooner. The bottom of the black egg rests there like a bowl with jagged edges, the top half of it shattered, its pieces scattered around it.

     From the other room I hear a faint noise. Something like a wheeze, but more guttural. Painful. It happens again and again, as if forming a tempo. 1, 2, 1, 2. In and out. I’m frozen and wondering if I shouldn’t just leave now and never look back. The croaking continues, the only noise or movement in the house. I am unsure how long I stood still. My head and stomach were spinning and I had to grip the chair just to stay up.

     I crept into the next room, following the noise. A shape stood out in the darkness, rested on the floor in the middle of the room. The thing that was wheezing must have noticed my presence because it started to get louder, and the inky black shadow seemed to shift its look towards me. I fumbled against the wall for the light switch and flipped it on. 

     It was all mouths, and no eyes. Gaping holes with a gumless teeth were dotted around its entire elongated head like spots of disease had eaten away at it. The mouths surrounded a crude, ancient-looking beak in the center of its face, all of them painfully wheezing in and out like every breath was causing intense strain. Its skin looked like it was made of tar, still wet and dripping from the embryonic contents of its egg. It crawled on all four, its body somewhere between bird and reptile, like its shoulders should have wings but they didn’t grow properly while the rest of the body was designed to crawl and slither. Some of its digits were talons, others were like half-formed glumps of tissue and muscle that looked like weren’t yet ready for the outside world. Its tail lazily furled and unfurled as it looked in my direction. 

     The creature cocked its head to the side as if it were curiously pondering a question, and then struggled its way over towards me. This thing had only existed in the outside world for moments, but it looked like every second of its existence was agonizing. It moved slowly across the floor, every reach forward like it was climbing uphill and desperately trying to hold on. I froze. It wheezed and wheezed. It struggled on, its belly sliding across the floor as it moved, leaving a trail of fluid behind it as it went. The mouths clacked in between exasperated breaths, like it was hoping to eat anything that came its way. 

     When it finally reached me, it clung to my leg and wouldn’t let go.

     I let the boss call me for several days before I finally answered. The thought of Mr. Brock becoming increasingly angry day after day, wondering where I was or why I wasn’t showing up for work, gave me a certain sense of joy. When I finally answered he seemed unable to speak, perhaps surprised to finally hear from me.

     “Where have you been?” he asked after a pause.

     “At home,” I said as simply as I could while laying out a plate of food on the floor.

     “You had better have a very good excuse as to why you have been missing your shifts.”

     “I’ve been busy,” was all I said. I knew he could catch the petty cheerfulness dripping from my tone. The creature clawed at the pile of raw meat on the plate, and then stuck it in its many mouths, starting with the beak in front. 

     “I--you--this, this is not a very good excuse. But, as you know, I’m a level-headed and understanding man. Generous, you could say. Come in right now or you can kiss your job goodbye. This is your last chance. You need this job.”

     “I have everything I need,” I said, and hung up. 

     The creature had already grown over twice its size in under a week. Through trial and error I’ve found it prefers its diet to be raw. Sometimes I let it outside at night to feed on whatever it can find (it has learned to move fairly quickly already, and, despite its lack of eyes seems to be perfectly capable of finding whatever it needs). After a few moments it has cleared the plate but continues clawing at it, perhaps in hopes that I’ll notice and refill it. I pick up the plate and the creature nips at the sleeve of my shirt, which I now notice I haven’t changed in nearly a week. Its beak catches a pinch of skin and I start to bleed but I am sure this was on accident. The dishes are overflowing in the sink. I add one more to its tower. The creature scurries off, its mouths clacking away. Even its breathing has grown exponentially stronger, the wheezing decreased.

     The fridge is nearly empty, but this causes me no worry. In a few weeks more bills will arrive, but instead of wondering how I will handle them I find myself wondering how much more the creature has grown by then. My priorities are shifted, and this excites me. My entire life has been without purpose; nothing more than treading water. But this has changed. I have found something to hold onto. Something that needs me. I am no longer treading water. I have everything I need. 

Resentment: Kathryn Gillespie

01. Writer

Kathryn Gillespie


02. Theme

Resentment


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Hayley Williams:
Leave It Alone


04. WRITING

February 29th, 2020

First night alone it snowed

called him- 
he said he was clearing 
the walkways with table salt 
drawing lines of futility 
never breaking down 
cold shifting in sheets 
across the blacktop
just biding time until 

okay 
fuck you
get home on your own 

called him- 
said they were still together 

and I sat my heart beside the space heater 
protected all I had left with my life
bundled under piles of quilts 
drained my breath into the air
like fog machine clouding 
thick waves of apathy 
newly laced with 
pocket knives

called him- 

no answer. 
none. 

expected 
to wake up new with day as sterling 
crisp and light as white of blank page
beneath my boots

expected 
him to miss my warmth that night
curled like cat around 
stark beaming absent
me.

instead 
found the ground gray 
and giving beneath heels
squelching sick with misery singing 
unrequited ballad cold
alone 

instead 
picked up piece of me I dropped 
lodged it heavy and clumsy
and careful til it was nodding 
asleep inside crook of my throat 

picked out 
splinter of him still jabbed
in my palm from last time I held 
a piece of love could have 
turned the sky 

but didn't. 

Resentment: John Duffy

01. Writer

John Duffy


02. Theme

Resentment


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Gil-Scott Heron:
B-Movie


04. WRITING

Incident

But he died in darkness darker than   
his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying

down the stairs.   

We have no word
—From “Incident,” Amiri Baraka


Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
—From “Incident,” Countee Cullen

Three years before he was killed by cops, Austin Ryan Thomas was a student in my class.  He was part of a group known as The Forty-Four: forty incoming freshmen who were identified as at risk of not graduating in four years. 

Before their arrival, our principal projected all forty names during our opening staff meeting.  He talked about the steps we would take, a new school-wide initiative, to engage and support them in every way we could.  Whatever service or support they needed, we would supply it. 

The gesture seemed very much in line with the work we had been doing for years, and everyone nodded along in agreement.  The labor required to make this happen was a no-brainer because the payoff was so big: kids get to experience success; they become models, mentors, and tutors for younger peers in similar situations; the school earns a higher graduation rate; the community gets to work with educated people who are connected to networks of resources.  Parents can brag about their children’s achievements.  School workers can brag about them, too.  

Austin’s name appeared next to mine on the big screen facing us in the meeting.  He was in my first hour class, and I met him the next week.  He sat in the back, slumped down in his chair, and wore big clothes.  He was frequently tired and did everything he could to make himself invisible.  His mom frequently sent him to class with granola bars because snacks helped him to stay awake.  He had opinions about Lenny from Of Mice and Men, though, and when we talked about Lenny as a sympathetic character, Austin came to life.  Lenny is a character for whom the world cannot account, we decided.  Always at the will of his impulses, he makes serious mistakes that eventually cost him his life.  This detail caught Austin’s ear, I remember. Perhaps this was the universe doing its best to sound an alarm, a grave warning from a world beyond our own.  The best laid plans, indeed. 

Austin didn’t pass the class, but he did make it through summer school.  I never heard from him after that, which was unsurprising.  Like so many students, he found a way to move through the next few years on a path that attracted as little attention as possible.  

Three years later, another staff meeting, our principal was talking about testing practices when another teacher mentioned the group of students, The Forty-Four.  Oh yeah, he said.  One of them died, I think.  I just read about it in the paper.  The news shocked us, of course, but so did its flippant delivery.  The words came like trash from the window of a moving car.  The principal said Austin’s name and then pivoted back to the testing practices, a gut punch.  The room became brighter, almost total white, and my face felt molton hot.  Back to my room, I Googled Austin’s name and read the reports in the local papers.  He had been killed by cops a mile away from the school. 
  . . .

Years before I began working in education, my friend Cody shared a story about a chance encounter with the police. He was working at an industrial supply warehouse when a man buzzed the front door.  Cody’s employer shipped large wholesale orders, so walk-in customers were rare.  When Cody answered the door, the man pulled a gun and demanded to be let in.  Cody was the only person there that day, so he did as the man asked.  The man took as many items as he could carry: power tools, a jacket, some work pants, a mop bucket.  Then he was gone.

Cody called the cops.  Two hours later, another buzz at the door.  To Cody’s amazement, it was the same guy from before.  Cody met him at the door again, this time with a shotgun.  The man said he had left some items inside and that he had come back to retrieve them. Cody racked his 12 gauge and told him that this was the last time they were going to see each other.  If the man ever came back, he was dead.  The man left.

Curious, Cody went back into the warehouse to search for the man’s belongings.  Tucked underneath a tipped-over pile of workshirts was a brown pocket folder with some papers inside.  Cody leafed through them and quickly sensed what was up: the man had used the folder for job interviews.  It contained a resume with his name, phone number, current address, and employment history.  He was stealing the equipment he needed to work a custodial job.

Two hours later, another buzz at the door.  This time it was the cops, two guys, both white.  Cody told them what had happened—the gun, the theft, the guy’s return, the papers.  He gave them the man’s belongings and even told them how to get to the address on the resume.  Cody confessed that he was close to shooting the man when he returned, too, because the police had not arrived. 

The cops laughed. Cody asked what was so funny, and one cop said that it wouldn’t have mattered that much.  When shit like this happens and we’re not around, he said, just make sure there’s only one story by the time we show up.  The cops laughed again.  In an act of feigned solidarity, Cody did too. 
  . . .

Acting as a “multijurisdictional narcotics team” (with the cinematic acronym N.E.T.), seventeen officers tracked and eventually killed Austin Ryan Thomas.  In a prepared statement following the incident, Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe alleged that Austin was selling drugs to an undercover officer and that the officer had purchased drugs from him “at least two times.” When the officer set up a third meetup, they got together at a condo complex down the road from our school.  Austin allegedly entered the officer’s car, pulled a gun, and pointed it at the officer’s head, attempting to rob him.  McCabe then describes the final moments with sterile detachment: “The officer pulled his gun and was able to fire shots that struck the suspect.”

Even with so little detail, the story is tragically familiar.  We recognize the plot from centuries of accounts of Black people killed by police with no one else around to see it, film it, or refute the official story.  We don’t know how many shots were fired in the car.  We don’t know how the officer managed to unholster his gun, aim it, and fire multiple shots before Austin could pull the trigger of his own gun, which was allegedly already at the officer’s temple.  McCabe’s story urges us not to question it because it’s one we already know, a quickdraw contest where the hero saves the day.  Variations of this story endlessly circulate in the flaccid Hollywood action films we’ve seen for decades: cop as John Wayne, cop as Clint Eastwood, cop as Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris.  The hero wins and the villain is vanquished, never to be seen again.  Order is restored.  Townspeople cheer. Safety returns.   

But this tragedy isn’t just about the loss of life and how we narrate it.  It contains multitudes.  Just as tragic is what we are invited to believe in order to see the outcome of this incident as just:  the police are honorable. Their work is always in the service of public safety.  Justice was served.  Youth drug offenses are criminal matters, not matters of public health.  Maintaining the perception of safety is worth paying a high price, even when that price is a child’s life. The undercover officer did the right thing; we believe him when he says that his own life was at risk.  The prize of capturing Austin on a greater charge was more valuable than deescalation, than intervening earlier, than lessening the danger.  The lack of transparency is justified because police work is dangerous.  Children who commit crimes that adults commit should be treated as adults, even if that means being killed by cops.  Killing children absolves the police of the need to be accountable for destabilizing communities, endangering citizens, and eroding public trust in their organization.  
  . . .

The official story of Austin’s final moments is a work of fiction.  We’ll never know what happened in the car, and we live with that.  The person who pulled the trigger is still out there, likely policing predominantly Black neighborhoods.  We don’t know who he is, and we live with that.  An internal investigation committee determined that the narcotics team acted appropriately, that there was no purpose in looking into this incident any further. We live with that.  Austin was a young Black man—a child—who was shot multiple times in the car of an undercover cop, and his family, friends, and loved ones will always live with the burden of not knowing what really happened. 

