Johnny Wraith Stories - Latest Blog Entries

About JW Stories V I

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:51:00 -0600

For the record, Volume I contains most of the stuff I once had to say so badly that I started writing in order to say it. It is also the stuff I couldn't speak through any mouth but that of Johnny Wraith. Johnny is real, don't get me wrong. He is out there somewhere, on the streets, at your office, in your classes, sitting next to you at a pub or in church. He is your muse and your conscience, but for each of us he has a different voice, motivation, and song.

Now available: johnny got his gun

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:44:00 -0600

johnny got his gun

by Johnny Wraith
Paperback, 196 pages

$13.99
Ships in 3–5 business days

Johnny is just about to pull the trigger and blow his brains out, but the memory of one of Marcel Marceau’s acts gives him hope. Johnny then explains how he got to the point of suicide, and in so telling he realizes his soul was taken from him by a succubus nearly 10 years before. That’s why he’d been filled with such despair and emptiness only suicide seemed an adequate answer. That’s why all the drugs, alcohol, women, and long nights at the Indian casino just didn’t cut it. In an effort to save himself, Johnny finds the entry to Hades and descends into the underworld in search of his soul.

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Now available: Johnny Wraith Stories Volume I

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:40:00 -0600

Johnny Wraith Stories Volume I

by Johnny Wraith

Paperback, 148 pages

This is the first compilation of Johnny Wraith's short stories. They are often loaded with debauchery, but in the end Johnny the anti-hero is always a beacon of hope and a light on a hill amongst all the evil and tragedy and meaninglessness the world so generously provides.

Purchase a copy

$10.00
Ships in 3–5 business days

johnny got his gun: more than a story

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:44:00 -0600

I'm selling johnny got his gun as more than a story. Yes it is fiction and yes it is a literary work, but it is also a self-help book. In these pages you will discover that there is a way to survive and thrive in a universe that makes absolutely no sense. Sometimes there is no hope, but that's because you are looking for it out there somewhere, when the only place you're going to find it is under your skin. Sometimes you will suffer and there will be no happiness in anything, but you just have to go the distance. Life is full of loss, challenge, and agony, but in the end each of us must be steadfast in our pursuit of the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is something different for each of us, and only by living and taking harsh beatings do we mold the cast for the golden chalice we shall one day tilt to our lips, but only once we have endured and bled enough. Joy is the compliment to tragedy and to have a lot of one of these passions is to bear a lot of the other.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 13 - The comedy channel

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:30:00 -0500

Hades’ suburbs. The biggest planned community I’d ever seen. Tract houses in the millions, packed together so close neighbors could reach out their windows and shake hands. Everyone had the same floor plan. I just sat there, looking out the window, watching it all pass by. My train could have been going in circles, though it seemed we were chugging straight ahead. I’d just keep getting off at each stop and taking a look around. Maybe I’d solve the riddle of how to get out of Hades? Maybe I wouldn’t. Seeing Gina again wasn’t pleasant. Somehow she’d managed to win a ticket to suburbia. I wasn’t sure her suicide was her condemnation’s culprit. Adam had said there were 3 Torments in Hades, and which one you got depended on whether your Vice was Idleness, Rigidity, or Greed. Who knows which one was hers? Maybe she had all of them? She was sitting there in the tub all day, hogging all the bloody bathwater and razorblades, bitching and complaining about the same shit over and over again. I could see how all the Vices were possibly manifest in her eternal Torment. Let her be friends of Brutus, Judas, and Cassius.

The train arrived at the next platform. I jumped off. The conductor waved goodbye and I waved back. Next thing I was back on the sidewalks, counting my steps, 1,2,3,1,2,3, “don’t step on a crack…”

When the time felt right, I broke the flow, stepped on a crack, and looked up to find myself standing in front of Larry’s old mobile home. I knew I could walk in the door any time I wanted, so I didn’t knock. The rusty screen door slammed shut behind me. It was dark and cool inside, the blinds were all closed, and a large screen television in the corner was the only source of light. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out Larry’s giant form. There he was, all 300lbs of him, reclined and snoring, bare feet up, a padded easy chair serving as his bed.

“Larry?”

“Eh? Snort! Grunt!”

By lunging forward on the springs and kicking at the footrest with his heels, Larry half sat up and looked at me with surprise, but the surprise quickly turned into a gap-toothed smile on his big, round face.

“Johnny!”

“Larry, what the Hell are you doing here?”

“Hell if I know. But before we hug and kiss, go get us a beer out of the fridge.”

I went to the kitchen and came back with two cold ones. Larry didn’t get out of his chair to hug me. I bent over and put my arms around his mass while he pounded my back with his palms. We cracked our beers and smacked the aluminum together in toast.

“Go grab that folding chair ‘gainst the wall and pull it on up!”

I unfolded and pulled the chair up, sat down, and took a swig. Larry started talking, and he didn’t give me a chance to say a thing. It had likely been a long time since he’d had company, so I let him talk. He went on and on about the movies, shows, and standup routines he’d been watching on the comedy channel. I pretended to listen as I remembered the events surrounding Larry’s death. When he was 27, his heart began failing – something about an enlarged heart. When he was 28, he had a heart transplant. When he was 29, his new heart failed and he died. I’d known Larry since grade school. I was one of his pallbearers. He was a good old boy that lived in the country, wore overalls around his big belly, drove a beat up Ford pickup, and was always filling the truck’s bed with empty beer cans. I helped with the task. As he drove, and we drank, we’d throw the empties out the truck’s rear, sliding window. They’d usually land in the bed with the other cans, but sometimes they’d jump out onto the highway and end up rolling into a ditch. Larry never worked any job more than a month, and he’d dropped out of high school. Half the time his utilities were shut off. His grandfather had died had left him with the mobile home and pickup. The only thing that stopped Larry’s nonstop talking was the start of a comedy channel sitcom.

“Don’t mean to be rude, but I gotta watch this. You’ll like it. Go get us round 2.”

I didn’t find the sitcom funny. It was something about the life and times of some white guy with an afro.

Larry found it quite funny. Every other line or so, he’d let out a booming laugh.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”

And he’d laugh some more.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”

And some more.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”

It was horrifying. Though we were watching comedy, the whole scene was something out of Hitchcock, or the Twilight Zone. When commercials came, I went to the refrigerator for more beer, and while I did so I had a chance to ask a few questions.

“Larry, don’t you want to get out of here?” I wasn’t sure if he knew he was dead, so I said “here” instead of “Hades.”

“Hell no. This is where I live.”

“What do you do all day?”

“I don’t have to do nothin’. One day I was sitting here watching my shows and was all bummed out about the empty fridge, but I got up and looked in it hoping something was there anyway. And wouldn’t you know it! It was full of food and beer! I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Ever!”

“Who’s been filling the fridge?”

“Hell if I know, but he’s a pal of mine. Sometimes I drink all the beer and munch down all the eats, and then I take a nap. When I wake up, the damn place is cleaned up. Not an empty is on the floor where I throw ‘em, and the fridge is all full again.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“You can say that again! And let me tell you. Since all this good stuff has been happening, I haven’t been constipated once and nobody’s shut off the water or electric.”

“You don’t want to go anywhere with me, I take it?”

“Like where?”

“To the train.”

“Nobody rides that train. I wouldn’t if I was you. Besides, I think I’m too fat to fit through the door.”

The commercial break ended and the sitcom about the white guy with the afro came back on.

Larry found it quite funny. Every other line or so, he’d let out a booming laugh.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”

And he’d laugh some more.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”

And some more.

“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”

I stood up and walked out the door without saying a thing. I don’t think Larry realized, or cared, that I left without saying goodbye. He had comedy channel sitcoms, beer and food, air conditioning, and never had trouble taking a shit.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 12 - Suicide girl

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:36:00 -0500

I hopped off the train. From behind rows of small windows, the conductor waved goodbye. I waved back. The train belched smoke, began pulling its cars up the track, and then chugged away into the greater depths of Hades’ tract housing. Still wearing nothing but a canvass sack, I took the stairs off the platform and headed into the suburbs.

Block after block I walked, and still the cramped tract houses all looked the same. It was row after row of continual sameness. At least the blue sky offered my bare back warm sunlight. Block after block I walked, and I just kept walking. Every once in a while I’d turn a corner or cross a street, or look up to see the same front yards and houses. Mostly, I just looked down at the sidewalk and watched my feet taking 3 steps on each concrete slab before stepping over a crack and taking another 3 steps, over and over. There was something to getting into the rhythm of walking, 1,2,3 and 1,2,3 and 1,2,3. With my steps I began saying aloud, “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.” 3 syllables per slab, 4 slabs each time I said a whole line. Rhythm. That was it! 1,2,3, “Don’t step on,” 1,2,3, “a crack or,” 1,2,3, “you’ll break your,” 1,2,3, “moth-ers back.” 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3… I realized it was Rhythm! 1,2,3,1,2,3… Swim with the currents! Don’t seek answers, but find questions. Stay in motion and the stage curtain will open. Your eyes will be filled with light. I stopped in my tracks and stepped on a crack. When I looked up from my feet, I was standing in front of a familiar house. It was just like the one I’d lived in with my 2^nd wife.

It was so familiar I felt as if I’d traveled back in time, as if I were returning home from work like so many times before. Maybe I really was? The only indication to the contrary was that I was wearing nothing but a canvass sack and bare feet, not a suit and polished wing tips.

