The Blind

It felt like the weight of the entire roof rested upon her feet as she stood at her opened door looking outward toward the great black unknown that was her large vacant home. She wondered what terrible creature could have made those noises that forced her blood to rush like she never knew it could. The police had already been called but what was downstairs wasn't going to wait for them like she would.

With her eyes pried open and hands clamped around the grip of the revolver underneath her bed she made the first step out of the sanctuary of her room and into the silent, mysterious jungle that was her hallway. She stood frozen for a minute staring at her home in the black. She felt like she was intruding into someone else's home. The darkness made it familiar and distant at the same time. She felt like she was in a doll house and the owner of it was downstairs preparing for her, waiting for her.

The stairs looked more like the beginnings of a well when the lights were off. She was reluctant to jump down but she had to know what it was that was downstairs. She had to know what she didn't know. So down the well she went; brick by brick.

She trickled down the stairs like maple syrup down the side of a stack of pancakes. She looked behind her and was surprised by what little distance she had traveled from the time she started her decent. Looking back toward the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated. The grip of the gun had become damp and warm from her hands. As her eye lids began to feel heavy again she heard it. Snap! Her eyelids tore open as her muscles tightened in fear. She stood as still as a corpse to hear the noise that would reassure her fear.

She waited for a long while, racing from fear to fear. "I have to continue" she whispered. "I have to end this." She slowly lifted her foot to be as quiet as possible. As she was about to finish taking her next step she heard it again. Snap! Louder than ever. She fell onto her suspended feet as her muscles tensed. The ancient stairs creaked so loud they seemed to be tearing in half underneath her. Anxiety flooded the pit of her being as she pondered whether that thing below her had heard the demolition of the stairs. It was now or never she thought. Kill or be killed.

Fear turned into fury as she ran down the stairs to face what had been plaguing her all night. She hit the bottom and made a swift right with the revolver in her hand leading the way. The only thing she could hear were her feet slamming against the cold wood beneath her as she ran down the hallway. Flying over the last set of stairs she had arrived to the scene of the crime. Without looking she aimed her quivering gun. She tried to see what she was aiming at but all she could see was black except for two eyes.

She peered into them for a few seconds. They were the color of bullets and seemed to be filled with wisdom. Bang! Her eyes wider than ever she stood still, seduced to stone by Medusa's gaze. Her chest began to feel numb and she could feel a growing blood puddle warming her feet. She could hear the humming of a 2-way radio behind her as she continued to stare at the eyes.

As she was loosing blood she dropped her gun. It hit the floor and fired a round into nowhere. The flash from the gun fell upon the entire kitchen, making everything that was once dark bright for just a second. She let out a quick, pathetic sigh as she discovered what she had been so afraid of the entire time. A branch had come loose from a tree and the wind was causing it to smack up against her kitchen window; and those eyes, they were attached to a cat she had never seen before. When the gun went off it jumped down from its perch and ran off into the night; just as her vitality had moments earlier.

The Satellite

As I opened the door into the cold morning air I listened intently to the reason why my friend had dressed so nicely. When I see one of my peers dressed up I feel like something is going to go very wrong because I'm wearing a pair of unwashed jeans.

Apparently it was career day. A day where booth after booth take resume after resume. "Look fresh, they won't want to hire you if you look normal." I thought to myself.

To my dismay I had to walk past all of that to turn in some pointless homework I just copied onto paper. As I walked by, the sun put its hands over my eyes as if to keep me from seeing anyone who belonged there.

Every booth had the same kind of person sweating and standing behind them. Their ties performing tracheotomies as they stood there taking and giving papers with a toothy grin on their face, each one of them concerned with the simple default pleasures in life: money, children, status. I looked at the cobble stones as I walked to avoid seeing everyone around me succeeding. My brow sweating I finally arrived to the drop box.

I arrived the same time a quiet woman did. I took my time taking my homework out to see what slot she would slide her papers into. Coincidentally she held the very homework for the very class that I had walked across campus for. We left, I behind her, and walked through the career fair like small boats passing and ignoring enormous islands.

What she looked like as she walked through the breezes resembled an object being pushed through empty space, even gravity failed to control her. Her skirt floated around her waist like a halo, each blush of wind slightly lifting each bend and curl, eluding to the subtle curvature in her tanned legs. You could almost see the perpetual growth of her hair as it flew closely behind her face. She turned her head to make sure a bike wasn't about to ruin my moment with her and her hair swam to the front of her face forcing her to flutter her eyes. While time was still stopped she began walking again. Her sandals, the birds, the suited androids; they all remained silent as she moved.

I didn't want to believe that someday, a girl like that was going to be pinned down by a black pencil skirt and the endless ordeal of earning a paycheck. I didn't want to believe that this moment or this woman was going to deteriorate and crumble into a lifeless skeleton someday. I didn't want to believe. I never wanted to believe. This got me thinking about the damned career fair.