When I think about Austin, the memory of his face begins to fade.  This is where I leave him: a 14-year-old in my 1st hour English class, bleary-eyed, hungry, and ready to entertain new ideas. I see his face, his hair braided in neat rows, his oversized orange shirt, his shoes.  But I wonder if this is really him. Perhaps what I’m seeing is a composite, a collage of the other 1,300 students who have occupied this room since he left.  Then I think of his final moments in that car.  What was said.  What he thought.  How it escalated.  His heartbeat thundering in his ears.  How it played out, like in a movie.  And I return to the liminal present: a time where any of my students who look like Austin could die like him too.  I sense the edges of my story beginning to warp and fade.  A search online warrants very little: the photo from an obituary website, some message board prayers from loved ones—the remaining evidence of his brief time with us.  How many of us have been Austin Ryan Thomas?  How many will be?  As my memory goes, I worry that I’ll lose him entirely and that the cops will win: by the time someone else shows up, there will only be one story left.

Resentment: George Lukezic

01. Writer

George Lukezic


02. Theme

Resentment


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Barclay James Harvest:
Sea of Tranquility


04. WRITING

A Day Trip to the Moon

The afternoon Moon in the sky glows like a giant peaceful world floating in a sea of blue.  A great place to get away from this chaotic earth.  If it was only possible to travel there for a day to the shores of the Sea of Tranquility where I could lay back in a chaise lounge and look back at the earth.  Safely away from all the pain and misery on earth yet a beautiful sight from afar.  What went wrong with the World we once knew.  A World that can take care of itself better than we could ever do.  Some day we will realize this but it may be too late for us.  For now I will just enjoy the view from my chaise lounge on the shores of the Sea of Tranquility and not think about the future.

Resentment: Emma Suzanne

01. Writer

Emma Suzanne


02. Theme

Resentment


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

RJD2:
Seven Light Years (Instrumental)


04. WRITING

The world

We are all equal. 

“Don’t be a victim”, he told her. “You are not different. It’s not part of your identity.  Your identity is a personality, not some hardship.  Your identity is your choice.”

She heard these words.  In English. It was more difficult for her to understand compared to her native tongue, but she understood the meaning.  She felt shame. 

A choice, she pondered, and her mind drifted back to a summer in her childhood, before choices began.  The sound of cicadas roared from the forests surrounding the rice farms.  The smell of mosquito coils registered the season in her mind, and that was her only world then.  This was before she would enter “the world”.  Back then, she could search for pill bugs in the back garden, wander through bamboo groves, play on the steps of the small shrine.  Then, she simply felt what she felt.  In her mind, that was who she was.  Her identity was what she had felt - what came to her naturally.  She had let it all happen that way.  She simply saw the world, and she had let other souls see her back.  Judgement had no necessity, but then “the world” came to meet her and tell her otherwise. 

“Your identity is your choice.” His words rang in her ears again.  When did choices become so rigid? Moisture pooled in her tear ducts. His explanation seemed to make sense enough logically. If she chooses to hang onto that feeling, to embrace any part of it, it is her choice. That much is true.  Yet, it will hurt her.  Voluntarily, she thought, confused.  The logic did not falter. She does have a choice; she has a way out.  Therefore, all responsibility falls completely on her. 

That moment - the one where she felt shame – the brief second when she allowed someone to tell her who she is or isn’t – that moment never actually stuck. For good or for bad, though, she had listened. Damn it, she had listened. And, in some way, she even wanted to believe it, to be empowered by it (empowered?).  

It changed her. Well, no, her heart couldn’t quite detach from herself, but facing shame was not an option either.  She decided to pretend. She was clever enough to pass the tests, and then careful enough to pass as one of them.  She styled her hair just so; wore fitted suits to work. five-centimeter heels, no less, no more.  She always spoke their language.  She wouldn’t let them believe she had ever known another language. 

So she was equal.  She was one of them. Well, she could fool anyone into thinking so. 

After she got home though, she closed the door and opened the closet; she changed her clothes. She could breathe this way.  For a while, this made her just okay.  She was okay but lonely.  Then, however, she learned there were others, other pretenders. 

She went to them. They gathered in dark spaces after most people went to bed. They opened up their souls and spoke their condemned language. They wore familiar costumes.  They let themselves be the minority, even the minority within the minority. They kissed each other. A place where being different was ok.  

In these shadows, she found some joy. She found someone to love, and one who could love her real self. Somehow, this captured that girl on the shrine steps playing with pill bugs.  She knew the remnants of her identity could be boarded up in this relationship and remain somewhat alive.

“You are not different.” She still heard, as the day broke. She heard it from her friends, even. From their spouses and parents. From her colleagues.  Go with the flow of everyone.  Assimilate. She worried that the cracks were exposing her.  Have they noticed?  Why do they assume?  She worked harder to hide it.  She separated her worlds.  

She guarded her private spaces. Her only joys. She would never let them know. Even though she saw others talk openly about their attachments and joys - the sanctioned ones.  Even though she sometimes forgot that she was any different.  Her life seemed to have become just as steady and familiar as the model life.  But no, she thought.  To do the same as them would expose her.  She would become an identity.  It was better to keep the label hidden.  She would keep it to herself.  She would keep all of it from “the world”. 

And every day, for leverage, she crossed over into it, “the world”.  She pondered again the idea of having a membership to it. Yes. She thought.  I’m not different.  I’m just as equal as every other.  This is a community, and membership comes at a price.  Being different is not an identity.  It’s just a side hobby I can manage in the shadows. That is all it is, which is keeping me living, just a personal hobby that no one needs to know about.  Differences don’t exist.  We just merely have personal lives.  That’s it.

So then life pushed on, heavy with irony, as she went through every next step, every natural phase of the world.  “I’m not different”, she thought, when she marked ‘single’ on her tax returns.  “Not different,” every time she used an initial for her name on a resume.  “Not different,” when she slipped her passport into her pocket for a jog in the neighborhood. 

“Not different” as she read the reviews and comments of her work, 

as she didn’t bother correcting the way they referred to her.  

“It’s not my identity,” she told herself, every time she let others assume - incorrectly - what she went home to. “It’s not about my personal life,” she would divert. That doesn’t set her apart.   We humans are all the same.  We are equal and no one treats us differently.  

“It’s nobody’s business,” she decided. 

But would we really be so surprised
if she ever felt

Resentment? 



Resentment: Alex Cascio

01. Writer

Alex Cascio


02. Theme

Resentment


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

The Happy Fit's:
Dirty Imbecile


04. WRITING

Primogeniture

Daniel Clark had died alone. He was found wearing nothing but boxer shorts and white socks bunched around his ankles, his body pumped full of a wild assortment of street-drugs. He was found the next day when a homeless man broke a back window, crawled carefully over the shattered glass, and flicked a lighter over the pale, rigid corpse. Can’t blame him really, the homeless man. For breaking in, I mean. The house they’d found my father in had appeared empty to close observers; no lights had been on the night of his death, no strange cars on the street, no sounds worth investigating. The facade was quiet; paint chipped, windows boarded, grass growing wild. It gave every indication of long emptiness. The half-assed questioning of neighbors that followed could be summed up with an uninterested shrug. Another overdose in the ghetto was hardly worth a mention at dinner, even to the residents next door. I don’t blame them anymore than I blame the homeless man for stumbling on it all. I blame my piece of shit dad. 

It took a medical examiner to confirm—in fact, document, true to god and science—what I’d known and my mother had denied for years. Blood tests had gone beyond the doubt that remained in missing Adderall prescriptions, maxed out credit cards, and pawned wedding rings. My father is a drug addict. Present tense. I buried him this morning still tainted with heroin. The residue of his vice will decay into the earth with all the same elements that make up his corpse. He is in death as he was in life—high, despite a six foot depth. 

My mother is below now too, the living room built directly beneath the master bedroom. Unable to bear her sobs—her slapped in the face with reality wailing—I’d retreated upstairs. My childhood bedroom was now a catastrophe of cardboard boxes, plastic packing containers, impulse bought exercise equipment used twice before storage. So instead I had opened a door closed since the police had called, flipped the light switch, and entered my parents’ bedroom. 

It’s only been a week, yet I can’t help but be reminded of the shrine bedrooms of dead children in true crime documentaries. Parents often leave the rooms untouched, exactly as they were. It’s twenty years on, their child would have been 34, but the room is just as it was in the early 90’s, complete with a Sega Genesis and box TV.  As if any moment now little Johnny will wander in, fallen out of a vacuum in space-time. Except my mother had left this shrine to a 59 year old stoner. Discarded boxer shorts, men’s t-shirts, and jeans are still piled on the floor near the bed exactly where my father had shed them before crawling beneath covers next to my mother. A clear-glass bong on the end table, dark towards the base from frequent use, still contains a fresh bowl. Passed out before you could even smoke yourself down, huh? I scoff to myself. I fumble in my pocket, fish out a lighter, and pick up the bong. My inheritance. 

I plop onto the bed, coughing from the stale bong water. My eyes fall on the armchair across from me, or rather, what’s on it. My father’s flannel. He’d had the horrid thing as long as I could remember. It had aged as badly as he had. The elbows were patched with close-enough-I-guess blue plaid, the shoulders torn then restitched with every color thread, whatever my mother had on hand. He only took the thing off in the summer months, short and few in Flint, Michigan. September to May he would not be seen without it; Christmas photos, birthday parties, even my fucking wedding. 

It’s October.

I replace the bong on the end table, rising quickly, head swimming as the high settles on me. My eyes are fixed on the flannel as I approach, inspecting, but there’s no doubt to be had—I know that rag like the man’s thin wrinkled face. Might as well be his face staring back at me, lain across the arm of the chair. It’s folded neatly, placed with care. Did mom put it there? No, she hadn’t come upstairs since the call—she’d made my uncle fetch clothes for her. If seeing the flannel without the man was shocking, it hardly compared to its neatly folded condition. Daniel Clark would have tossed it in a heap, haphazard. 

As if reaching to touch the cold skin of a corpse, I lift the flannel from the chair.

Marshal! Oh, thank god you’re not your mother, you-

I drop the flannel to the floor, my hand flies back as I stumble backwards. My heel catches the pile of clothes and I slip, trip, crash onto the carpet. I gawk at the flannel, eyes wide with terror. My heart pounds in my ears. 

Better my heart than my father’s voice.

My eyes snap to the bong. Fuck. Oh fuck. What the hell was I thinking? Who knows what that shit was laced with. FUCK. I pull my knees to my chest, my hands to my face. My palms are clammy, my face hot and heavy from the weed and who knows what the fuck else oh my god. I slap my cheeks, shaking my head furiously. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I force my breathing slow, deep. 

All right, all right. So I’m really high. I can be really high. I went to Michigan State. I’ve got this. I give my cheeks one last firm slap, nodding along to my inner pep talk, and crawl back to the flannel. 

With a fist around the sleeve, Marshal quit fucking around!

“What the FUCK?” I want to scream, but it comes out as a choked sob. I’m going to panic.

Don’t panic-

What the hell is in that bong?

I can explain-

“You’re a fucking shirt!”

No. I am your father.

“Are you quoting fucking Darth Vader at me right now?” That’s it, I start crying. My mouth is so fucking dry. My tongue is sticking, cheeks rubbing against teeth. I pick up the flannel with both hands, drape it over my knees, and stare into the threadbare blue plaid. Nothing left to do but ride it out.

Listen, you’re not high, or, well, that high I mean. You think I’d bring something harder than weed into the house?

“Yes!”

Yeah, okay, fair. But seriously.