I opened the front door. There was my old denim jacket hanging on the coat rack. The familiar silver mirror set in a wrought iron frame was hanging on the foyer wall. Stairs lead up to where I knew I’d find her. My body tensed with anxiety. Oh god, I don’t want to go through this again… My last encounter with Gina had been a horrible one. The last time I saw her. I could sense I was reliving that encounter.

“Johnny! Come on up! I’m in the bathtub!” her voice carried from upstairs.

I sighed with relief when I heard her voice. She sounded happy. Could she really be happy? She sounded like she was glad I was home. Had she decided to love me again?

Old feelings of love flooded my heart and I suddenly felt light and free again. I had loved her. In an instant, I suddenly loved her once more.

“Johnny! Get up here!”

I darted up the stairs, ran down the hall, into the master bedroom, and through the open bathroom door. There she was in the bathtub, just like she had been the last time I’d seen her. She was sitting in tepid water mixed with dark blood. Her wrists were slashed open, and an open package of razor blades lay on the floor beside the tub. I suddenly felt heavy and chained again, cursed with old feelings of grief and guilt.

She wasn’t smiling, as usual, but this time she was alive. Gina’s blue eyes were piercing me with hatred. By her look, I realized she’d feigned her tone of voice to lure me up the stairs, to find her bathing in blood.

“You did this to me!” she accused.

“You cut your own wrists,” I retorted, and in so doing I was surprised how quickly my old combative attitude returned.

“You were never there for me.”

“All you ever did was complain, nag, and bitch.”

“You and all your friends, the drinking, the casino.”

“I liked being happy.”

“That isn’t what life is about. Being happy. Staying away from me because you couldn’t stand how I was or how I felt. For you being happy was being irresponsible, refusing to see things the way they really are, and not being able to understand me.

“We can all choose to be happy. You just wouldn’t ever try. So I gave up.”

“There were too many problems to be happy! How could you have treated me the way you did, when I was suffering so much?”

“What do you expect? I grew tired of all the bullshit, the depression, the constant therapy sessions, the complaining, nagging, and bitching. I could have lived with a year or 2 of it, but you just wouldn’t give up being miserable and blaming me for all of it.”

“It was all because of you!”

“I tried and tried. Nothing I ever did was good enough. I could never change enough. I never showed enough empathy. I couldn’t understand. It was too much!”

“You never listened. You never cared!”

“Like I told you, I couldn’t live with the complaining, nagging, and bitching. The world was nothing but a bad place for you. You wanted me to live in it with you and accept it. Sorry. I couldn’t. Sorry. I wouldn’t. Sorry. I won’t. I’m going to leave you to your own misery, again. There’s too much of it for me here. I’m getting back on the train.”

“You aren’t going anywhere this time!”

“Why not?”

“We have to talk.”

“About what?”

“Our problems. Why you make me so depressed and miserable. Why you made me kill myself.”

“I don’t have any problems, and I never made you do or feel anything.”

“Yes you did! You need to take responsibility!”

“I’m leaving.”

“Just like you did last time?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t leave me! You can’t leave this place! No one can!”

I turned away, walked down the steps, and out the front door. All the while she was screaming this and that. None of it mattered. Issues. Problems. Incurable unhappiness. The misery I had caused. Everything was my fault.

As I headed back to the train platform, the guilt and grief over Gina’s suicide left me. I no longer felt bad about finding her dead in the bathtub, floating in her blood. I’d done the right thing by just calling 911, giving a statement to the police, packing a suitcase, throwing it in the car and driving away. Though I’d ended up with a foreclosure on my credit report, I didn’t care. A mortgage just ties a man down. I’m not sure who took care of Gina’s funeral, or if she even had one.

I sat on a bench and waited for the train to come. I remembered the Gina I’d fallen in love with, the one I’d known before Gina that had fallen apart.

Before she’d changed, there was a time we’d hiked deep into a thick forest of Redwood trees. We had a blanket and a basket filled with bread, wine, cheese, and apples. It was chilly beneath the lofty canopy – not at all accommodating for a picnic, but to our joy we discovered a clearing filled with sunlight and warmth. We threw the blanket down, rolled around in one-another’s arms, laughed, and got drunk on wine. While making love we spotted a stag and a doe in the tree-line shadows. They were watching us, and we them, and we were mimicking one-another’s erotic motions.

I’ll always love the Gina I first met. Somehow she’d died long before I found her body and blood in a bathtub.

Some of us give up the journey. Some of us stay a while and get back on the train.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 11 - Idling at the first stop

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:47:00 -0500

The train chugged along for what seemed many hours. Through the windows an endless array of tract houses flashed past, and kept flashing past. Was Hades nothing but an endless suburb? Who’d have thought? What was I supposed to do here? You can just walk out of the place, but no one ever has, I’d been told. You can’t get off track because the journey through Hades is one way, it had been said. Adam’s talk of the torment found here – the vices. Or were they virtues instead of vices here, as the conductor suggested? What was I supposed to do with them? I wasn’t seeking any torment. Oh, what the hell. I was in Hades now, and I had to deal with it. I’d done it to myself by falling for a snake. I’d stepped out of permanent stone and into temporal flesh and sand just for a bottle of Chardonnay and a girl in a sundress with no underpants. Come to think of it, that wasn’t why I was in Hades. That girl and the wine were the lure, not the cause of my being here. The sin, or the injustice for which I was suffering, at least according to the snake, had something to do with my being a pillar for so long. I had held up the flux and chaos for everyone else by just standing there, a pillar in the desert, watching the seasons turn with every slow blink of eye. So, if I accepted all I’d been told as truth, I was in Hades because I’d been changeless too long. Was I somehow being punished for having taken a taste of immortality? The tree in the garden is forbidden for a reason, be the tempting fruit a chance to turn to stone, to sip of Chardonnay, or to have lust with a snake. Partake of the fruit and you just might be in for a ride through Hades’ suburbs. Or was it the shrooms, absinthe, or hashish lollipops? If only I’d never tumbled off the bridge and into the water. Still, I was glad for it. Sometimes you have to seek the glimmer in the darkness, and that is the beauty in fireflies. Ever since meeting Vatsulu, I’d been on quite an adventure. It was a welcome change of pace. Who else gets to swim with a fish with a man’s face, be swallowed by a whale and escape from it by breathing through a mermaid’s tit? How often do we get the chance to stand as a pillar in the desert for more than a thousand years, take instruction from a talking skeleton, sleep with a snake in a sundress, or plummet into Hades wearing nothing but a canvas sack? Oh yeah, and the barkeep’s whiskey was free of charge. How often are the drinks free in any tavern? Change and flux, the chaos of it all, we have been and will be all things, dogs, cats, men, women, snakes, and foul again. Seek not the answers but the questions. The vices… the virtues… eternal torment. Ride the train. Wait for nightfall. Catch the fireflies and put them in a jar to light the way.

Someone was shaking me. “Sir, sir! Wake up! We have arrived at the first stop.”

“Er, eh… what?” I’d fallen asleep and the conductor had his hand on my shoulder.

“We’ve been stopped here for a while, and it’s about time to depart. Don’t you want to get off at your first stop? Why have you just been sitting here, sleeping? Your ticket will still be good when you want to board again.”

I looked out the window. “It looks like the same place. Haven’t we gone anywhere? All the houses and streets still look the same.”

“Johnny, it’s all a matter of perception. I understand where you are from the sun rises and falls over and over again. The days go from Monday through Sunday over and over again. Every two weeks you receive a paycheck for sitting at a desk and doing the same thing you did to get the previous paycheck, and the one before that. I hear you have to pay the same bills every month: mortgage, utilities, cable television, water, and trash. I can’t fathom how you can tell one day from the next where you’re from. I think it is kind of the same thing for you, being a stranger here. Just how you see nothing but sameness in my world, I see the same thing in yours. Everything really is different here, even if it looks the same as everything else from the outside. It all depends on how you look at it, or maybe it is how you live it.”

I scratched my head. “O.k., so if I get off at this stop, and take a look around, I’ll start noticing everything isn’t the same?”

“Probably not at first,” grinned the conductor. “You need to start by looking into things.”

“Oh, come on, please not another riddle!”

“Try knocking on a door or two.”

“Who will answer?”

“It can be anyone you have known that has died.”

“Everyone here is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Even me?”

“Some questions shouldn’t be asked, Johnny.”

“Then this really is the land of the dead?”

“It is Hades.”

“And no one has ever left it?”

“Nope.”

“What about Lazarus?”

The train conductor grimaced and his silence spoke clearly. Seek questions. Don’t ask them.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 10 - A light touchdown

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:28:00 -0500

Again I was falling into the blackness, but this time it was because I’d leapt back into it. As I dropped, the spirits of the dead once more came swirling around me,

“Hey buddy, got a cigarette?” asked a bum.

“Sir, can I have a puppy?” inquired a small child.

“Can you show me the way to Toledo?”

“Sorry, can’t help you, but do you have a parachute I can borrow?” I smirked to each in reply, and this caused each of them to offer sad faces and swirl away.

To kill the time during this long drop, I started doing summersaults and cartwheels. I practiced spinning like a top. Sometimes I sang children’s lullabies, and at others I found my body still, my mouth quiet, my mind pondering this and that. What if I’d gone to school to become a chiropractor instead of a lawyer? What if I’d married that accountant girl back when I was 23, had a few kids, and a house in the suburbs? What if I’d been a religious man? What if I hadn’t lost so many friends over the years as a result of getting so outrageously drunk at so many parties? Falling into Hades really gave me time to think.