It’s dad’s voice, alright. No doubt about it. Yet it doesn’t come from outside, there’s no perception of direction, no vibration in my eardrums. It’s clear as day, stereo-speaker smooth, but it’s internal. The voice is parallel to my brain, orbiting my own stream of thought, but somehow outside of that too. It's the feeling of figuring out how a math equation works. It’s like tasting music. It's a whole new sense. Explain blue to a blind person. “What the fuck is going on?” I demand.

So, I got up to some weird shit with a voodoo woman. 

Running my hands over the flannel, I smooth it over my knees. It’s rough, stained here and there—the uneven fabric makes my back remember an itch. I’m staring deeply, waiting for the plaid to start weaving, breathing, dancing as it would on acid.

You’re not on acid, Marsh. This is Marie’s doing. As long as you’re touching my shirt, you can hear me, alright? It’s part of the spell, or curse, or whatever, I don’t know.  Put it on, to be safe, okay? 

I obey my cotton father. Shaking off my suit jacket, I pull the flannel on over my dress-shirt and remain on the floor, cross-legged now, rocking slightly. I can feel every taste bud on my tongue against my teeth. 

Thank god you found me before your mother did. How long has it been?

“A week. The funeral was this morning.” 

There’s no immediate response. My eyes fix on a brown stain in the matted, off white carpet. Besides the hallucinating, I feel pretty typically stoned; my eyes are warm, glazed. My mouth begs for moisture. I can feel the faintest shift of the air on my skin—it sends a shiver down my spine.

Fuck. Only a week? I can’t, well, I couldn’t tell time really. It’s like I’ve been just… nothing, right? Like, I could think, but that was it, all my other senses were off. I thought that’s just how death was, and I was real pissed ‘bout it, but then I noticed that I could feel the shirt, my flannel. I wear it so much it didn’t stand out right away, I’m so used to it, right? But yeah, anyway, then you picked me up and WOW! 

I startle at the exclamation, but it's not louder. It's...heavier? Navy blue to a blind man. 

All the sudden I can like, see what you see, I can hear what you hear, and you can hear me! I can talk to you! But as soon as you dropped me I was thrown right back into the void, so, don’t do that. 

“M’kay.” One of my hands is stroking the carpet, plucking up loose fuzzies and dropping them in a small pile.

Shit, you are way too high for this.

“Takes one to know one,” I snap. The high is settling, myself acclimating. I use the bed to pull myself to my feet, as something else settles now. 

Rage.

I am enraged. 

“You lied to me.”

My wedding was a year ago, almost to the day. October 25th. Three-quarters of that day had been the happiest of my life. My beautiful wife, Amber, draped in picture-perfect white and lace. That smile. The same gorgeous smile she’d given me when I’d proposed at our college graduation. My mother blubbered fat tears that cascaded over a proud beam. My father slumped in the plastic chair beside her, his head nodding then snapping up, suddenly awake. Our families, our friends, miscellaneous others—all of them were there for us. They came in and out the entire reception. “Congratulations!” and “How beautiful, how handsome!” Yet even her father’s firm handshake and approving nod couldn’t pull my eyes off Amber. 

Until my father collapsed, spit dripping down his chin as he slipped from his chair to the floor of the reception hall. To his credit, he’d managed to keep himself conscious until after Amber and my’s first dance. My uncle and father-in-law took an arm each and dragged Daniel Clark to his feet, helping him stumble along to the kitchen of the reception hall where the caterers were packing up to leave. I brushed off Amber’s concern, elbowed through the crowd, ignored relatives’ attempts to catch me in conversation. 

The kitchen was still hot, though only a handful of staff remained to pack up. My father-in-law approached, gripped my shoulder tightly with a sympathetic sigh, then returned to the party. The music and chatter heightened with the opening of the door only to be immediately muffled again by its slam. My uncle, Avi, had found a chair for my father and stood over him, tilting a plastic water bottle over my father’s mouth. 

“What happened?” I asked, rushing to Avi’s side. My concern is half-assed, overshadowed by embarrassment, disappointment. 

“He passed out, I-”

“Get the fuck out, Avi,” my father snapped. 

My uncle glared down at him, then looked to me for instruction. I nodded, taking the water bottle from his hand. “I’ve got it from here,” I assured him. Reluctantly, he exited the kitchen.

Music, chatter, slam. 

“I’m only going to ask you this once,” I said, screwing the cap back on the water bottle and placing it on the counter. “Are you high?”

My father scowled, appalled. His brow furrowed over his dark brown eyes, eyes that matched mine in every way besides the wrinkles at the corners. A seam in the shoulder of his flannel had popped again, giving a peak of a white t-shirt underneath. His graying hair was greasy with sweat, strands clung to his skin. His hands tightened on the plastic seat of the chair, knuckles whitening. “How dare you even ask me that. It’s your fucking wedding.” 

Missing Adderall prescriptions, maxed out credit cards, pawned wedding rings. 

“I won’t be angry if you are.” I did my best to speak calmly, soothingly. My heart was heavy; it sat lower in my chest than it belonged. “I just need to know, dad,” I pleaded. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you. But I can’t help you if you keep fucking lying to me.”

“I. Am not. Fucking. High.” He sneered the last word, poisonous. “I’m not a fucking junkie.” 

That wasn’t the first time I’d tried to get the truth out of him, but it was the last. I tucked him in a cab and spent the rest of the night dodging the questions of gossiping witnesses. When I returned to my wife’s side, her smile was sad. “Are you okay?” She whispered through a slim hand cupped around my ear.

We were slipping back towards our table, faking smiles at friends and relatives as they hovered near. It’s fucking impossible to get privacy at a wedding when you’re the happy couple. I thought bitterly. I pulled Amber close, my arm around her shoulder, and whispered my reply, “It’s true. He’s fucking high. I knew it. I knew it. And he just lied through his fucking teeth about it, he—”

“Shhh,” She spun herself under my arm, wrapped hers around me, squeezed me hard. “We’ll bitch and rave about him when we’re drunk in Hawaii. Come back to me now.”

The photographer got a snapshot of Amber then—of her rising on her toes to plant a reassuring kiss on my cheek. 

I hate that fucking picture. 

After the funeral I called her an Uber, promising to be home by midnight. She’d fought me at first—we had one of those whispered arguments in the parking lot, stopping mid-sentence every time someone walked too close then jumping right back at it. 

“It’s my job to be here for you,” Amber had insisted. She gave me the same small, sad smile from the wedding. She was pitying me. 

“You’ll be there for me, at home, tonight.” When it would be just the two of us, my head on her chest and her hands in my hair, in the dark and warmth of our bedroom—where she couldn’t sit there absorbing all the dysfunction my family was infested by, comparing them to her picket fence perfect parents. 

I don’t want anyone’s fucking pity, I didn’t do anything. He did. 

I’m so fucking pissed. 

I’m fucking enraged. 

“You fucking lied to me,” I hiss into the empty room. 

I did. 

“Why?” I’ve refound my ability to yell. I’m pacing across the room, from the bed to the chair to the dresser of aged, chipped wood. My eyes are still heavy, my mouth still aired, but that’s underneath this new heat. If my father had any sort of physical form, I’d be stalking it down, backing it into a corner. 

He’s already in a corner; he’s trapped in the shirt on my back. I tear at a loose thread on the sleeve, hoping it causes him pain. 

Because I was ashamed. I am ashamed. And… I’m a coward. There’s a pause. I can picture him sighing, running a skinny hand through unkempt hair. I really didn’t think of myself as an addict until you were born. 

The shock of this sentence stills my feet. “You’ve been high my entire life?

I, well…. Yeah. To varying degrees…. But yeah. 

The rage is twisting, fusing with something else. I open my mouth, close it, open again, repeat. The high and the anger and the void in my chest from burying my father are latched to the back of my mind, dragging my thoughts to slow-churning butter. 

Look, I imagine a sigh, a sorrowful shake of my father’s head, I know you must be pissed, but I can explain everything on the way.

“The way?” 

To Marie’s, the voodoo lady. She’s our only hope of straightening this out. 

My stomach gurgles and the thought of a road trip fast food pit stop teases my baked brain. Fine, “fuck it,” I say. Patting myself down for my keys, phone, wallet, I nod to the empty room on my way out. 

Mom has passed out on the sofa across from the stairs. I glance around for my uncle, but it’s just my Mom here, alone. She’s curled in a ball, still wearing the black dress she’d worn to the funeral, a knit throw sagging to the floor near her feet. Gently as I can, I pick up the blanket, careful not to wake her as I tuck it around her shoulders. 

I should be here for her, but she’s drawing some of the rage too. 

How fucking blind she was. 

Avi had figured it out before any of us. He’d noticed my father’s long disappearances to the restroom or the car during family gatherings, strung together the stories of financial mishaps my mother confided in him, recognized the toll the drugs were taking in rapidly graying my father’s brown hair, thinning his face, darkening the circles around his eyes. 

“He’s a fucking drug addict, Anne,” he’d said. My mother and uncle were sitting on the front porch of my childhood home, passing a cigarette between them. I’d just slipped out of my car, arriving to pick up the wedding presents Mom had held onto while Amber and I enjoyed a Hawaiian honeymoon. 

My mother shot Avi a warning glare as I approached, stepping into earshot, but he continued, “Jesus Christ, you think the kid doesn’t know? The man nearly ruined his fucking wedding.” 

My stomach sank. There it was, the salt in the wound, still raw and leaking. 

Mom’s nose scrunched, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not saying he didn’t make an ass out of himself, but he just drank too much, he-”

“Oh, come the fuck on!” Avi threw his hands up, exacerbated. 

I didn’t understand why he still bothered trying to convince her. My mother just shook her head, ash blonde curls bouncing around her, a physical manifestation of the denial she let fog her perception. A stubborn control freak, an office manager from hell—she’d ruled my childhood with an iron thumb. Ruled her marriage, family finances, her entire mental universe. 

Her mental universe. 

Which required denial of anything that broke the illusion of perfect order. Denial that my father was who he was. When he was fired from the bar for ringing in food under the table and pocketing the cash, my mother ate up his story about the owner being a neo-nazi and firing him for our Jewish heritage. The taxi company, the cashier gigs, that odd stint as a maintenance worker at Seven Lakes State Park—she chewed out the management of all of them with venom. She spit fury between swigs of the sympathy beers she’d bring home for my father. It was one of the few times they really got along, when from the outside it looked like they had the ideal marriage—they were on the same side, in it together. 

My mother had always looked the other way. Always shut her eyes tight. Anything to avoid admitting she was wrong—that perfect Anne could make the mistake of marrying an addict. My dad’s tall tales of monstrous managers were further from reality, but closer to her fantasy—so she fit them in, broke off edges and forced the pieces together. A mangled jigsaw life. If you squinted to blur the details, it passed, I guess. 

Until she shot herself in the foot demanding an autopsy. 

The paperwork was on the table in the kitchen when I’d arrived this morning, a bottle of moscato over the word “heroin” magnified and stretched the letters. At least she could fucking see it now. 

Damn it, Anne. I shiver under the weight of second hand grief. I hasten to leave before my uncle gets back, before I have to see that I told you so look for the thousandth time today. Shutting the front door carefully, I quietly disappear into the cool October evening. 

Carriage Town is as alive as ever. A neighbor’s TV is leaking a CNN broadcast through thin walls. A car alarm goes off a few blocks away. Someone’s yelling at their kids to get back inside. Porch lights silhouette trees, casting the street in an ominous yellow glow, like the entire place exists on someone’s Jack-O-Lantern. I catch the scent of a campfire as I follow the cracked cement path to the driveway. 

The Spectra is parked next to the garage, a little offshoot spot from the driveway I’d parked always, since the day my dad slapped the keys in my hand. The Silver Specter, he’d named the old Kia. That’s gotta be some sort of irony. 

“How about a road trip?” He’d asked, bouncing like the kid I was supposed to be. 

I was still gawking at the keys in my hand. I was sweet sixteening and should have been exhilarated, should have been over the atmosphere. Instead I asked, “how did you get the money for this? Does mom know?”