Once I’d tormented myself with enough “what ifs” and “why did Is,” the darkness began to dissipate and light appeared. It became brighter and brighter, and blue, as if I was falling into the sky. Fluffy clouds emerged and I fell through them. I dropped straight past birds. I saw pastel and striped hot air balloons sailing about. Hades? This couldn’t be Hades. Now I was really confused. I’d had enough. I didn’t need any more adventure or any more tests. I should have drowned long ago, when I fell off the bridge. Don’t resuscitate me. This was too much and I was tired of it all. When the suburbs and lush parks appeared below, at the speed I was going I was satisfied I’d land hard enough to splatter. Being ready for the end, I crossed my arms in resignation, let out a sigh, and closed my eyes. It had been a good life… I’d seen and done a few things with it, though not nearly enough, but who dies satisfied? All our works are dirty rags, eh?

Just as I had offered my resignation and exhaled, I was snatched at the elbows. I abruptly stopped midair and started floating. What now? I opened my eyes to find my mood suddenly and positively changed. What appeared to be 2 angels had taken hold of me. They were slender, smiling, and beautiful, with feathered wings, bare breasts, and were wearing diamond-studded g-strings. Each wore a peacock’s plume on her head. All right, Adam, I’m game for another test. Just one more! How quickly a couple pair of tits can divert us from suicide.

The plumed girls didn’t say a thing. They just kept smiling and flapping their wings. Gradually the ground grew nearer. We flew over tract after tract of suburb housing, thousands of little rooftops that all looked the same. A master-planned community stretching to the horizon in every direction, and the only things breaking the monotony of the dense, checkered patterns were lush green parks and lakes. But there was something peculiar about the orderliness of it all. Nothing was unique. That was it. Even the parks and lakes were identical. In each park, children were playing kickball and dogs were chasing Frisbees. In each lake, couples were floating along in kick-paddle boats. The sight of it all gave me the same feeling as listening to a broken record skip and play the same line over and over again.

One of the winged girls tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. Up ahead, the monotony of the track housing, parks, and lakes broke. We were approaching a small train depot. An old black steam engine was idling next to the platform and choking out smoke. When we got closer, I could see a train conductor standing there, waiting. The girls put me down in front of him, giggled to one another, and fluttered away.

“Welcome to Hades, Johnny.”

“You know my name too? I should have guessed.”

“I do keep track of all the passengers,” he winked.

“This is Hades?”

“Sure is, at least the suburbs of it.”

“I thought it was a dark place filled with ghouls and tortured souls.”

“Look around you. That’s exactly what this place is – a dark place filled with ghouls and tortured souls.”

“Then where are the pits of flesh and lakes of ale?”

“My goodness, Johnny, if you are looking to find any of that, I’m terribly sorry to tell you you’ve come to the wrong place. You aren’t looking for Hades. You’re looking for Paradise.”

“Let me guess. Your train won’t take me there?”

“Nope. Sorry to disappoint you. Do you have any other destination in mind? I just may have a ticket.”

I scratched my head. Let’s see, I thought. Adam said something about vices. The vices must be part of the riddle.

“Where do I go to confront the vices?”

“Vices?”

“Yeah, you know, Idleness, Rigidity, and Greed.”

“Oh goodness. Johnny, in Hades, these vices you speak of are the virtues. And I’m not sure there are three virtues. There may only be one,” winked the conductor.

“Let me guess. Here darkness is light, so vices are virtues. Everything is upside down. One big tangled cluster fuck.”

“Well, not exactly, but don’t you worry my green friend. You have an eternity to seek your answers now.”

“I was taught to seek questions, not answers. Don’t you know Vatsulu and Adam?”

The train conductor offered a big smile, and his silence told me I wasn’t going to get any more out of him.

“Alright, I’ll take a ticket. What are my options? Do you have a schedule?”

“You don’t need one. The train only goes one way, and with one ticket you can get off at any stop and stay as long as you want. You can get back on the train and keep going whenever you decide the time is right.”

“What’s at the first stop?”

“It is a different place for each person.”

Shit. Hades. A one-way street, or should I say train track? It is tailor made for each of us, probably to make sure the marginal utility of our pain is maximized with every step we take into the mire. All you have to do is walk out of the place, but no one ever has. Maybe no one ever will, but fuck it. I’d give it a try just to take pride in knowing I did my best to defy Orcus.

I held up a finger. “One ticket. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 9 - Descent into the pit

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:47:00 -0500

Hades’ Gates are not guarded. You won’t find Cerberus, a hydra, or a band of skeleton warriors trying to stop you from getting into the place. In fact, there are no obstructions or locked gates to Hades. There are no barriers to entering the Mouth of Hell. You just walk right in. Everyone is welcome, living or dead, though there is only one place where the living may enter, and only a guide can get you there. My guide, as you have seen, was the scorpion. Funny I call him a guide. After all, he did throw me into a canvass sack, tie it shut, and carry me a distance before dropping me off at the entryway. I suppose it doesn’t matter whether we make it to Hell through a guide or via a courier. What is important is that we make it there.

I tied the canvass sack’s string around my waist, took a few breaths, got down on my hands and knees, and crawled into the little hole in the ground. There was not enough room to stand, so I had to keep crawling. An eerie, gray light somehow glowed from the jagged walls of the twisting passageway, so I was just able to see which direction to clamber. It was so cold, my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t feel my hands, feet, lips, or ears, but I kept going. It seemed I was slowly descending, and I kept going. If I had to guess, I crawled nearly a mile into the earth before finding what appeared to be an end to the tunnel. In the ground I discovered a little wooden trapdoor. I bounced on it, tried to pry it open with my fingers, knocked on it to see if someone might open it from below. Nothing. Finally, I found a little wire loop sticking out of the wall and gave it a pull.

The trapdoor opened!

I dropped straight into nothingness, pure black nothingness. I fell. I fell for a long time. I fell. At first, the horror of suddenly plummeting into a pit with no bottom in sight, an abyss, made me shut my eyes tight and yell until all my air was spent. Something about having my stomach thrown into my throat made it impossible to refrain from screaming as loud as I could, like a girl, over and over again. At some point I pissed and shit in the canvass sack I was wearing. It was quite a drop. It was quite a dump. I tumbled, and screamed, tumbled and screamed.

Eventually, I realized how ridiculous I was being, so I came to my senses, straightened out, and opened my eyes.

All around me, what appeared to be souls of the dead were swirling. They were holding out their hands to me in supplication. I had always been afraid of ghosts, but it is amazing how you overcome your fear of everything else once you have come to terms with the fact you are freefalling to your death in an abyss.

“Hey buddy,” said a fat man in a panama hat, “do you have anything to eat?”

“I want my daughter back! I was young when I gave her away! Please give her back to me! Please!” cried an old woman.

“He went to prison because I lied! I’m the one who stole the money!” confessed a man in a fancy suit.

“Sorry, I can’t help any of you. All I have is shit in my pants, and regrets I just pulled the wrong wire.”

The desperate souls made sour faces and abandoned me. I kept falling.

I don’t know if I fell for days or weeks, but I had long given up hope of splattering at the bottom when a powerful gust of wind swept me up and began carrying me somewhere. When I looked down, I discovered my body was in the grasp of a monstrous, ethereal hand. After being carried a short way, a little wooden tavern came into view in the distance. It was hovering midair in the abyss, among the absolute darkness coming from every direction. Through open windows and the swiveling doors, a warm fire glowed. The hand flew me to the entrance. The swiveling doors flew open, and I was gently put down on the welcome mat. The hand disappeared.

“God damn! What’s that smell?” demanded the bartender. Like the best bartenders, he was a surly man, balding, and had a distinctly protruding belly that stretched against his greasy, white apron.

I looked around, and discovered I was the only other person there.

“Sorry. I shit in my pants.”

“What the hell you do that for?”

“I fell into this hole and it scared the shit out of me.”

The bartender grinned to his bushy sideburns. “I’d shit too if I fell so far. Tell you what,” he pointed a fat finger, “through that door is the washroom. Go wash up. Rinse out that damn sack you’re wearing and hang it by the fire to dry. I have a clean apron for you. I wouldn’t leave here with only an apron on though, so stay a while. Have a few drinks. As you can imagine, in Hades you won’t be a virgin long if you’re running around with your bare ass showing.”

I returned wearing an apron and smelling of lye soap.

“I’d ask you your drink, but here we only serve various devils’ brews you ain’t never heard of and can’t say,” explained the barkeep.

“What do you recommend?”

“Depends on what you need.”

“I need to get out of here.”

“There ain’t no drink for that.”

“Then how do I get out of here?”

“You just have to fall to the bottom, get up, and start walking. There’s only one way in and one way out. There’s no way to get lost, and no one is going to stop you from leaving this damned hole. Just remember, along the way there will be a lot of places where you’ll want to set up camp and stay forever, like at the ale lakes, the shroom fields, or one of the pits of flesh.”

“You gotta be kidding me! Ale lakes, shroom fields, and flesh pits?”

“I’m kidding,” winked the bartender after a pause. “But there are powerful temptations here, and no one has ever turned his back on all of them. That’s why no one has ever left Hades. It’s something about the personalities that fall into this pit in the first place, because everyone is free to leave. But nobody ever has.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. Sounds like I’m in for trouble. Give me your strongest drink, and make it a double!”

As I put down round after round and took back my warmth, I pondered. I must say that though I can’t pronounce what I was drinking, it was strong and didn’t taste bad, like aged whiskey from a foreign land. What did it mean to find myself falling into a strange place? Maybe it was like being born? Isn’t being born like falling into a strange place, you’ve never been before? Living life is like falling into an abyss and you can’t see where you’re going. Could smashing on the rocks at the bottom be like getting to the end of life and dying? If not death, what is at the bottom? When we are born, we are shitting in our pants, and throughout life we shit in our pants a time or two. Sometimes strange spirits plead to us for things we cannot give. Other times we run around with our asses hanging out, but here and there we find solace. A gentle hand sweeps us up and carries us to a safe place. There we clean ourselves and find a fire’s warmth. Then we must go on. We jump back into the abyss. Once more the darkness swallows us up and we are falling. Adam and the barkeep claim there is a way out. It is a one-way path to the exit, but no one has ever chosen to exit. It is something more than suicide.

And so I had my last drink, gave back the apron and put my dried shorts back on, took a deep breath, walked out the swiveling doors, and jumped back in.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 8 - Journey to Hades

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:13:00 -0500

I left footprints in the sand, and the wind blew them away as I drank the Chardonnay, and sang songs, danced with the girl in the sundress. I have to admit it was a good time, at least for the time being. Sometimes throwing it all away is worth it. There can be joy in being as a comet, speeding through the universe at the cost of burning your body away. If you didn’t spend your flesh on going somewhere, you’d never go anywhere. You’d keep your body – be nothing but a fat Buddha sitting in the same place, contemplating nothingness, or nirvana, though your belly’s substance was profound and gravid. Nevertheless, when the comet burns out and reaches the end, it doesn’t always end well, though getting there was glorious.

As I lay there on top of the girl in the sand, my belly large with wine, my back streaked with sweat, and my loins spent, she turned back into the snake.

“Ouch, ouch!” hissed the snake. “Get off of me you oaf! You’re too heavy!”

I rolled off into the sand. I felt sick to my stomach. Had I committed an act of bestiality?

“You tricked me,” I whimpered.

“Oh, shut up you idiot,” you knew what you were doing.

“I screwed a snake!”

“Do I have to call you an idiot again? Look, you really did get with a girl, a real flesh and blood human girl.”

“But you are a snake!”

“You’ve been a snake with a lot of the women. So don’t cast the first stone. You weren’t a snake in body, but you were a snake in spirit.”

“Payback… …I suppose what goes around really comes around.”

“Yep. Eventually. And Johnny, if it is of any consolation, I am a girl snake.”

“Really?” I sighed with relief. My stomach started to feel a little better. Of course I couldn’t resist asking,

“Snake?”

“Yeah Johnny?

“Was it any good?”

“What? The sex?”

“Yeah, the sex.”

“Bad sex is still good sex, but you were a little rough. I could have used some foreplay.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time.”

With that, the snake slithered away. She just left me there, lying in the sand next to the ziggurat I’d abandoned. In the corner of my eye, the bonze goddess in gold adornment glinted in the brightening sunlight, which was getting hotter and hotter. I did not dare turn my face to her. Without looking, I knew she had once again covered her breasts and her smile had returned to stoicism. I feared she was disappointed in me for abandoning her eternity just to temporarily frolic with a snake. Perhaps she was causing the desert to suddenly become so hot. My flesh began to sizzle and bubble. It peeled off as the wind swept it away to reveal my bones. All I could do was scream and kick as my flesh was cooked and stripped, as I truly became like Adam. When the job was finished, my bleached bones lay in the sand, my lower jaw flapping, “Oh god, this is worse than a hangover. Woe is me! Shit…”

When you are a skeleton, you have no flesh. It is flesh that gives you a sense of time. The stomach becomes hungry for breakfast at morning, the eyes sleepy at night. Bones, they just lay there, never desiring sustenance. The skull’s sockets are oblivious to light or darkness when the eyes are missing. I don’t know how much time passed before the scorpion returned, gathered up my bones, and carried me back to Adam. I probably reviewed my life a million times, maybe a billion, and the odd thing I discovered is that no matter how many times I mulled and pondered it all, all of it remained shrouded in mystery. I am fairly certain that man’s primal questions will never be answered. Where did the gods come from, if there are any gods? What is my purpose? What, where, how, when? Why? Give up my friends and rejoice! I have been a pillar and a pile of bones, and thousands of lifetimes have I known, and I am no wiser than you are wise. Sometimes the wine and the girl will get you because we know only they give us temporary answers to all the mystery. The answers beg us to give it all away so our flesh dries up in the desert. It is swept away in the wind. We become nothing but bleached bone. Just as Adam.

My bones clattered into a pile on Adam’s crypt floor. My skull bounced a few times, jumped up over the edge of his sarcophagus, and landed face to face with his skull.

“Oh Johnny! You’re back!” chuckled Adam. “How nice of you to join me like this! This time we can have an intimate chat, skull to skull.”

“Hahahaha!” our lower jaws flapped together.

“Hahahahahaha!” we kept flapping, the dust swirling.

Adam looked at me with deep, black eyes and said, “Johnny, the scorpion is going to put you back together and restore your flesh. He will lead you to a cave that will take you into Hades.”

“Hades? It’s a real place?”

“Call it what you want, but it is where souls go for eternal torment.”

“Wait a minute, I thought everybody kept changing forms? The snake told me I was the last one that had stopped changing forms because I had been standing there in the desert, a pillar, for so long.”

“She was right. You are the last one that hasn’t changed forms that is still outside of Hades.”

“Oh shit! Are you telling me I have to go there now because I haven’t changed forms?”

“That’s right.”

“Can I ever leave?” This was becoming quite concerning. Had I been more than bone, I’m fairly certain I’d have felt fear in my heart and my stomach.

“No one has ever left Hades, because, as I said, souls go there for eternal torment. But, from what I hear, anyone can leave. All they have to do is give up their suffering and walk out of the place. But, no one wants to leave, or has ever wanted to leave, after getting there. It is a horrible place, with nothing good about it. Why souls stay is a mystery to me, so I don’t bother asking.”

“What kind of torment is in Hades?”

“There are 3 kinds of torment. It depends on whether your Vice is Idleness, Rigidity, or Greed.”

Another test? Maybe it wasn’t a test, but the result of my having failed all the tests. I’d learned not to ask questions, though my impulse was to ask more about Hades, how to get out, whether I really had to go, what the Vices were all about. I was just going to go along with it. I remembered Vatsulu’s words,

“Just keep swimming my brother. Go with the currents.”

“Bye Adam, I’ll telephone from Hell.”

“Hahahaha!” flapped Adam, the dust swirling.

One by one, the scorpion picked up my bones and put them in an old canvass sack. He tied it shut, and threw me over his shoulder.

Clank! Clank!

We swam up through the ocean and onto land. We traversed forests, mountain passes, rolling hills, grasslands, and tundra. When we arrived at a place of eternal winter, we stopped. The scorpion untied the sack, dumped my bones into the snow, and went to work arranging them in proper order. He stuck his tail in my eye socket and returned my flesh.

“Brrrr! It’s cold and I have no clothes!” I blurted as I hopped around in the snow.

The scorpion didn’t say a thing. With his pinchers he cut two holes in the canvass sack and threw it to me. At least I had shorts.

The scorpion pointed behind me, then turned and scurried away.

I looked behind me to discover a small opening in the earth. A cave.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 7 - Off the pedestal

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:50:00 -0500

I stood there a pillar.

The seasons changed and offered serendipity with every blink of my eyes. Close and open them to find the falling snow had turned to sunshine and blue skies. Wink again and I was amidst a hailstorm flashing lighting and screaming thunder, or there was darkness all around, but for the vast constellation glimmering above, which occasionally made a show of changing moons, fiery comets, and falling stars. Fall into sleep and arise to find the desert changed into grassy, rolling hills; wide rivers slowly flowing with fish springing out and back again. Nap an instant and wake surrounded by forest, or foothills rolling up into mountains. Each time the wind and rain withered it all away for something new, making way for the earth to give birth to other children. One day, or should I say one time? No. Not one day or one time, but something else. Nevertheless, the desert returned, and I was still standing there. A pillar.

In the distance I could see a black snake wiggling through the sand my way. It slithered up the steps and to the base of me, or should I say what used to be my feet? It raised its head, showed its fangs, and spoke,

“Hello Johnny.”

“Don’t tell me I’m not supposed to ask how you know my name. Besides, how can you recognize me because I’m no longer a man, but a pillar?”

“You aren’t much of a man after being a pillar for so many epochs, it is true, but I suppose it is a state of mind.”

“I thought it was a state of being?”

“Words, words, words…” hissed the snake. “Nevertheless, you’ve haven’t gone an entire round. Far from it, in fact.”

“Round?”

“Yes, during your stay here, all things that could be have become and have been every permutation of all possibilities, and now they are starting over again. In fact, since you’ve been here, several rounds have been made by most things, and at least a couple rounds have been made by all the others, that is, with one exception.”

“Don’t tell me. I’ve remained a pillar and haven’t changed at all, while everything else was making the rounds.”

“Vatsulu said you were sharp.”

“Vatsulu?”

“Yes. I had a chat with him before I ate him.”

“Ate him!”

“Don’t worry. I know he was dear to you, but he went in and came out, became something else, just as we all have before, and who knows when he will become a devouring snake and I will be the eaten mouse? After all, there is no escaping it. I suppose you can call it fate, or just the inevitable inescapability of the randomness and chaos that tears it all apart and puts it together again, just as it always has been.”