“Gah!” He waved his arms impatiently above then pulled open the passenger door. “I’ll cover with mom, I always do, don’t I?”

I grinned. Dad could haggle anything, any situation. His mind was constantly whirring with the next fib, next solution. He made school lunch debts and maxed out credit cards disappear with nothing but the right words at the right time. Gotta be the right time with Mom. The woman was always wound tight; where’d this tenner go? Where’d this twenty? Didn’t “she understand how much it costs to keep the groceries stocked? Clothes on your back? Life isn’t cheap,” Dad said as I backed the Spectra onto the road. 

It was always you and me against it all. 

“Because I believed you.” I drive slow in the dark, with the high still on me. With care, I unscrew the cap on a water bottle in the center console and down it, the liquid chilled to perfection by the autumn air. 

Who’s the real liar if the lied to is a denier? 

Fuck. I’m just as bad as Mom. 

“Dad, I can’t make rent this month without this money. You said you’d pay me back two weeks ago.” I had pleaded, begged into the cell phone against my face. From the apartment next to my cramped studio I could feel the thumping of bass, the chatter of a crowd with the means to party through college while I juggled two jobs and coursework. My chest was heavy with dread. Tears threatened as I mentally cut my grocery budget. 

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, Marsh. There was some mix up with one of the tax forms I submitted, I have to redo our entire return,” Dad replied. He used the same sickeningly sweet apologetic tone that he used on Mom when justifying buying me a car three years prior. 

“Mom said you guys got your return last week!” I cried. “I know you took something for yourself. I know. You always do-”

“There wasn’t enough for me to take a cut this time, alright? I’m sorry, Marshal.” My dad’s voice was heating.

“So you do have it, why would you lie?”

“I’m not lying, I-”

“Where’s my money, dad?”

“Look, just give me a couple months and I can-”

“I’m barely scraping by, I can’t wait a couple of months!” The words came in a gush of panic. I could already feel hunger pains. The shame of being poor as dirt. The shame of being so stupid, lending my dad money again. Of him not following through again. Weighing down upon it all—the thing that crushed all these feelings into a solid mass of sheer despair—was the settling realization that my father was not a man to be trusted. He was not the emergency contact, he was the emergency. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Dad, I need that money. Where the hell is my money?

My father hung up the phone.

I clench the steering wheel with a ferocity. I grind teeth. I refuse tears. “Where are we going?” I ask.

She’s off Robert T. and Franklin. 

I turn down R.T. Longway, grateful for the yellow city lights. My mouth is still cotton, but I’m attuned with the weed now, too stoned to hold on to any emotion for long. I swing through the Rally’s drive-through for an American-large Coke and fries and anything off the menu that looks greasy and delicious, because I buried my father this morning and now he’s a cotton creeper on my back. I’ll binge eat whatever the fuck I want. 

I open my mouth to ask if he wants anything, and the absurdity of this whole situation sends me into head to toes hysterical laughter. My eyes tear up as I try to choke down giggles and pay the horror-struck cashier. What a sight I must be; ordering 40 bucks of food for my scrawny self in a beat up Silver Specter, shabby flannel over the shirt and tie I wore to the funeral. Even the homeless crowd in the corner of the lot—usually eager to hassle customers in their cars—keep a safe distance. 

Christ, Marsh. You’ve gotta get it together. 

“Oh! I’ve got to get it together!” My laughter turns bitter. I nearly choke on the burger I’m stuffing whole into my mouth. Cheeks still full of grease and beef I demand, “Where did that five-hundred ever go? What the fuck did you spend it on?”

Five-hundred?

“Six years ago! The money I lent you in college!” I hiss. He doesn’t even remember ripping off his own son. I chase the burger with a healthy mouthful of Coke and start shoveling fries. A car horn roars at me as I swerve in my lane. Fuck you too, buddy.

Oh. That. There’s a pause where a sigh should be. Uh, I’m pretty sure that was when I pawned my wedding ring. 

“No, you did that when I was in high school,” I confidently correct him. I can still remember my parents fighting over the debacle; their raised voices rising from the floor of my bedroom, burying my head in pillows to block out slamming doors, my mom’s hysterics. 

When my father later told me he’d pawned the ring for grocery money, I didn’t even question it. I’d raged at my mother, the kind of rage only teenagers can muster. “If you’d just give him enough money to feed us, he wouldn’t have done it. It’s your fucking fault!” I snarled.

 She retreated upstairs in tears. 

When she entered my room with my report card in hand, demanding answers for dismal scores, I snapped, “maybe if you gave Dad money to get my Adderall prescription, I wouldn’t be such a fuck up and you could pretend to be a good mom.” 

She stammered, bewildered, “but I gave him that money…”

I slammed the door in her face.

Because I fucking believed him. 

I hate myself for believing him. 

Huh. It was definitely a pawn shop thing, might have been your mom’s guitar that time. 

I scoff, disgusted almost to the point of pitching the rest of the food out the window. Almost. Foil crinkles, the little folds of aluminum reflect streetlights as I unwrap a chicken sandwich. This is art-deco. This is Flint Town Noir. “What, run out of your own shit to pawn?”

Yeah. I did. 

It’s not just the high. I’m actively trying to keep my anger flowing, pump fury through my veins. I scowl. My full mouth growls, my empty mouth curses. I squeeze the steering wheel tight enough to trigger an ache in my knuckles. I mimic all the motions of pure, unfiltered rage. All the motions I’d perfected after years of practice, years of dodged questions and lies. 

I don’t know what to do with the truth. The anger keeps slipping, leaking somewhere no matter how much fuel I try to pour in. I want fire and heat and scalding. 

The cold bite of October air stings my face as I roll down the manual window, the crank wobbly from age, and light up a Marlboro ‘27 from the pack I’d picked up on my drive into town yesterday. The smoke is heavy in my chest, tastes like childhood car rides in my father’s truck. Tastes like chill-the-fuck-out, Marshal. Tastes like—we’re here, rounding the corner onto Franklin. 

That red house there, with the Impala out front. The one with all the plants. 

“All the plants” is a full front facade of Virginia Creeper, “the red” is their rusting leaves, typical of Michigan October. A brick walkway cuts across a perfectly manicured lawn from the wide front porch to the sidewalk, next to which I park the Spectra. Gas lamps glow ominously on either-side of the front entryway, their natural flicker off the door’s stained glass reflecting deep blues and reds and greens. A faint orange light illuminates the large bay window from somewhere deep within. 

Eyeing the house suspiciously, I smoke the cigarette down to the filter and immediately lust for another. Fuck it—it’s a “fuck it” kind of night, isn’t it? I put the car in idle and flick the lighter on a fresh Marlboro. “Alright, I’m not just going in blind. What exactly is the deal here?”

Do you remember Mike Cambell? 

“Yeah?” I ask, taken aback by the name. Mike Cambell had been my best friend as a kid— we grew up on the same street. For years we were practically glued at the hip. 

“Your dad is so cool,” he’d whispered in my ear the summer after 6th grade. “I wish he was my dad.”

We were sandwiched in my dad’s Ford Ranger, a little three seater with me in the middle. Knees knocked against knees with every bump on the road. My dad’s fingers drummed the steering wheel in time to some dad music on some dad radio station. 

I cupped my hand around Mike’s ear. “Then we’d be brothers,” I said. 

“I wish my mom and your dad would get married,” Mike sighed with a pout. “I bet they wouldn’t fight.”

“Or my mom would marry your dad,” I replied, “and then they’d fight even more.” 

Mike laughed, and I smiled. The other kids at school didn’t understand why we wanted our parents to get divorced. Sarah Goyette had kicked us off her dodgeball team when she found out we used our birthday candle wishes on such a thing—her parent’s divorce was the reason she was going to have to move schools. Mike and I had wondered whether her parents screamed as loud as ours, whether they broke things when they got mad. I remembered the sting of my mom’s open palm across my cheek for asking why dinner was taking so long after such a fight. I decided on the spot Sarah was a brat who couldn’t have it that bad. 

What a dream it would be, for my dad to marry Mike’s mom. Every summer day would be a beach day like this one, packed in the cab of the Ranger, skin smelling of sunscreen and hair of second-hand smoke. While my dad struggled to light charcoal on the public grill and Mike and I built sandcastles, I pictured Mike’s mom there with us, helping my father grill hot dogs. When we took turns being lifted in my father’s arms to be chucked into the crystal blue lake, I pictured Mike’s mother at my dad’s side, laughing—because I couldn’t picture my own mother laughing. 

When my dad chuckled at Mike’s mustard covered chin and dabbed his nose with a fresh application of sunscreen, I knew my friend was dreaming the same thing. 

My father’s credit card was declined at the gas station on the trip home, leaving us stranded. I knew Mike was secretly happy about it too, we mirrored each other's wide grins when my dad broke the news. We watched the sun set from a bench facing the road, passing around chips and sun-melted chocolate, laughing at goofy songs my father made up about passersby. We didn’t wonder why the card was declined, we wondered why my mother was so angry when she arrived.

 We kept wondering until high school, when Mike started partying with an assortment of fuck-ups; drop-outs, drug dealers, kids self-medicating mental health issues with pain pills they nicked out of their grandparent’s medicine cabinets. We never fell out so much as drifted. Last I’d seen him was at our graduation, smoking a bowl in his mom’s Corolla. 

“What about him?” I ask.

I used to see him around a lot, when he got into harder shit., my father continued, pretty sure we had the same dealer for a time. The first couple times I ran into him, he would bail the second he saw me, but pretty soon he was hitting me up for connections. 

“You didn’t,” I gasp, but the shock is feigned at this point. 

I’m not proud of it, but yeah, handful of times, when he was looking really bad. But then I just stopped seeing him. I feared the worst, given our situation. People go missing in that crowd, they’re dead or in prison. 

Then this summer, I’m up at Starlight getting breakfast, and who walks in? Mike. Fucking. Cambell. And he looked fucking great. He’d put some weight on, but like, looked real healthy.  His hair used to be so greasy you couldn’t even tell it was blond, but he had it all styled and sharp. Shit, I was damn proud of that boy, offered to buy him breakfast. 

He tells me about this woman he met, “Marie,” he says, “She’s a miracle worker. Got me clean.” 

I was like, ah shit. Here comes some preaching about 12 steps or fuck-all. 

“Nah, Marie’s not like that,” Mike says, “Her mom was a Voodoo priestess, she’s the real deal.” He gave me her card, it says she’s some “all natural healer” or something. 

Trying not to roll my eyes. I take a drag before asking, “Well? Did you go?”

Not right away. It sounded hokey as hell. But then, well. I can see him shuffling his feet, staring at the ground the way he always did when caught fucking up. I was in a bad way. I was nearly out of dope, rationing it to get by, but I was already getting the shakes, the sweats. I tore the house apart, but anything worth any money I’d sold years ago. Your mom was almost home from work, so I bailed. I just… I fucking hated myself. It’s not like I wanted to be like this. It’s not like I thought it was okay. 

If I stayed high, I didn’t think about it. I was too, well, stoned. I could deny it. But running that low, I felt like the scum of the earth. It was like years of self-loathing were just… attacking me. My brain was attacking me.  That’s when I said fuck it. I called up Marie, I came here. 

“And?” I crush out the cigarette in the Spectra’s overflowing ashtray. 

And it worked. 

“Oh, it worked, did it?” I scoff. “How come you’re dead then?”

That’s my fault, not Marie’s.

The house’s bay window fills with light. “Shit,” I murmur. Feeling it would be better to approach than be approached, I pull the key from the ignition and slip out of the car. 

My mind whirls with what I’ll find inside as I walk up the brick path. Cajun cooking, French accents, jars pickling exotic animals. A Creole witch with braids and missing teeth, rings on each finger, pulling open the door in exotic costume. Maybe even naked. I use that last image as confidence to reach for the handle of the door.