“If that’s the case, Vatsulu has eaten us many times before, and he’ll do it again.”

“That’s right, and we have done it to him and will do it to him again.”

“Then why don’t I remember any of this ever happening?”

“You will remember it eventually, and you have remembered it before. You just don’t have such memories as a pillar or as Johnny.”

“Wait a minute here. If it is all in flux, then how come my name isn’t in flux? That’s remained the same. I keep being called ‘Johnny’”

“That’s part of the problem, and that’s why I’m paying you a visit. As I said, you are the only one left who hasn’t gone an entire round, at least this time a-round.”

I’d always liked philosophy, and what the snake was saying made sense in a logical loop sort of way. But what if it was a trick? Snakes. They were always tricksters in all the stories I’d read. Yes. That was it. It was a trick! I was being tested by Adam, or maybe by Vatsulu? Maybe the snake was one of them!

“I’m not buying it. I’m staying put.”

“Ok… ok…” hissed the snake. “Have it your way. Just don’t come crying to me when you suffer the consequences. I don’t want to have to tell you, ‘I told you so.’”

“Go bug another pillar.”

“I can’t. You are the only one left. As I said, all the others have had their turns as pillars and are waiting for you to join them in becoming something else.”

“Sorry lizard. I’m staying put.”

The snake hissed, turned around, and slithered away.

Night fell and morning came again, as did the snake, slithering up to my feet, raising its head, and showing its fangs.

“Hey Johnny,” hissed the snake, “I hear you were once a ladies’ man. Back when you were a man.”

The beast did seem a bit lonely. I guess I was too. I hadn’t had a conversation in quite a while. Besides, I was a pillar and it was a snake.

“No. Not really. They came and went.”

“Yeah? What kind of girls did you like?”

“I liked all kinds, as long as they weren’t too fat or diseased. The crazy ones always had a special allure.”

“What about your dream girl?”

“Hell, I don’t know. They all caused a lot of trouble. I’m not sure I have one anymore.”

“Ok. Tell me how the ideal woman looks. Use your imagination! Give me a fantasy! Whatever your fancy is right now. What would she be like?”

“It depends on my mood, so right now, it would be one that’s athletic, with dark hair, smiles a lot…” I began to ponder, hmm. I hadn’t conjured up such a fantasy girl in a while. “Put her in a short sundress…” Yeah, that’s it. Now it was getting better. And with women there had to be wine. “A bottle of chardonnay is in one of her hands and…” I closed my eyes to focus on the details. “…and, I got it!” I blurted as my eyelids popped opened.

The snake was gone, but the girl I’d just described was standing there, in the flesh, and in a short sundress. A bottle of chardonnay was in one hand, and the hem of her dress was in the other.

“Hey cutie pie,” she smiled as she lifted the hem to reveal missing panties. “I bet you’re thirsty!”

Yeah, you know what happens next. I fell for the old snake in the garden trick. Funny how in life we have these great epiphanies and feel we are transforming into something else – something truly meaningful or profound. Along comes a girl in a short summer dress, lifts it up and offers some wine. You can see the shallow trick from miles away, but somehow it’s so easy to give it all up and take the bait. Such an easy trick even a dumb snake can pull off, and which snake is it, really? Eternity is so easily and ignorantly given away for a temporary drunken countenance, or the murderous explosion that comes from having a girl’s soft heels biting into your clinching buttocks. When we sober up, we are empty of drink and everything else, having given it all away – all but the headache. It is so easy to live and die. It is so easy to be as Adam and not something else.

My stone body lost its height and turned to flesh. With bare feet I stepped down from my indelible pedestal and into hot sand to make temporary footprints.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - 6 - Scorpion on my back

Sat, 31 May 2008 14:13:00 -0500

“Why would I crush your bones to dust?” I blurted. It seemed to me Adam should be sending me on a quest to get his flesh back, not turn what little was left of him into powder.

“Johnny, I thought you’d learned to seek questions, not answers? Don’t disappoint me after you’ve come so far.”

Yeah. He was right. Don’t ask “Why?” Just go with it. Swim with the currents, as Vatsulu had taught me. As the red-haired mermaid had shown me, sometimes you just have to grab tight and hold on. Don’t worry about seeing or anticipating what’s ahead. That way you have less fear of what’s to come and can go deeper. You can go farther into the mystery.

“I don’t have anything else to ask,” I resolved, sat down before Adam, and waited for his question.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Embrace every burden,” the bony, lower jaw flapped. “Every step is precious because you only have so many to take,” arose the dust. “Of every 10,000 steps you take, only 1 one of them will put your foot on something, and you’ll only be able to stand there for a moment before having to continue along. In that 10,000^th place, you’ll leave a footprint, but the wind and rain will come quickly to wash out and blow away the proof you were once there. When you take that 10,000^th step, leave more than a footprint. Cut off and abandon a part of your body at that place. Make it a stone pillar impervious to wind and rain, unlike a mere impression in loose sand.”

Light filled the room, as did intense heat. I shaded my eyes, stood, and turned around. A portal had appeared behind me, and through it I could see a vast desert of nothing but sand dunes and scorching sun all the way to the horizon.

“Get going before it closes up!” insisted Adam.

I clinched my teeth, bore down on the fear in my gut, and took a daring leap.

The portal disappeared behind me as I landed ankle deep in the sand. My soles began to burn, as did the skin on my shoulders. My mouth dried up and my eyes started stinging. I’d been in desert heat before, but this place was much hotter. So this is Hell? Every breath scorched my lungs with fire and grit. I became dizzy and began stumbling around. Sand-filled wind came and lashed my body about. It blinded and choked me until I was helpless, until all my strength was sapped. I lost balance, collapsed, and fell face first into a dune. As I lay there losing consciousness, I felt the flesh on my back drying up, cracking, peeling away, joining the wind and grit. It hurt like hell, and maybe it was Hell, but what could I do? It was either a test or it was the end.

I thought for sure it was the end when I felt something stab deep into my neck. I expected blood to spill out, but instead, I felt something cool and soothing rushing into my body and veins. The heat and the elements became less intense, and the wind quit stripping the flesh from my bones. It seemed I was being re-inflated with flesh after nearly becoming mummified, or turned into a skeleton like Adam. Whatever was being pumped into me through my neck flowed through and filled all my sinews and bones, restored not only my lifeblood, but also my muscles and skin. Suddenly, my strength and consciousness returned, allowing me to climb to my feet with ease. I realized I had been changed. Did I feel stronger? Smarter? The bright light no longer blinded me, and the wind and the heat were now bearable. However, one thing was of major concern. Something heavy was clinging to my shoulder. Something had stabbed into my neck and was still there, on me. I turned my head and found myself face-to-face with a black scorpion the size of a large cat. Its polished eyes glinted, as did its carapace, and its sharp feet were burrowed into my shoulder, neck, and arm. The tail disappeared behind me and I surmised it was its sharp end that was plunged into my neck.

Somehow, I felt no fear. I knew I had to walk. I had to carry the scorpion with me. Don’t ask why. Go with the currents. Start taking steps. Count your steps. That’s it! So I began to count.

1, 2, 3…

50…

200…

Here and there, my skepticism stopped me and I just stood there. Whenever I did so, I’d turn and look at the scorpion and it became heavier. The glinting, black eyes began to frighten me, and my flesh once again began burning in the wind, sun, and sand. My legs became weaker. Only by continuing to walk, counting my steps, did I lose all fear. Only then did the scorpion’s nectar flow freely through my veins, heal me, and protect my body from the elements.

I kept counting, 330, 331, 332…

And counting, 2000, 3000, 4000…

As I continued counting, I pondered the absurd rhythm of walking. I was going somewhere, and didn’t know where. It didn’t matter. I was moving, going, being. There was something to the simple rhythm of walking, traversing the desert, the action of it, my bearing of the scorpion. There was meaning in it all, but I could only feel it, not describe it, have faith in it, and not question it. To ask of it, “Why?” was to find its visceral essence dissipating. Only my savage intuition could be its successful captor, and all other devices of mind and logic set it free by attempting to bind it.

9998, 9999, 10,000…

10,001, 10,002, 10,003…

It wasn’t how many steps I took that mattered, I realized. So I kept walking. The sun sat and rose, and the sun sat and rose again. And I continued walking. Perhaps the days and nights came 10,000 times, but it didn’t matter. The scorpion became a part of me, much like an arm or a leg. The trance and rhythm of the walking was all I needed, and with it I was complete. Infinite time could pass without worry. Only when I came to know these truths as if they were a part of my being, the ziggurat appeared on the horizon. It was a great monument of stone pillars and stairs reaching upward into the heavens. At the top of it stood a 100’+ tall bronze deity adorned with gold. It had a scorpion tail and several arms, 2 across its chest, the other 6 akimbo. Its androgynous, smooth face shone kindly. Only its chin moved. It moved slowly downward, allowing its large, black, glinting eyes to watch me as I climbed the sandstone stairs.

I prostrated myself at the great god’s feet.

I did not pray, but listened. I knew not to ask a question, but to wait. The sun sat, the night passed, and the sun rose at dawn,

“Become a pillar,” whispered a soft, feminine voice from above me.

I stood, bowed before the great, bronze god, and looked up at Her. She slowly opened her embracing arms and hands to reveal Her breasts. She smiled down upon me. I bowed again, turned away, and descended the stairs of Her platform.

I searched the ziggurat until finding a missing column. I stepped into that 10,000^th place, folded my arms, looked out across the desert, and smiled.

My flesh grew tall and turned to stone.

I became a pillar.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - Chapter 5 - All that remains of me

Sat, 24 May 2008 14:45:00 -0500

And there I was, sitting in a crypt on a stone floor, staring into an ancient sarcophagus at the remains of a crumbling skeleton. I was beneath an ocean somewhere far away. Perhaps it was another dimension, a state of death, or my mind trying to find its way out of a coma? I had no clothes. The few friends I’d made along the way had abandoned me, or were nowhere to be found. Vatsulu and the red-haired mermaid were gone. Home? Would I ever find my way back? Wine? Would I ever have another drink? Everything, even my memories, suddenly seemed so distant. Perhaps I’d traveled so far into something else I was no longer myself?

I pondered.

In a lot of ways, we aren’t ever the same person from one day to the next, one second to the next. I’d once been a churchgoing fellow, and had really believed. Now I wasn’t religious and questioned the gods. I’d once fallen in love with a girl and married her. We were “soul mates,” we used to swear. Now she was in another man’s arms. I’d lived in the snow, the desert, the mountains, and near an ocean. I’d had a lot of friends, but had lost most of them along the way. Wasn’t it peculiar how I was always a different person in every place I’d been? In one place I’d made my living as a bouncer. I was a rough, tough guy. In another, I’d been a lawyer. I was a briefcase, a talking suit and tie. I’d been a student, a lover, a hater, a good employee, a bad employee, a loyal friend, a scoundrel, a thief, a savior, a good son, a bad son, and an aspiring, alcoholic writer, falling apart at the seams. Hell, what was I? All of it? None of it? All of it at once? Time, distance, sentiment, belief, hope, happiness, and sorrow, loss and gain – all of it can permanently change us into something entirely different than before, down to the quick, from one day to the next, one second to the next. Who I am? It is always something else other than what I’d been a million times before.

I realized.

I am all of what I have been and will ever be, all at the same time. Somehow, it was all tied together, into me – attached by something, be it spirit, memory, tendons, spider webs, or the branches of trees, the stars in the sky. My guts told me so, whispered it to me, and I knew it, however fleeting, intangible, or ineffable. Vatsulu was starting to make sense. When I look into a mirror, my face never looks exactly as I remembered it; yet, I still see it as my face. It always reflects back the same expression I offer. Should I offer a smiling face, I am given a smiling face back. Should I present a sad face, a sad face is returned. There is no more to it than that. Quit seeking answers and find the bigger questions. Recognize and move on. Don’t get tangled in the riddles, smoke, and fog.

I stood up and explored the crypt. There were two pillars, stairs leading up to the exit, flaming torches casting light and flickering shadows, stone walls, a stone floor, and a vaulted ceiling. In the middle of it all was a crumbling skeleton lying in an open sarcophagus.

I bent down and examined the skeleton. It was on its side, in a fetal position. The bones were brittle and porous, and had turned dark brown. The finger and toe bones had all but disintegrated, as had a few ribs and vertebrae, but the skull and its teeth were still intact. Slowly, I reached into the sarcophagus. As my fingertip touched a bony knuckle, the knuckle crumbled to dust.

“Ouch!” yelled the skull’s lower jaw.

“Shit!” I jumped back. “Shit!”

The jaw continued moving. My heart raced and my eyes gaped, as did my jaw.

“That’s right, I’m a talking skeleton, and you can’t believe it.” Dust swirled around him as he spoke. “I can’t believe it either. So, get over it. I used to be a man like you, and still am in small part. I’ve still got bones, even though they are crumbling. I’m just missing the flesh and blood.”

I just stood there, still speechless, heart racing, eyes gaping, as was my jaw.

“Flesh got your tongue?” chuckled the skeleton with its flapping lower jaw. “I understand. Anyway, I already know your name. It’s Johnny. Don’t ask how I know. I just do. You can call me Adam because I’m the oldest remains of any man that’s ever lived. And no, I’m not The Adam of the Bible either. I doubt anyone was. But who knows or cares about that? I just think I’ve earned the right to be called Adam because, as I said, I’m the oldest remains of any man. And for this same reason, I’m going to be your guide. Well, I won’t actually guide you because I can’t stand and walk. All I can do is talk you through the steps you’ll be taking. As a matter of fact, talking will kill me a little faster than I’m already dying – decaying actually because I’m already dead – you’ve seen how easily I break into dust. Just flapping my jaw makes me crumble faster. So, remember all my words and don’t waste them. Ask me to repeat something, and it might take away something else I could have told you.”

I finally mustered the courage to speak. “Wh…why…why have you remained… er… um, alive – I mean around – for so long?”

“Now that is the question, isn’t it? I must have really been something when I had flesh on my weary bones, huh?” flapped the jaw and swirled the dust. “In fact, I am here now exactly because I was nothing, rather than something, when I had flesh on my bones. What you see is all that remains of me because when the end of my fleshy days came, when I died, as you call it, all I had to leave behind was my body. It was all I had to offer. The flesh rotted away, and here I am, nothing but bones. Still taking up space. This is it. That is it. These damn bones are all I ever had to say or do, or be. A carcass. I left nothing behind but a carcass. So, I’m being eternally punished for being so greedy.”

“Who is punishing you?”

“Me, can’t you see? I’m the punisher and the punished.”

“Then why are you my guide?”

“I know better than anyone how to avoid my mistake. You are my student now. You will be my atonement. In the end, you will crush my bones to dust.”

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - Chapter 4 - Bones to ashes and dust

Wed, 21 May 2008 06:57:00 -0500

I swam and swam. I closed my eyes as I swam. The currents stripped me of my clothes and my shoes as I swam; freeing me of the last things left over from the only other world I’d ever known. I swam. Or maybe it wasn’t swimming but something else, such as escaping, no, maybe I was becoming? So with eyes closed, I kept going, paddling and kicking, doing the Breaststroke, remembering Vatsulu’s words:

“Just keep swimming my brother. Go with the currents.”

And so I went with the currents. I swam with the flow of warm water, and many colors flashed through my eyelids. I followed along cooler flows filled with music and sound, and most of it I didn’t recognize, though it ranged from signing birds, to African drums, to Brahms, and Chopin. I swam.

I opened my eyes, and discovered I was no longer in a canal, but deep in the middle of an ocean with no air or land in sight, but I wasn’t alone. There were fish, whales, dolphins, and sharks. The dolphins spun circles around the whales. The sharks chased and swallowed the fish, chewed them up, and spat them out whole again, but in new shapes and colors. Once a stout, silver fish, it might come back out a long, red one, or as a baby octopus.

And then from nowhere, a giant mouth opened up and swallowed me whole. “Oh shit. Johnny and the whale…” All I could do was roll up into a ball and brace myself for the teeth. I tumbled in circles in the dark and I bounced about the mouth and gullet, before the water rushed out and a light came on. I blinked a few times and shook the water from my ears and face, finding myself sitting on a tongue floor in a little cave with a lit lamp, paintings hanging from the fleshy walls, a small bed with a canopy, a desk, and a rocking chair. What appeared to be a buxom young woman without any clothes was sitting in the chair, slowly rocking. A pencil and a little book were in her hands. She stopped writing and looked over the top of her little round glasses at me.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“I was swallowed by a whale.”

“I see,” said she. Then she put down her things, hopped out of the chair, onto the bed, and opened her legs wide, showing me the white soles of her dainty feet. With her head lifted, she looked down at me over her porcelain belly, and through a great, bushy mound of bright, red hair. “That must mean it is that time of year for me. We have been brought together to mate,” she declared with a crooked smile and a wink.

Though I felt the blood rushing in, all I could do was stand up, erect, but I couldn’t step forward. She was a poised and ready young tart, enough to make even an old man desirous, but my feet were hesitant.

“Come on!” she gestured. “Just put that thing in here,” she pointed. “It won’t hurt, not at first. When you feel the sting, you’ll already be finished.”

“I can’t.”

“It sure looks like you can! All you have to do is take a few steps! I’ll put it in for you.”

“I can’t.”

“Good!” she squealed and clapped, closed her legs, hopped to her feet, and approached me with her hand out. We shared a formal handshake.

“You passed the test.”

“What test?”

“You are a man with more to pass on than bones to ashes and dust.”

Another riddle. Shit. I began to regret not taking the bait.

“Let’s go!”

The water started rushing in. Her legs turned into a fish tail and she took me by the hands. “You won’t be able to breathe under water any more, so you need to take a deep breath and hold on to me. Just keep your arms around me – don’t let go, and I’ll do the same to you. Put your mouth on my nipple and keep it there,” she pointed. “You’ll have to breathe through me,” she giggled. And so we were enveloped, fell into one-another’s arms, and I took my breath from her body as she took me off my feet and began moving her hips. We swam. We swam out of the behemoth’s mouth, and into the depths of the ocean. I couldn’t see where we were going because her breasts were in the way, but I could tell we were swimming downward.

“I have a friend you need to meet,” she gurgled into my ear. “It will be a long swim because the bottom is a long way down. You can go to sleep if you want. I won’t let go of you.”

And so as she swam, I fell asleep, and it was a pleasant slumber. I dreamt that she reached down and stroked me until I was spilling out, leaving a milky trail in our wake. She laid eggs as we swam. Little translucent eggs. They popped right out of her as she wiggled her hips and tail.

I dreamt of all the stories I would write. It was amazing how many ideas were born from that slumber, as I took air from her, slept in her embrace with her body rhythmically and softly flowing against me.