It swings open before my fingers touch the knob, but it’s no witch before me, and she’s absolutely not naked. A head shorter than me, she glares up with dark, nearly black eyes. Her natural hair is trimmed short, the curls a voluptuous halo of artificial red that match her pursed lips. Her fists are on her hips, tucked against a threadbare Cobra Starship t-shirt that hangs loose over black leggings. Voodoo Queen of what? A college campus? “I, uh, um,” I stutter pathetically. 

She looks me over, her eyes falling on the flannel. Wordlessly, she reaches out and rubs the collar between her thumb and forefinger. “Oh, you dumbasses,” She says, no hint of French in her Midwest accent. “C’mon.” She turns around, and waving at me to follow, walks back into the house. 

It’s okay, Marsh. If anyone can fix this it's Marie. 

I follow her inside. 

Besides the lamp next to the front window, the room is dim. Orange string lights are draped along the shelves of a tall mahogany bookcase that’s filled with worn leather-bounds and glass jars where various plants float in brown, murky liquid. A battered grey plaid sofa is covered in papers and more books, which Marie stacks onto a chipped glass coffee table. Incense burns on an end table next to the bay window, engulfing the jungle of potted plants residing there; hazy smoke heavy with the scent of Nag Champa wafts around their thick leaves and tall stems. 

Yet across from the sofa, a massive flatscreen is mounted on the wall above an impressive looking speaker system. An iMac is on a minimalistic white desk next to the hallway entry, half its screen on Reddit, the other half a paused Kendrick Lamar music video on Youtube. Above the computer hangs a framed print of a map of Westeros. I am wildly confused. 

“Sit,” Marie commands, pointing at the cleared sofa. I obey, carefully stepping around the coffee table. Sinking deep into the cushion, I feel horrendously small. She stands over me a moment, sizing me up. Finally her face softens. “Want a beer?”

“Oh my god, yes. Thank you.” My mouth is still uncomfortably dry. I huff a relieved sigh as she slips into the hall and around the corner. A light comes on in what must be the kitchen. Pressing my palms into my eyelids, sharp white patterns swim against the black. 

See? She’s a sweetheart.

“Uh-huh.” I open my eyes and blink back tears, shifting in my seat, uncomfortable. For someone making enough to buy a big-ass TV and Apple computer, you’d think she’d invest in a new couch.

Marie returns with two bottles of some craft IPA I’ve never heard of, but guzzle gratefully. She grabs the back of the desk chair and drags it across from me, taking a seat before drinking herself. She wiggles her fingers in a give-it manner then rolls her eyes at my blank stare. “The shirt,” she says, “I need to be touching it too.”

“Oh,” I say, “Right.” 

“So you’re the son, I take it?” She says as I slip off the flannel. I drape it carefully over the coffee table, trying not to send Marie’s pile of papers crashing to the floor.  

“Yeah, Marshal. And you’re Marie?”

She laughs, a surprisingly musical sound. “My name’s Sam. ‘Marie’ is just a thing to get white people in here, no offense.” 

Wah, Seriously?

“Non taken.” I smile, picturing my father’s genuine shock. 

I still would have come…

“Mm-hmm. Sure you woulda,” Sam teases as she picks up a sleeve. A hint of sadness has appeared in her eyes. “I told you what would happen if you used again, Dan.”

I know. I… Sam and I stare into the blue plaid, waiting for him to continue. It’s my fault. I know you said to get help, a therapist or whatever, but I just felt so good at first, I felt so much better. 

But then, eventually, I didn’t. I thought if I stopped using, maybe your mom and me wouldn’t fight so much. But we kept fighting. I thought maybe I’d be able to hold down a job, but I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d toss and turn with these terrible dreams. Dreams about my dad, dreams about being a kid again. 

I’d only ever gotten snippets of my father’s childhood, disclosed in offhand comments. His own absentee father, an unmedicated schizophrenic with a habit of disappearing for weeks. Growing up in the ghetto of Detroit. Years in and out of the system; foster care, juvie. 

I’d end up not sleeping for days, then passing out for a straight 24 hours, missing work. Got fired again. Your mom sure loved that. I can picture him defeated, tired. Sullen and weary. Scrawny and unshaven, sulking around the house. All I could think was, what a fuck up I am. What a waste. I felt like trash. Got to the point I couldn’t even get out of bed. Your mom wouldn’t talk to me, she started sleeping on the couch. I felt like she hated me and worse, I deserved it. 

I thought about calling you, Marshal. I really did. If his phantom voice could crack with a sob, it would. I swallow my own. But I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know what to say. Hey, son, I’m sorry you got stuck with such a garbage father. I don’t know how to be better. I’m sorry. A bitter laugh. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, to reach out.

“Oh, Daniel,” Sam sighs. I glance at her, she’s staring into the flannel with tears in her eyes. I wonder how well they’d gotten to know each other.

I knew what would happen if I relapsed. 

Sam looked up to me. “It’s like a need, addiction,” she said. “It’s like hunger, or thirst.” 

I remember college days, trying to make ramen noodles ease the pain in my stomach until my next paycheck. 

“I take that need away. But there’s a cost.” Her brows straighten, serious. “To use again is to revert to a maximum state of that need. It is to instantly starve, instantly dehydrate.”

Instantly withdrawl. 

Sam frowned, nodding. 

It happened so fast. I never even felt the high. Then I was in the dark, the void. 

“I don’t understand,” I say, “They found you half naked in some abandoned house on the North side.”

Well, I was dead, can’t really account for that. Best guess is my dealer wasn’t too happy about me ODing in his living room. He must’ve moved me, ditched the clothes to remove evidence. Wouldn’t be the first time he had to hide a dead junkie. 

“But your flannel…” Neat on the chair, folded with care.

Hadn’t worn it since I came to Mar-, sorry, Sam. Too many bad memories.  Now, how I ended up In the thing is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

I look up to Sam, who’s shrug knocks a sleeve of her oversized t-shirt off her shoulder. “I’m no expert about hauntings,” she says, “but souls usually don’t like forced removal from their bodies. I’ve only ever seen a handful of ghosts, but their deaths are never planned or peaceful. Murders, accidents—that sort of thing jars the spirit.” She takes a sip of her beer and readjusts her shirt. 

“So, it’s because he overdosed?” I ask.

“Nah.” Sam shakes her head. “Addicts know they’re playing with death, chasing after Bawon Samedi. Dan didn’t overdose—he reversed my spell, triggered a curse. His soul tried to run. This flannel is like a voodoo bomb shelter, not a sanctuary.” 

Even a coward in death. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to feel. I take several greedy gulps of the beer Sam had given me. She remains respectfully silent and I wonder how used to this she is. 

I wonder how this is. 

“So,” I finally say, “you can get him out?”

“Oh yes,” she replies with confident ease. “Whenever you’re both ready.”

Ready? Who the fuck is ever ready for their dad to die?

Well, Marsh… I guess this is it. 

My throat feels thick, my eyes warm. Fuck. 

I just… I just hope you can forgive me.

Missing Adderall prescriptions, maxed out credit cards, pawned wedding rings. 

Road trips in the Silver Specter. Hot summer days at the beach. 

What could I have done differently?

“I don’t...I-” can’t. I can’t. I’m angry and heartbroken and disappointed and relieved to finally be getting the truth, finally getting the raw, unfiltered version of my father. I can’t fucking process. I don’t know what to do with this. “I don’t know,” I manage to choke out. “I just… I can’t right now. I…” My words fall off. Sam is pretending to read the label of her beer, trying to give me an illusion of privacy.

Right...right. I understand, Marsh. Even if you hate me-

“I’ve never hated you,” I say. Tears sting my eyes, a sob chokes my throat. “It was never about the drugs. It was-” I hold the sleeve of the flannel with both hands. I remember my wedding. Pleading. “It was the lying. Lying to me. I always trusted you, and you lied to me.”

I know I did.  If I could do it over… but I can’t do it over. I’m dead, Marshal. This is it. Regret. Mistakes. 

Restraint is out the window, snot leaks from my nose, racing the tears. I grit my teeth. 

I understand you can’t just forgive me. I hope you can, in time, someday. I just hope you can find acceptance. 

“I could have helped you!” I cry.

No, you couldn’t have, son. I did this. Only me. Don’t you blame yourself, you understand me? The rare authoritarian; clean your room, do your homework, eat your vegetables. Followed up by a cheeky grin, a pop-tart snuck to me under the table, out of sight of Mom’s keen eyes. 

Fuck. 

The beer tastes like salt. My hands shake. 

So, how do we get me out of here?

Sam gathers the necessities; herbs and solutions, a clipping of my hair, some threads plucked from the flannel. Owe! my dad yelps, as she pulls loose a blue strand. 

I gasp, horrified. 

I’m just kidding! I can hear his buffoonish laugh, see him slapping his knee, giddy at his own joke. 

Sam tosses her ingredients into a wide, flat bowl of a thick, earthen brown material. She’s chanting under her breath in a language I don’t know, finally living up to my imagination. She takes a slim glass vial from the bookcase and carefully removes the cork stopper before dashing her concoction generously with the thick, oil-like substance within. She wafts the scent into the air with her hand, beckoning it towards her and breathing deeply, before offering me the bowl to do the same. The thick smell of beef-stock and cayenne pepper stings my nostrils—my nose scrunches involuntarily. 

I’m trying to get it together, but my dad is about to fucking die, so you know, fuck off. I chug down the rest of my beer and Sam hands me her still half full bottle. I drag anxious hands through my hair and gag on a new sob, remembering my father’s hair, thick and mouse-brown and identical to the mess my hands are in. 

Sam clears a spot on the table and places the bowl on top of the flannel. She searches the room a moment, returning with a box of matches. She places the cold cardboard in my hand with a nod. “You must light the match,” she says. “It will burn fast. Once it’s out, his soul will move on.”

I stare down at the box in my hand, the tiny rectangle has the weight of a pistol. My other hand is still holding a sleeve, absentmindedly stroking the fabric with my thumb. 

It’s okay, Marsh. I’m ready to go.

“I’m not.” My voice is small. 

You will be. 

I slide open the box and pull out a match with thick, fumbling fingers. My hand shakes as I drag the tip against the checkered red side. The match sparks feebly, failing to ignite. 

I breathe deep. Exhale. Strike again.

The match ignites, the small flame blazing, flickering light casting spectral shadows across Sam’s face. 

Deep. Exhale.

I drop the match into the bowl. 

The effect is immediate. The contents light up in a wicked array of colors; orange and blue and gold and green. The flames lick across it all, engulfing the bowl, showering the room in enchanting illumination.

I’m proud of you, Marshal.

“I love you, dad.” The tears blur the multicolored flames into a ghostly, mystic light show. 

I love you, son. I always will. 

Then as suddenly as it began, the flames recede. The room grows dark again. The bowl smokes feebly, weakly. I squeeze the sleeve in my hand, attempting to wring my dad’s voice out of the fabric, but he’s gone. Dead. Buried. High on my mind, despite a six foot depth. 

When Sam removes the bowl, I pull the flannel back on. I hold it tight against me. The warmth of the thick, scratchy fabric feels artificial now. 

She lets me mourn awhile. Let’s me finish her beer, brings me another one. Eventually we slip out to her porch for a smoke. The autumn chill gives the night a certain menacing feel; a feel of wickedness, of specters and ghouls. Or maybe that’s just the weed and the beer and the Voodoo Queen, the nicotine hitting my lungs, the flickering glow of the gas lamps at our backs as we gaze out over the quiet Flint Town street. I wonder how the fuck I’ll explain this to Amber.

“I liked him alot,” she says between drags. She flicks the ash off her cigarette delicately, elegantly. “He was funny. And kind.”

“He was,” I say. 

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She echoes the same words I’d heard all day, but only now do I feel them. They’re heavy, somewhere between my stomach and my lungs. 