And I never knew her name.

When I woke up, she was gone. I was sitting before a stone sarcophagus in an ancient stone room with only one way in or out: a tall portal between two pillars with stairs leading up to it.

In the sarcophagus, in the middle of the floor, was a skeleton lying on its side.

Nothing but bones and dust.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - Chaper 3 - Sank like a rock

Sat, 17 May 2008 15:45:00 -0500

Help didn’t come when I tumbled off the bridge and into the water. Vatsulu certainly wasn’t any help. He just swam around me in fast circles, blowing little bubbles of laughter while I kicked and splashed for air. Each time I yelled “Help!” I choked down more water and sank deeper. I was drowning, suffocating, losing consciousness. I’d always been a good swimmer, but that night I sure wasn’t. Maybe it was the booze, or the hash, or the shrooms, or a combination thereof. After all, it had been hard enough to stagger about on my feet in such a state of intoxication, so maybe that explains why, despite my struggle, I sank straight down and hit the bottom.

This is the end of me, I thought. At least I’d lasted as long as I had, I reminisced. I suppose it was a good life, I tried to convince myself. One last bubble escaped my nose and floated up.

Then all went cold in my body and blackness took my eyes.

It was forever before my ears rang me out of death, or my sleep, whichever state I may have been in.

“Wake up!”

“Eh?”

“Wake up, Johnny, wake up!” Insisted Vatsulu.

I opened my eyes. Where was I? It looked like I was sitting right where I’d apparently drowned, at the bottom of the canal, but now the canal was empty. I could breathe! When I looked up, I saw a ceiling of water rushing overhead. Vatsulu was running circles around me. He was still orange and had a human face, but now he possessed a dog’s body.

“What the hell?”

“Johnny, you’re a fish now. Your arms are fins and your legs are a tail. You’re breathing water rather than air now because your lungs have become gills.”

I looked down over my body. I still had my hands and feet. It didn’t make sense.

I shot Vatsulu an accusing glare.

Catching my beam, he stopped running and giggling and sat down in front of me. He perked his ears and tilted his head. I replied with rolling eyes and a shrug.

“I know you still think of yourself as human, so that’s the way you still see yourself. To me you look like a large salmon.”

“To me, you look like a dog.”

“Oh yeah, what kind of dog?” he smiled and perked his ears.

“A Boston Terrier.”

Vatsulu’s smile changed to a frown and his ears dropped. “Thanks a lot. I always thought of myself as a Rottweiler.”

“At least you’re still man’s best friend, but that doesn’t help me much, now that I’m a fish. Does it?”

Vatsulu’s good cheer returned. He barked a few times in laughter, jumped up and ran a few circles around me, and did a back flip into my lap.

“Stop licking my face!” I screamed as I fought to keep from getting the pink, sloppy tongue. “Settle down boy!”

“Just trying to have some fun,” chuckled Vatsulu.

I wiped the spit and snot off my face with the back of my hand and gave him another serious look. “What’s really going on here?” I insisted. “It looks like water has turned into air and air has turned into water, but it only looks that way because now I’m a fish. However, I still look like a man to my own eyes, though it’s only because I still think I’m a man. And you, though you are a fish, you look like a dog.”

“Well, not exactly,” sighed Vatsulu. “I was trying to make this seemingly odd situation you’ve splashed into easier to understand. But, you aren’t ever going to understand all this in this life, so you have to simply accept things as they are, despite their apparent chaos and randomness. You can’t ask, where am I? What is this? Who are you? Who are they? How? Why? Or anything of the sort. There are no answers you will ever be able to comprehend in your current state. Instead, focus on what you see and hear, smell and touch, the things you taste. Seek all the questions without wanting to know the answers. Find your current. I know you still have more questions to ask. Just trust me when I tell you to quit asking for answers and to start seeking more questions. Nevertheless, let me try to answer a little bit better what you have been asking: Johnny, you are a man, a fish, and a dog, not to mention many other things. All that exists is Now. There is no Time. There is no Future or Past. Only Now. And Now you are All Things. You are just focused on being a Man trapped in Time. Like I told you, I have been a million Things, but by saying have been, I was simply trying to communicate with you in terms of your faulty, Time-centric language. The reality is that I am both a fish and a dog right Now.”

I scratched my head.

“At the cost of using faulty Time-centric words, do you realize that you are never the same from one moment to the next?”

“Maybe. Is it kind of like how we are made of spinning atoms that are never positioned in the same way, or like how the cells in our bodies are either dying or dividing, thus we are never the same?”

“Close. And this might be as close as you’ll ever be to understanding the nature of your true, real substance, which is truly and really No Thing at all. Johnny, we are No Thing. But we are All Things. We are beings made of No Thing that swim through Every Thing, in all the shapes and forms Every Thing may infinitely take. This all happens Now, all at the same Time, though Time is a fiction, so, we are Every Thing and No Thing, all at the same Time.”

“Damn Vatsulu, I think I want to believe all of this shit. If I really believed it all, there would be nothing to lose.”

“Sorry Johnny, there is No Thing to lose, and Every Thing to gain, whether you like it or not. Whether you like it or not, we are the same dog.”

“What would I see if I swam up and poked my head into the air?”

“Most likely, Every One would look like a fish to you, but as I’ve been saying, Every One is Every Thing, right Now.”

“Shit...”

“Welcome to the Otherworld.”

“You mean Every World and No World?”

Vatsulu’s eyes brightened. “Johnny, you’re quite the quick study.”

“Thanks…”

“Let’s quit piddle-farting and get started. Time, as you say it, is wasting. We have a long journey ahead, so just follow me. We’ll swim with the current. That’s how we’ll find our way from one place to the next until getting to the End, though there really is no End.”

“Where are we going?”

“No Where in particular. We don’t have to be Any Where. Let’s go!”

Vatsulu took off running along the bottom of the canal and I followed. After a few steps I lifted off my feet and began swimming through the air, doing the Breaststroke. Vatsulu turned back into a fish, and the air turned into water once more.

“Johnny?” Vatsulu yelled back at me with bubbles.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got to go now. You’ll never see Me again, but I will always be Every One you meet.”

“What!”

“Just keep swimming my brother. Go with the currents.”

And so Vatsulu vanished.

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - Chapter 2 - The fish

Sat, 03 May 2008 16:49:00 -0500

Before I tell you how I tumbled off the bridge, I will tell you how I ended up on the bridge in the first place. It all began with debauchery, the kind involving the consumption of Absinthe and shrooms while vacationing in Amsterdam. Why I was vacationing in this particular city has already been partially answered: Absinthe and shrooms. Granted I'm probably too old to be partaking of such things, at least according to prudent minds, but I'm still searching the depths of my soul, or at least I was. Some may say this is because I was lost, dissatisfied, depressed, enduring a mid-life crisis, or otherwise trying to compensate for personal failings. It doesn't matter now anyway, even if it did matter then, but I won't reveal why or how this is the case just yet. We'll get to that part by the end of this tale. For now, there is no reason to be concerned with the fact you may never know me but through these words, whether they reach your eyes from your computer screen, a book, or a pamphlet. Enjoy the story, for it is one of folly and adventure, but most importantly it is a form of personal instruction. Nevertheless, there I was in Amsterdam, searching, playing hide and go seek with things that would certainly alter my mind and body, but the hope was that I would find enlightenment as well.

That day I had an omelet and a triple espresso for breakfast, and then toured the city on foot. I saw the Anne Frank House, visited Vincent van Gogh paintings in the art museums, and strolled the Red Light District for the purpose of peeking in the windows at the girls for sale. On numerous occasions in-between, I found myself sitting on barstools, doing shot after shot of Absinthe. By suppertime I was drunk, tripping and stumbling over cracks in the cobblestone streets and apologizing each time I lost my balance and tripped into tourists. I think the hashish lollypops may have caused some of the trouble, and may have been a contributing factor to my vomiting into a public trashcan to relive my upset stomach. Funny how even in Amsterdam, a city tolerant of drug experimentation and hallucinogenic alcohol, sex shows, and hookers, you still receive a few sneers and rude comments from passers by when you are heaving sickness into a public trashcan. And the worst of it wasn't the bad publicity. It was that even after I had partaken of enough drink and candy to puke, I still wasn't hallucinating. Instead, I was only half awake, sitting on a bench, barely able to stand and walk, and my mouth tasted like puke. But, as I was sitting there pondering whether to give up or keep going, whether I would be coherent enough to find the train back to my hotel, let alone the train station, I realized I was sitting across from a small pizza parlor. By cupping one hand over an eye to offset the double vision, I was able to read the sidewalk menu board. The special of the day was:

"Cheese Pizza with Shrooms = $10.5 E."

I think it was frozen pizza and the place didn't serve any booze other than wine and beer, but the meal wasn't too bad. The tomato sauce was sweet and the little white, diced mushrooms abundantly sprinkled on top were raw and strangely bitter. I ate the entire pie. Washed it down with a carafe of house wine. Paid the bill, and got out of there. Disappointed I was still only feeling drunk after such a promising meal, I decided to find my way back to the hotel and get some sleep. It wasn't an easy task. With every step I had to fight for my balance, and a few times I tripped over a cobblestone crack and fell down. My skinned knees bled through my jeans after a couple falls, but I didn't hit my head or break any bones. On my way, I crossed over many bridges. Amsterdam is a city with many canals, and bridges.

I kept hearing my name called out each time I went over one of the numerous bridges.