My father is a drug addict. Present tense. I burned up his soul this evening with a Voodoo Queen off Robert T. and Franklin. The residue of his vice will decay into the earth with all the same elements that make up his corpse. Complicated, incalculable atoms. Bits of matter somewhere between science and urban garden herbs. He is in death as he was in life—loved. 

Flow: Sam Moore

01. Writer

Sam Moore


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Marcus D:
Times Past


04. WRITING

I still don’t know how it got there. It just appeared that night out of thin air, planting itself against the wall. Tall, dark brown, old. Ticking back and forth. Left, right, left right. Perfect symmetry, counting out loud amidst the otherwise silent room.
I had woken up in the middle of the night from a heavy, dreamless sleep. I wasn’t anxious, or restless, so I’m not sure what it was that stirred me from such a deep slumber. Nonetheless, I was up, and going back to sleep didn’t seem probable. Perhaps diving into a book would lull me back to the dreamworld, I thought. If I’m awake, I might as well spend this extra time wisely. 
My paperback was laying face down on the kitchen table, right on the page I’d left it earlier. Some old mystery novel I found used for cheap, all worn out and falling apart like the slightest touch might cause it to crumble. It sat next to a cold, half empty cup of coffee. Maybe something to drink would help wash away the middle-of-the-night grogginess that clung to me. I rinsed out the cup, grabbed a teabag, punched some buttons on the microwave, and waited. Outside the city was asleep. Silent and still, as if the flow of time had abruptly stopped dead in its tracks. The lights were a frozen glow, unmoving and unblinking. No leaves scuttled by in the wind, no stop lights bobbing up and down. For a second I wondered if time was stuck--
--and then the microwave beeped. 
I grabbed my cup and my book and walked into the living room. This was when I noticed it--how had I not seen it before when I walked past? A looming grandfather clock, up against the wall, its metal pendulum swinging back and forth behind a case of glass. It was dark brown wood, very nearly black. The clock itself rested on top, above the pendulum in the glass case. It swung back and forth against a velvety black emptiness behind it. Spindles and spires sprouted from the head, like the tops of old castles and towers. 
I didn’t own such a clock. I’ve never even seen one like this before in person. Up close, it looked almost fantastical, like it had been plucked from the past and dropped in the present. Why was it here? Certainly someone wouldn’t have broken in and done the opposite of stealing. What other explanations did that leave, then? I had no working theories, nothing that stood up to the laws of logic. All I knew was that it had appeared for one reason or another, and planted itself in my room. In fact, in the dead of night while everything was silent and still, it looked as if it had always been there. Perfectly in place. Like it was exactly where it was supposed to be.
The tchok of the pendulum was almost hypnotizing. Maybe this is what woke me, I thought. This metronomic ticking must have stirred my subconscious, and I only now realized it. I set down my book and tea to take a closer look. Behind the glass was a deep, deep blackness. A thick wall of shadow. But behind that wall was something else. Something in the very, very back...a tiny, glowing speck, like the last ember in a dying fire--a light at the end of a tunnel? This isn’t just a clock, I realized. It’s the entrance into something else. For reasons I once again can’t quite explain, I needed to venture in and see what laid at the end.
I slid open the glass. It opened effortlessly as if it were inviting me in, and I stepped inside, ducking around the swinging pendulum.

I was now standing in what appeared to be a long hallway. A liquid black tunnel leading me...somewhere. It was too dark to tell how wide it was. I reached out, touched walls I couldn’t see with my own invisible hands. Just wide enough on both sides to get through comfortably. I reached up but couldn’t feel a ceiling. My room was still visible behind me, now on the other side of the looking glass, appearing in pieces behind the undulating pendulum. The tchok of its swing was clearer here, like pure splashes on a silent pond. No going back now that I’m inside, I thought. I journeyed forward, and realized my footsteps made no noise as I walked.
Never once did I feel out of place as I walked down this dark hallway, like it was a bad idea or that I should turn around. There was a magnetic pulse to it, pulling me in, deeper and deeper into whatever it held at its core. The appearance of the clock was strange, but inviting all the same. When strangeness seeps through one world and into your own, all you can do is accept its presence and follow its current like a flowing river. In this case I had to obey its own rules and logic, which meant stepping in and accepting the invitation. How could I ignore it? As I traversed further in, the emptiness emptied even further,  like I was losing myself, losing my form, melding into its liquid darkness, dissipating into an incorporeal entity hazily floating away…
Lost in thought, I hadn’t even realized I reached the end. I looked back--now, the pendulum and my room were the tiny speck at the other end of that long hallway. The pendulum was now just a distant, barely audible ticking. I had arrived.

I was in a large, rectangular room. White walls, shiny wooden floor. Pristine. Paintings hung up everywhere, blotting out most of the walls.
A gallery? This is what the clock had wanted to show me? 
Dead quiet. The pendulum was no more audible here than my own heartbeat. Not a speck of dust in sight. Dim lights hung overhead, not off but not completely on either, the in-between level of brightness when a place is closed but leaves a couple on anyway for whatever reason. No blotches, smears, nothing, which meant it had obviously been kept up. How strange! And what are these paintings of…?
I decided to look through them clockwise, starting on my left. First, an infant. Wrapped up in a cradle, sleeping soundly. The first batch of paintings were all similar, all featuring this same child. Next, an adolescent. Standing outside a school, entering a favorite cafe, bundled up and waiting for the train to arrive at the station, working their first job. All places I’d been. Could it be? Then--adulthood, arriving home late, pouring over emails, love, loss, falling apart, starting fresh--
“You see now, don’t you?”
The voice cut through my focus. I spun around, and saw a man standing before me. 
“Surely you’ve figured it out,” he continued in a rough, weathered voice. He was a short, older man, dressed in a security uniform. More eyebrows than eyes, more mustache than mouth, both the color of dirty snow. A cap matching his uniform rested on his head, and a ring of keys hung at his side. He stood straight with perfect posture, his hands folded behind his back.
“These are photos of me,” I answered.
“Got it in one,” the man said. “Perhaps you’re not as dull as you look!” He coughed up a raspy laugh, equal parts painful and joyful. Where had this man come from? He seemingly appeared out of nowhere. 
“What is this place?” I asked. 
The man bounced up one time on the heels of his foot and let out a deep breath. “Well, it’s yours, is what it is. That much is obvious now, isn’t it? Look around. Take your time.” 
I continued my way around the room clockwise, looking at paintings of different moments of my life. Different chapters. The pendulum ticked away quietly, far away. 
“How strange, the flow of time. Like a pulsing river. Some of those moments feel right there, don’t they? But it never stops, does it?”
“I suppose not,” I said. 
“And the flow--it only gets stronger and stronger.”
“It certainly feels that way.” I continued making my way around, looking back on moments and memories. The man was not wrong--they felt as chronologically close to me as ever, like I could reach inside and pull them out and relive them all over again. What I wouldn’t give to relive the bright parts, or to undo the dark ones, I thought.
“Seeing all these moments laid out together, it’s...odd.”
“Lotta feelings welling up inside you now, aren’t there? Can’t exactly be helped.”
“No, I guess not. It’s a lot to take in. But you didn’t quite answer my question. Where am I, really?”
The man huffed. His mustache flickered back and forth. “It’s exactly as it seems. A chapter gallery. These are chapters of your life that have come and gone, swept up by the flow. Those chapters were carried off and washed up here. You’re standing right outside the flow.”
“So right now, here, I can’t get swept up in the flow.”
“Got it in one.”
“And you?”
“I’m just the humble caretaker, nothing more. Someone has to watch over this place, right?” He jangled the ring of keys at his side. “Every chapter gallery needs someone to keep it nice and neat. I think I’ve done a fine job, if I do say so myself. Say, you alright there?”
The paintings had stopped, leaving an empty wall. The last frame before the paintings stopped was also blank. Something was stirring inside me, a strange swelling of dread, a rushing wave threatening to inundate me and pull me in.
“All those chapters,” I murmured. “They really don’t seem so long ago. And now they’re gone. And there’s so many of them. So many swept away by the flow.”
The man pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, let out a grainy mmhmm between the cigarette in his lips to acknowledge he was listening while he fumbled for his lighter. “Don’t mind, do ya?” he asked as he lit. I continued staring into that blank frame, wondering what would go in it. He shrugged and blew out a cloud of dirty smoke.
“Yeah, they’re gone, those chapters,” he said. “But not really. They’re still here, aren’t they? They still happened. Swept away, but washed up here. The good, the bad, and, outnumbering them both, the somewhere-in-between. Nobody can take those away from you.”
“Still. It seems...sad, somehow.”
“Can’t think of it like that,” he said as he pocketed his pack. “Not sad, just is. The flow is wholly indifferent towards everything it touches. Besides, still a lot of blank space on that wall isn’t there?”
“And what’s this? This blank frame here, where the chapters end?”
The man exhaled, long, as if he had been holding his breath. “Ah, that. Well, that’s now.
“Now?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Gotta explain everything, don’t I? Well, why do you think you’re here? The next frame needs a chapter. That’s you. This you. Swept away by the flow, you washed up here. You were drawn in, weren’t you? Like it was pulling you in? You’re the next chapter. The flow continues, and a new chapter will start. Those are the dots, all nice and connected for you in plain view.”
I reached up towards the blank frame, wondering if it would feel real if I touched it, then pictured my fingers melding into the canvas, unable to pull them out, as it absorbed me bit by bit. I recoiled at the thought. “You’re telling me--this me--is going in that blank frame?”
The man must have picked up on the worry in my voice. His brow furrowed like descending storm clouds. “Well, don’t sound so worked up about it! It’s the nature of the flow, isn’t it? Who are you to stand against it, like a heavy stone that refuses to be carried downstream? We’re all just pebbles against such a force. And that’s fine. Can’t change the way things work. You can only react to it. You’ll be alright, y’will.”
I was already backing away towards the black hallway that led me here. “But...it doesn’t seem fair...it’s not fair. Even you don’t think so, do you?”
The man huffed. “Doesn’t matter what I think. Or you, for that matter. Go on--take a look. Go back the way you came, see if I’m wrong.”
I was gone before he finished, his words floating behind me. I sped through the thick, palpable darkness, back towards the pendulum. I don’t care about the flow, or chapters, or any of that--I’m getting out, I thought. I was moving quickly, clumsily, stumbled, caught myself on a wall I couldn’t see. My palm ached as it slapped against it and kept me from collapsing. The tchok was getting closer--I could see it--how long is this hallway, anyway? Louder. Piercing. Time seems different here. Malleable. Liquid. I can’t tell if it’s flowing in multiple directions or none at all. But--the entrance--close enough to see through now! The pendulum was doing its dance. I could see inside my room. The glass was still slid open--I’m close! Only a few feet away before--
--a figure walked into view, into my room, in front of the grandfather clock I entered through, and I froze. They looked in, quizzically. I stared back from the darkness. For a moment, all was still. Then, I watched myself close the case, trapping me on this side of the glass, and walk back out of view. 

“I thought you said that I couldn’t get swept up by the flow here,” I said.
“And I wasn’t fibbin’,” the man said, sitting in a chair in the corner, smoking. “You can’t be swept up here. The flow doesn’t reach this place. But you already were swept up, out there. And now, here, this chapter is done.”
“I think I understand now. This chapter is done, but that means a new one is about to start. I think I saw that, on the other side of the glass.”
“Got it in one.” For a brief moment it almost looked like a smile had cracked behind his bushy, curtain-like mustache. 
“Then...I accept that.” 
“Well, good!” The man stood rose from his chair. “Not like you had much of a choice though, did you? You’re a pebble against the flow, remember? Still, it’s a good thing all the same. About time you reached a sensible conclusion.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now, the flow goes somewhere else.”
I stared into the blank canvas. My vision got lost in the emptiness but behind it, I could almost see bits and pieces of...something else. Like staring straight through a clear lake to the bottom. Glimpses into whatever was on the other side. Possibilities, I thought.
“I think y’know what you have to do next,” the man said.
I reached up, touching the blank canvas, as my fingers melded into it. 