"Johnny! Johnny!"

Was I imagining things? Maybe the shrooms were beginning to work.

"Johnny! Johhny!" said a high-pitched voice as I crossed yet another bridge. It was coming from below.

"Johnny! Johnny! Look down. I'm down here! In the water."

I stumbled over to the stone edge and looked down. An orange fish with a human face was looking up at me. It was about the size of a cat.

"What the..." I spoke aloud.

"What the..." replied the fish. "What is a fish? I am a talking fish. You may have never met a talking fish, but you have never had pizza with magic mushrooms before, have you?"

"Well, no. You have a point there. I'm Johnny, by the way."

"I know your name, you idiot. How else was I calling you by it? Think before you speak, why don't you?"

I was enjoying myself. The shrooms were working! This is going to become a great story. Just go with the flow, talk to the fish. See what happens next. Of course, I was imagining things. I knew that much. I was having a vivid dream while still awake. A blessing brought on by medicinal fungus. A good pizza.

"My name is Vatsulu," declared the fish as it rose up out of the water on its fluttering tail and proudly flapped its fins. "I was once a human, like you, and I've been a number of other things. I've been a flower, a bear, an insect, a dog, and a cat, not to mention a number of other things, perhaps a thousand or a million. I am to be your animal guide."

"Who told you to guide me?"

"No one. We simply crossed paths when you were in tune to the Otherworld. In fact, we spoke yesterday. That's when we had our formal introduction."

"I didn't talk to you yesterday. I would have remembered that."

"We did to talk. Or at least I spoke to your True Self. He was running about a day ahead of you, at this very bridge. I don't expect you to understand because you think in terms of Time, as if things really happen in a particular order, and things don't really happen in a particular order. You'll never fully grasp what I'm saying in this life, but to make a long story short, as a flesh and blood being, you live in a realm with only one dimension. All you've ever known is a flat world when the world is round and full of many curves."

"Vatsulu, if I've ever seen a curve, I think I'm seeing one now."

"Quite the contrary my friend. You are not seeing a curve. You can't see such a thing with your eyeballs. You are feeling the curve."

"But I am seeing a talking fish."

"No, you really aren't seeing me. You aren't hearing me either."

"So I am imagining things?"

"Yes and no. No, because this is more to it than imagining, as you typically define it. Yes, because you are imagining something real. Usually your brain imagines things that don't really exist, but when you are really tuned in, as you are now, you can imagine real things. That's the only way to do it because your senses are too dull to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell the Otherworld. Only because you are filled with magic are you able to sense the higher reality, its chaos, splendor, randomness, and answerless puzzles and conundrums. Still, you are like a blind man feeling your way through a place brightly painted in rainbow colors."

"Vatsulu?"

"Yes?"

"You are full of a beautiful abundance of shit, and I like it."

"Are you ready to join me on an adventure you'll never forget?" Winked Vatsulu as he spun about on his tail, flapping his fins.

"How do I join you? You're a fish. Unless you can sprout legs and come out of the water."

"Quite the contrary my friend. You are going to sprout fins, a tail, and gills so you can join me in the water. After all, there is a lot more water than land, and in water you can swim in any direction. Up, down, upside down, and sideways. You can ride the currents wherever they go. On land you can only go one way, and that is straight. You are also too heavy and wingless to follow the wind. Just jump in! Time is being wasted, to put it metaphorically, because after all, there is no such thing."

This was the part of the shroom trip I'd been warned about. The urge to jump. Just the day before, while hanging out in a coffeehouse smoking a bowl, I'd heard a story about a Japanese kid on shrooms. He'd stripped naked and climbed out onto the railing of his 15th floor balcony, held his arms out like wings, and jumped. He thought he could fly. Perhaps he'd met Vatsulu in bird form. Needless to say, the kid dropped like a rock and bounced down 15 flights of fire escape. Apparently he survived, but at the cost of broken bones and splattered organs. I may have been drunk, stoned, and delirious, but I wasn't so far gone that jumping into the water to swim like a fish seemed a good idea.

"Sorry Vatsulu, I'm going home and going to bed," I declared over the railing.

"You don't have a choice," winked Vatsulu, and with that wink there was a flash of light.

"Later tuna man," I insisted. Then I took a step back onto something slippery and squishy. I barely had time to catch a glimpse of a banana peel. Next thing I knew, I was tumbling head over heels and into the water.

"HELP!"

FLOWERS FOR ADAM - Chapter 1 - Tumble off the bridge and into the water

Sat, 03 May 2008 13:14:00 -0500

Nothing happens for a reason or according to anyone’s plan, whether they are a man, beast, demon, or deity, plant, or stone, but everything is but a small step or a wiggle in a perfectly choreographed, absurdly chaotic dance with no origin or cause. There is no good or evil, or time, or permanent folly, but only laughter and tears, food and drink, and sex and bowel movements, the paintbrush and the pen, hope, and in no particular order, birth and death with countless slumbers and awakenings in between. We can’t ever grasp it, but sometimes we may catch the colors and sounds, or tastes or palpability of it, as it whisks through our hair and over our skin with its invisible currents, but only whenever we are looking the other way.

One day, I tumbled off a bridge and into the water.

Ordinary Grit Ch1

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:07:00 -0500

Ordinary Grit Ch1

I hope I have enough time to tell you my story, because it might be a day, or a week, or a year before the police knock on my door with questions, a warrant, or both. Maybe they’ll never come because there were no witnesses, or at least I’m not aware of any. I’ve covered my tracks well, but you never know what might lead from the crime scene to something else, to a chain of things, events, etc., and then finally to you. It can start with circumstantial evidence, which can be a fingerprint, the date stamp on an ATM slip, the video footage taken by an ATM, the video footage taken from a stoplight camera, a grocery receipt, a fingernail clipping, a hunch from a family member or friend. Anyone who’s ever dealt with the victim on a social or random basis can become a suspect. The list goes on and on. Because I used to be a criminal defense attorney, years back, I know how the Law operates. I know how to cover my tracks. The Man isn’t likely to find me, but I’m paranoid because what I’ve done is punishable by death. Miniscule chance of getting caught, but if I’m caught, I might be executed or locked up for life. I’ve gone over and over it all in my head, and there are only a few things which might tie me to the victim: the gun, the bullet, the traffic ticket, the argument I had with the cop when he wrote me the ticket, the fact I walked my dog past his house every day at 5:20am, the time I went to a holiday barbeque at his house July 4, and the fact the victim was my workout partner at the gym every Monday from 6:15am to 7:15am, until recently. Never did we threaten one another or have a heated argument. In fact, until the very end, a few weeks before he wrote me that speeding ticket, which was the original cause of his death by my hand, we’d always seen eye to eye on things, and laughed a lot together between workout sets. I wish he hadn’t started to change. Sam was and still is my friend. I only killed him out of necessity. I killed him for a greater purpose. I killed him out of hope for the human race, for our safety, for our freedom. And yes, I confess that part of it was my anger and the desire for revenge. You’ll have to hear my story before you understand what I’m saying, but you know how in the zombie movies, when someone is bitten by a zombie and is starting to turn into one of them? The eyes start turning red, the skin becomes sickly yellow, and the mouth begins to froth. The surviving party has no option but to kill their comrade. Otherwise he will become a dangerous, brain-eating monster. Everyone’s life and safety will be at risk. It’s a hard choice, but someone has to do it.

Charging the Turks

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 06:04:00 -0500

We are all down in the trenches, waiting for the drillmaster's whistle to blow.
In the trenches, we are typically safe, and it is dark and soothing.
Unless it is close to midday,
the only real problem is the bad smell, the buzzing flies, the decay, and the
anxiety of becoming one of the many bodies lying at our feet,
or rotting in the field out there.

When the whistle blows,
fix your bayonet.
The time will come when we are tested again and again.
Every day and every night the drillmaster's whistle might shriek.
We never know when.
Sweating and shaking with fear, holding only memories and no hope,
we are sent clambering up over the edge to make a wild charge together.
Brothers and sisters in arms,
into the face of machine gun fire, tripping into the razor wire.

It isn't really a test of bravery, will, or nerve, strength, wit, or speed.
It is a game of odds.
And the killing bullets aren't always bullets,
but craps rolls:

Cancer
Heart attacks
Old age
Dying in our sleep
Lawsuits
Tax assessments
Car crashes
Rape
Murder
Politics
Church
Servitude
Poverty
Abuse
The daily workday
A dead end job
Monotony
Not enough money
Lost hope
A lost dog
Love lost
Running out of gas
Forgetting our cigarettes
Not having money for beer

Onion

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:26:00 -0600

I opened the mailbox and a butterfly flew out.
It was bright yellow and fluttered away happily.

I sit there at night, on the sofa, in front of the TV.
Drinking wine, getting drunk.

Getting older.
Day after day.
What next?

So many memories stacking up.
I smile at them, as I relive them, but barely.
And at times I can’t remember the perfume’s smell anymore.
So many memories, faded.

And the future shortens.

The longer we live the more dull it all becomes,
Even those memories that have dulled which weren’t dull at all
When we were there.

I have a dog, job, house and wife.

I have a car.

And the money isn’t bad.

A vacation here and there.

Grey hairs starting to pop out.

Getting older.
Day after day.
What next?

I sit there at night, on the sofa, in front of the TV.
Drinking wine, getting drunk.

I opened the mailbox and a butterfly flew out.
It was bright yellow and fluttered away happily.

And that was enough to make today worth it.

I have and have had all I ever needed.