Flow: Emma Suzanne

01. Writer

Emma Suzanne


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Pinback:
How We Breathe


04. WRITING

Assume there is a natural pull
gravity,
a goal,
a determined order of events

Collected momentum, 
advance
Obstacles, don’t mind.

Just keep on with it, 
travel
path of least resistance

You’re a movement
of liquid 
or air 
A stream of sound

An excuse for the general 
way
that things will unfold

All things go with you
at times
when it feels right

You keep things alive
working and thinking 
breaking, gliding

Emotions, 
the faster you go

Move to a beat
A gush
A breeze

You’re unstoppable 
Do it.

Flow: Kathryn Gillespie

01. Writer

Kathryn Gillespie


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Old Gray:
Wolves


04. WRITING

Ars Poetica

I.
Pretend- 

believe narrative 
is source of life
better than ours 

that I am literary 

in lines from genius 
skullcracking wit 
pouring out weary ears 

like Claudius carved me
vessel to prove 

II.
Olives crammed into a jar 
like brain trying to skull 
through metaphor 

but switch kitchen light 
into flickers and dance

in harsh of oscillating 
dark finding home

in endings 
where I do not understand 
there to be endings.  

III. 
Glib 
and overwrought

like sentiment draining 
sick down throat 

never write again 

or 
spin basket haphazard 
with lines plucked from beak 
of moment woven
on clumsy loom 

as prayer
let it all break down 
atop your skull 

and Begin 

never end 
Begin 

Flow: AJ Condon

01. Writer

AJ Condon


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Mac Miller:
Missed Calls


04. WRITING

7 Syllable Soul food 

Part of me’s out of me now 
I get it. figured it out 
Pockets full empty’ em out 
Ouch it hurts, sleep on the couch 

Left in the rain,  I am rust 
Hold what I stole, just because 
Holdin a hand on the bus
Cussin n touchin, got busted 

Call me I’ll talk just don’t leave 
Please baby it’s just you I see 
Fall away all the way down
See me there I’ll be around 

Wild flowers over a grave 
Nature is decorating 
Dancing with cancer. Just, wow 
Chest had air it’s empty now

Chest had air it’s empty now 
Fall away all the way down

Swear on my burial plot 
Plant gardens over the top 
Only God me knows me. I doubt. 
Told me this whole life’s about that Soul Food 

Marryin is scary to me 
How boring the story will be 
Barely feel hair on my cheek
Rarely know days of the week

All it will cost, I will be 
Break my back, sacrificing 
Debutant tumbling down 
No ones going to catch you now 

Gracefully stationary 
You and me, polarity 
Joyous today tho it sounds
Nothing gold can hold me down

Poison darts boys in black cars 
Holes in walls. callin it art 
Part of me starting to feel 
Can’t steal what was never real .. at all

Flow: Stephen Wisniewski

01. Writer

Stephen Wisniewski


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Joe Henry:
The Gospel According to Water


04. WRITING

When they finally told us that the water was poisonous, I was drinking coffee, pretending that it wasn’t really water. I was still pouring it into everyone and everything I love, trying my very best to not remember that I’d been doing that all along. I was trying my very best to not imagine how it might hurt them. I was trying my very best to not feel my blood move inside me and imagine it heavy and sluggish and sharp. I was trying my best to pretend that my blood wasn’t really water.
The blood of everyone and everything I love flows from the center outward to our fingertips, and to the ends of our tails, and to the city limits sign, and back in again. It flows from one of us to the other, and it flows through the ground, through a heavy metal spider web, through a column of spent trees, and into polypropylene containers tinted blue to let us know that it’s temporarily pure. It flows through spring-loaded release mechanisms and fixtures and money and money and back to the center and then outward, to everyone and everything that I love, and to the sky and to the ground. And eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it, heavy and sluggish and sharp.
I am haunted by waters.

Flow: Jeff Twietmeyer

01. Writer

Jeff Twietmeyer


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Mark Guiliana:
2018 Drum Solo in Dublin


04. WRITING

1/29/20
I missed a day of journaling yesterday. I’m not sure if it’s useful for me to collect thoughts I’ve written down in the past. Should I bother rereading it? Is the point to just get the thoughts out of my head at the time and nothing more? Should I even be asking these questions? Why do I need to question everything? I’d like to think I’m building upon something. Not just getting my thoughts out, but analyzing them in a way to best help me. Maybe the only help I need is to just get them out of my head. Maybe I don’t need to “just keep writing”. Maybe I don’t need to be anything than what I already am. I just caught myself staring out the window. I’m in my head. Is that so bad? That seems to be part of who I am. I’m not like most other people. Are there even people that are most like other people? Why am I always stacking myself against others? Judging them and judging myself. Why do I care so much about what others think of me? It’s so time consuming. It’s frustrating. Why can’t I just be who I am? Always worrying about the emotional stability of a situation as a whole, and the feelings of others, has, I think, caused a serious problem with anxiety in my life. It’s debilitating. It is honestly having an effect on every area of my existence. That was a stupid, ignorant thing to say. I just need to do the right thing moving forward. I think I know what that is. It’s just everything that comes along with it is anxiety ridden. I’m so worried about all the “small” stuff. What will people think of me? The situation I’m in. How I got here. The shame that’s keeping me here. Do I have it in me to make the changes that I need to make? Why can’t I just move forward? Staring out the window again. I was thinking about how I’m the only person that can do, and has done, exactly what I’ve done. I’m unique. Also I’ve been thinking for a long time how it would be nice to write down some of the things in my head as I think them. Carry a notebook or something. This is, I guess, the first time I’m actually doing it. I do get some good ideas. When I’m in my head thinking everything else around me shuts off. I’m not very observant when I get like this. Am I autistic? I feel like if I didn’t care so much about how others felt, and also about fitting in, and also about trying to be normal, I wouldn’t have anxiety. If I could think the way I think without distraction from anxiety I could apply my brain to something potentially life fulfilling. Anyway, I have good ideas in here, but I’ll probably never reread it. I guess I write to get it out at the moment, then maybe over time something sinks in. 

Flow: Jason Kotarski

01. Writer

Jason Kotarski


02. Theme

Flow


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Singing Lungs:
Flow


04. WRITING

The first song I wrote for my band Singing Lungs is called "Flow". It's about creating space to connect with your depths using the practices of mindfulness and meditation. I don't do that enough but in times like these it seems especially important.

Not too late to look around
Sit there and settle down
There’s something in the absence of sound
Nowhere to go from here
No explosions of light appear
I’m digging below the surface of my fear

And we sit and we wait
And we sit and we wait and know
And we wait and we rest
And we wait and we rest and we grow
Something inside begins to flow

More aware, holding my breath
Making room in the depths
Moving right past the stale taste of death
It’s not a big surprise
That the seed, it has to die
Before something new can rise

And we sit and we wait
And we sit and we wait and know
And we wait and we rest
And we wait and we rest and we grow
Something inside begins to flow

Distant: Emma Suzanne

01. Writer

Emma Suzanne


02. Theme

Distant


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Parov Stelar
feat. Lilja Bloom:
Coco


04. WRITING

An important relationship

Away
That’s you
Far, as in a place
but now also distant
in heart.

Distant,
but distinct.

I don’t resent you
We finally
learned to keep our distance
Still
there's meaning

I remember a time I longed for you
A painful yearning
On the banks of the Arakawa
looking out beyond
where the highway separates
the Naka river from the main
A small island of concrete
in the lapping ripples
The sea river

And I felt the pain
Pain from confusion
At times, intense
Other times distant

It lapped
up and down like the waves
But indeed
a constant tugging on the heart
that admittedly,
took a long time to settle

And before that
The time I met you
when curiosities unfolded

The time I knew you
The bond we formed
Something lost, connected.
A surging, dangerous river
The time I had you.
My soul, unashamed
A slippery animal

We never admitted
The depth of what we forged
Guilt
made it deeper
Maybe

The responsibility we never took

Distance.
The inevitable
that would separate our mess
Our only reprieve
The way out.  

Yet oceans between us
was little relief
from all
that we failed to sort out 

For you too?
I wondered
It pulled on you too
Hesitation
Persistence

But the purpose of us
wasn’t for each other

You unraveled me.
A catalyst, you were 

The waves they rocked
So close to the edge
Only the distance would tell

Make it more distant
the bank
from the waterline

A river calmed. 

Distance is time
Distance is learning
Distance achieved,
Wisdom.

I’m grateful.
I won’t forget. 

Now
even if made possible
our interactions
are all spent

We only exist in thoughts
Recollections. 

An untraditional, but
important relationship.

Distant: AJ Condon

01. Writer

AJ Condon


02. Theme

Distant


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Pinegrove: 
Aphasia


04. WRITING

I've hunted your kind for ages.
In a sea where I've fished with my brothers.
I was created in mud
and it's where I belong, 
but you darling, 
The art of your Mother.  
This maniacal world brought together
you’re changing. 
your moods are the weather 
It’s your fault.
You ought to know better 
Like skinny dipping in December 
Our finger tips
They touch 
And yet we are miles apart 
You’re scared 
I'll set up camp and fire
In the layers of your heart 
Chicagos not that far 
California, not much further 
Don't be scared
We'll find repair 
You the wonder
I the observer
I'll have your fears and bury them
In the very deepest well
And plant a garden overtop
you'll never even tell

The Devils breath could never thaw
The pictures of you 
Where you are 
Frozen in my mind 
As I cower down in awe 
Never loved ya past a picture
But I've imagined futures
And still there’s no reaction 
Like a PG kama sutra 
You and I
The dark outside
Cold crystal breath
Fingers pressed against my chest, 
Is this something I could fake? 
Is this feeling just a test? 
it's less than just two weeks. 
I saw you down the street 
You’re worlds away
We’d freeze in Space 
You don't exist to me 

If I could change your mind that fast
The winds would die down 
And the lake turn to glass
You think you've never been worth what you’re worth to me now, in the past.
So send me packing on 
I want what you want
A little piece of heaven
A tunnel to a Con 
Guns loaded 
Like an ak47, Vietnam 
Are you tired, love, my dearest?
Don’t have to be so serious,
Just grant a dying man his wish
For you, it can be meaningless
My friends can’t help but ask 
“is the driving really worth her?” 
I say.. Chicagos not that far
California, not much further.

Distant: Sam Moore

01. Writer

Sam Moore


02. Theme

Distant


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Lena Raine: 
Trance State


04. WRITING

            I stared down into a cloudy cup of coffee I had barely touched. Next to it, a plate with some sort of generic pastry with a tiny nibble taken out. I stirred the cup with a spoon and watched the cream swirl and churn like the warning signs of a terrible storm.

            “...Anyway, does that make sense?” she asked.

            I looked up. Her head was cocked slightly to the side with a look of genuine concern. The cafe was mostly empty, minus us, and the baristas. One person, presumably a student, sat in the corner with textbooks and papers that were strewn about in a big mess. An elderly man sat by the window with a newspaper draped across his lap and his head drooped forward. The occasional snore escaped his mouth.

            I met her eyes. Deep pools of dark blue, like the ocean at night. Too deep. I look away. Behind her, rain splattered the windows in a steady, monotonous tone that sounded like countless bubble wrap being popped simultaneously. The world seemed stuck in a groggy, lethargic haze. I rubbed my eyes, watched strange colors pulse and splash behind their lids.

            “I’m sorry, I--”

            “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she interjected. “You seem so...distant.” She said it without any trace of malice or indignation, as if she was simply stating a scientific observation. “Are you even here in front of me now? Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She considered it for a moment, glanced down at her hands like she was looking for something that wasn’t there as she organized her words exactly how she wanted them. “It’s like I’m talking to a fragment of you. A shadow. Like I simply think I’m speaking to you when in reality you’re in another world entirely, and this is just the residue that got left behind.”

            Lush keys and a subtle beat droned over the speakers like a gentle wave ebbing and flowing through the room. I swirled my cup of coffee again out of nervous habit and stared down and through its murky colors.

            “I’m pretty sure I’m still here,” I said half-smiling. “More than residue. Flesh and blood, right? Drinking a mediocre and overpriced cup of coffee and enjoying a rainy day.”

            She didn’t smile back. In fact, she didn’t do anything but patiently wait in hopes that I’d say something more substantial. At the bottom of those deep pools of dark blue I could see her grasping for something. Something to hold on to, something she could take away from this talk. Noiseless walls closed in our conversation, walls I couldn’t very well push away.

            “Look,” I said, filling the palpable silence. “I’m still here. I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m just tired. This happens sometimes. You’ve known for me for, what, how long? A long, long while. It’s like a cycle that comes and goes. You’ve seen it. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Sometimes I just have to thaw out, so to speak, the same way the branches do after winter so they can sprout leaves again. No need to worry.”

            Something told me she wasn’t convinced. Maybe she was still waiting for me to say more. Perhaps she was trying to get a read on me and see if I was convinced of what I’d said. The student in the corner was rapidly flipping through the pages in their textbook, evidently searching for an answer they missed. The old man by the window was still sound asleep, his newspaper having slipped off his lap and onto the floor. Another song similar to the last one played on, like one continuous blend of sonic waves. Noiseless walls, closer.

            “Really, I mean it,” I added.

She cupped her hands around her mug of tea, absorbing its warmth. She looked like she was formulating a response but simply, finally settled on “Okay” and took a sip of her hot tea. Was that all? Should I be relieved or worried by how quickly that ended? And why couldn’t I tell?

“Want to try it?” she asked, scooting her mug across the table towards me. The tea smelled like earth and flowers and tasted similar.

“It’s not bad,” I said.

“You ought to be a professional critic.”

“Maybe I will.”

We chatted for the duration of several more songs, catching up for the first time in a while. The conversation was much more relaxed and casual from here on out. This was her last semester before leaving for Europe to study abroad. I’d known for some time, but she didn’t talk about it much. When I asked her about it, she offered up only surface-level details and tried to sound modest. Underneath, though, I could tell she was about to burst with excitement. Maybe she found it the polite thing to do.

“Anyway, I have to get going,” she said after some time. “Closing shift tonight.”

“I hope you make tons of tips,” I said.

“Not likely. But thank you anyway.” She grabbed her umbrella, put on her coat, and stood up to leave.

“You know, even if you’re not here, it was good to catch up from a distance,” she said. Then, she was gone.

 

I stayed for a while longer. The rain continued to fall, warding off any more potential customers. The student left soon thereafter, leaving just me and the sleepy man by the window. I imagined he’d be there all night until the staff had to awkwardly wake him up and ask him to leave.

            I turned in a couple assignments online and tried to do some pleasure reading, but my mind was elsewhere. I’d reread a page several times, but none of it was being absorbed. Her words lolled around in my head, knocking into any other thoughts that tried to pass through.

            “...you’re in another world entirely, and this is just the residue that got left behind.”

            Residue. Was it true? If I wasn’t here, where was I?

            The groggy, lethargic haze the world seemed to be stuck in was lulling me into a tired staleness, like I could pass out any moment without even realizing it. I decided it was time to leave. I was no longer being productive, and trying to read was about as successful as trying to water a plant through concrete. Nothing was getting through. I still had barely touched my coffee or pastry and felt bad about throwing them away. To alleviate my guilty conscience I took another bite of the pastry so I wasn’t wasting quite as much, and I asked for a to-go cup for the coffee even though I probably wouldn’t finish it anyway. I packed up my things and left.

            The moment I stepped outside, it stopped raining. Or, to be more accurately, it hadn’t been raining in the first place. Not here.

            Instead of stepping out onto the gloomy, rainy sidewalk…

 

            ...I found myself in a vibrant, thriving forest.

Endless trees loomed like giants with outstretched limbs, splashed in heaping doses of glossy green. I watched leaves bud and spring to life before my eyes, like time was passing through them and speeding up the process. As real and unreal as anything I’d ever seen. I plucked a leaf off a branch--I had to see if it was real--and no sooner had another leaf sprout in its place. The wind made the forest appear as if it were taking in large gulps of air and letting them out slowly. A living, breathing haven. Almost as if it were sentient. I let the leaf go and watched it float off, carried away by the gale.

            Above was cloudless twilight, the sky perfect nightfallen blue. I looked behind me--the door I passed through in the cafe was replaced with an old, worn-out one the color of dead leaves. It stood there, detached from anything else, as if it had blossomed from the ground as a natural part of the woods. If I turned the handle and went back through that door, would I find myself back in the other world? Something held me back. Perhaps I didn’t want to leave the tranquility, or maybe felt that it wasn’t time to leave. Not yet. I turned and left the strange door where it was, guided by nothing so concrete as consciousness, but something deeper. A sleepwalker in a waking dream.

            If this is a dream, I thought. I’m not so sure. Why does it feel so strangely familiar?

I waded through this strange and peaceful forest, unsure of where I was heading, only knowing that I was supposed to be heading somewhere. How did I know this? Logically it made no sense, which, for some reason, didn’t alarm me. The illogical seemed to flow smoother here, and I was swept away in its current.

A gradual change started to take place, like a mask slowly being peeled off. The comfort of here started to drain. Something churned inside me. Worry? As I progressed further and further in, the vibrancy of the forest seemed to dwindle as if it were dying right before my eyes. Gradually, at first, as leaves changed from greens to reds, before plummeting into lifelessness and barren branches. This is when I realized--

            “This is where you’ve been going, isn’t it?”

            She was sitting on a tree stump as if she’d been waiting for me. The color had been completely sapped from every particle now, a black-and-white lens placed over the vibrant one. The trees looked were inky silhouettes, like shadows I could put my hand right through. The air had a cold greyness, and the moon above was crumbling concrete.

            “I get why,” she continued. “Why you’ve been coming here. Why you’ve been so distant, slipping off somewhere else. This place is really far away. It’s nice at first. Peaceful.Tranquil. A haven...”

A black leaf fluttered off a branch, but disappeared before it touched the ground.

“...but there’s nothing here for you.”

            Behind her a tree started to disintegrate, wisping away like ashes in the wind. The particles fluttered for a moment, and then were gone. It left an emptiness in its stead, like someone had rigorously erased reality.

            “I’ve been here many times,” I said, more to myself as a sudden realization. “I’ve never seen this happen before, though.”

            “That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening. You just haven’t noticed it. Maybe you haven’t wanted to.” Behind her the erasing picked up speed, an encroaching wave of emptiness that made a noise like crackling fire as it removed everything in its path.

            “Why wouldn’t I want to notice this? It’s all going to be swallowed up. Then what will happen? Where will I go?”

            “I don’t know,” she said as the next line of trees disappeared behind her. “That’s not for me to say. I’m just glad I found you here. Like you’d finally let me find this place. And find you.”

            The erasing was louder, closer, right behind her. An invisible inferno eating everything in sight.

            “It seems like I was too late,” I said.

            The tendril-like roots of the stump she sat on started to fade. “I don’t think it’s too late,” she said as the erasing grabbed the base of the stump. “But you can’t stay here anymore.”

            I tried to respond, to say anything at all, but before I could she was gone, just as everything else was going, and I was hurtling back through what remained of this place like I’d been tethered by a long string and violently yanked backwards, the trees turning to comets of light trailing beside me and the crackling invisible inferno swallowing everything up just as I reached the door I arrived through that was already open and waiting and I fell through into a shimmering glow--

 

            --and groggily churned to life like an obsolete machine, rubbing my eyes and seeing more strange colors pulse and throb and then wash away as everything clicked back into focus. I felt like I was coming out of a dark tunnel and seeing light for the first time in days.

            “Ah, there you are. Welcome back,” said a voice. It belonged to one of the baristas. He was wiping down a table a few feet away. It was dark out, and the rain had stopped. There were no other customers, not even the old man who had passed out earlier in the middle of his newspaper. My book lay open, exactly where I’d left off, the same page I’d tried reading over and over to no avail.

            “We’re just about to close,” the barista said. I must have looked very disoriented, because he was holding back an amused smile. “You want a to-go cup for your coffee?” he asked. Some sort of vaguely-human noise must have lazily spilled out of my mouth because he returned a second later with my drink swapped from a mug into a paper cup. I thanked him (I’m fairly certain), and stumbled out onto the wet, grimy sidewalk. The jarring, cold night air swept away the lingering grogginess as I felt myself return to concrete, flesh-and-blood personhood again.

            Hazy images drifted in and out of my mind that night. Images of a strange door and a familiar face, of green being eaten up by emptiness. A place I’d been slipping away to too often without even knowing. That dream (if it was a dream--it felt more like a place I had actually traveled to while my body remained here) had jostled something loose in this world; a cause and effect that stirred something up inside me. Residue or not, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that something was changing. As I drifted off to sleep I thought of doors closing, of distances disappearing, of leaving empty places behind.

Distant: Michelle Lukezic

01. Writer

Michelle Lukezic


02. Theme

Distant


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Explosions In The Sky:
It’s Natural to Be Afraid


04. WRITING

Understand who you are. 
Decide what you want. 
Do what needs to be done.
Be the person you want to be. 

You’re afraid; do it anyways.
You’ve made a decision; a commitment.

Distant, distance.
Over 26 weeks out, over 26 miles ahead.
A long journey.

Practice is mandatory.
Action over mood.

Don’t react how you feel you need to;
react how you would like to.
Be the person you want to be. 

You are several positions away from your physical body. 
There is value in training the mind.

You start talking to yourself.
Stop it.
You have a choice. 

When you say you are going to do something; do it. 

Sacrifice whatever it takes to make sure that the one thing you promise yourself, actually happens.
Build evidence of your capability. capacity. consistency. confidence.

You are in control.
Stick to your word.

It’s never perfect.
You were destined to fail.
Life is about screwing you up.
You will get crushed, and when you chose to quit, that’s on you.

Be aware.
Be grateful.
Be grateful that you are aware that in this moment you have a choice.

Keep moving forward.
Be the person you want to be.

It will be uncomfortable.
Impossible.
Stay the course.

It will hurt.
Feel it. Embrace it. Fall in love.
The taste of sacrifice like metal on your tongue.
Evidence of dedication to your word.

Lean into the pain.
It will be over soon.
It will be over too soon.

55,000 steps.
It’s not easy; it wasn’t built that way.
But that’s why you decided to do it.
You were afraid; you did it anyways.

Follow your dreams.

Man, fuck that.
Find your fears.

Hunt them down.
Don’t hide from them;
don’t let them hide from you.
Expose them; expose yourself.

Identity is not fixed.
Story not permanent (nor pertinent).
You get to chose who you are.

You grow, you change, when you train;
when you stretch yourself. 

A glorious victory.
I know who I want to be.
I am who I want to be.

Distance, distant.
You’ve crossed the finish line.

Remember what you’ve accomplished.
How far you’ve come.
How far you are willing to go.
Let those markers of success ring-the-fuck-out.
Let the stories in accordance with the character you want to be resonate the most loud.

Distant: Robb Anthony

01. Writer

Robb Anthony


02. Theme

Distant


03. MUSIC INSPIRATION

Dr. Dog: 
Listening In


04. WRITING

You said you wanted light
Mine has never burned brighter
Instead you choose the dark
So I put out the fire

You write and say you miss me
Your words leap out and kiss me
Your actions speak louder; they scream and yell
Your silence, overcoming like the tide on a swell
I thought I knew you well but you always prove me wrong
I try to speak and tell you but I can only write this song

Your mystery is beauty and yet the hardest part
So I relinquish these feelings and admire your silent art.