I thought "Was I to be doomed like those robots too? Put in a cotton leash and thrown into a work camp? Did everything have to crumble to the ugly, honest, dull core inside?" She veered onto her own path and just like that I was thrown back onto my terrible and real earth, once again searching through that giant box of gray for something bright and colorful.

The Blaze

I was awoken this morning by the pain of a bed spring reinforcing it's existence upon me. I've had a terrible dream but I can't quite remember it. Thank goodness. I remembered that today was Valentine's Day and that damned spring suddenly felt more gentle than it did inconsiderate and cruel.

I rose out of bed and felt the grogginess roll onto my body like the drool of a sleeping giant overhead. Thinking a shower would fix me, I stripped myself of my clothing and began the redundant task of washing myself. I turned up the heat of the water to make sure I could still feel. The steam was so thick I could hardly breath. I observed my legs as I sat in a fetal position, the water slamming my head like a jackhammer on a defenseless bed of concrete. I watched the hair on my legs jump from one position to the next like thousands of small railroad switches as the droplets of water from my nose and mouth fell onto them.

While getting dressed I had decided that I needed a new shirt. To be honest I don't think it was the shirt that mattered, but the need for human contact at a distance. So when I was done putting my clothes on, I headed out to my car so I could get myself that new shirt. The air in the car was as hot as that of the shower and not any easier to breath either.

As I walked into the store, a man dressed in tattoos greeted me with an indifferent "Hello." I walked passed him without saying anything and went about my search. Thumbing through walls of fabric is tiring when you have no one to tell you which ones make your tits look like tits. I had finally found the perfect one. It was plain blue, like the sky. I felt like it said something about me. Something along the lines of "Hi, I'm just Dan." That's all I wanted to be now: Just Dan. It sounded refreshing, like crumpling up an old sheet of paper and taking out a new one to write on. I tried it on to make sure it wasn't a trick and walked to the register to pay for it. 

I noticed it wasn't who I wished it would have been so I silently swiped my card, grabbed my bag, and began the journey back to my car. As I was walking back in solitude, I could hear the conversations the people around me. If you think about it, people talk about the dumbest of things. Oh your dog knows how to sit now? You're torn on what kind of pasta sauce to use on your spaghetti tonight? You're angry because your child is walking around with his hand half covered in ice cream? It's all so stupid. When you hear dumb shit running out of people's mouths, you feel like that's what is running through their head too. None of that mattered to anyone, not even them, but they didn't think that.

I was thinking at a thousand miles per second and my feet seemed to be going the same speed. Then out of no where I noticed the tapping of shoes on a pair of legs people would go to war for. It was like turning off a television after experiencing static for a while. Her skin looked like it had been polished by a blaze of fire when she was coming out of the womb. It was so dark and so smooth it could have been chrome. Her head was shaven down to a thin layer of hair that you could barely see. She didn't need any hair to show people she was a beautiful woman and she knew it. Words seemed to float out of her mouth like the thick smoke of a cigar, and she walked like everyone there that day were just guests at her annual ball. I could have never had her, no one could have, and it was best that way.

I had been pleasantly reminded of what lies outside of my cave. With every mountain lion or bear that wanted to kill me, there was the sweet sensation of the warmth from a sunset on my back. I realized that I couldn't stay in my cave forever, so a departure I will make.

The Score

"Jim? Jim Smith? Ralph? Ralph....Ralph...Nug-Yen? Beth?" I wanted him to just tell us all that we were going to be O.K.  I wanted to jump out of my cheap plastic seat and punch someone. Just nail them and watch the blood from the rest of my body rush to my fist. I was consumed with anticipation. This score meant the entire world to me in the endless five minutes I was waiting for it. Your entire village has ebola? You just found out your dad is a serial killer? You think you have it tough? You don't have to take this class.

"Daniel?" My ticking foot rested and flew off of my knee as I asked "Bothwell?" He nodded and I made my way toward the paper that was going to either ruin me or make me. Shit he folded it; I thought to myself. When someone folds you a piece of paper with an important grade on it, it usually means that important grade is a piece of shit. Pieces of shit are bad, I didn't want a piece of shit. I felt doomed.

I uncurled the paper and looked at the score. Fifty...fifty points out of a god awful one hundred. I turned and asked him what the mean was. Had I beaten the rest? Fifty one, a god awful fifty one. I was ecstatic. I felt like I had just survived one of Jigsaw's contraptions in those Saw movies. I was so glad I had cut my leg off in time for me to be saved. I was so glad that I had ripped that key out of that woman's living stomach before the timer went off. I was so glad I was walking out of that empty warehouse breathing. I might have been bloody and fucked up, but at least I wasn't one of those poor bastards laying in a pool of blood on the floor inside.

I felt like I was floating to my car. The mountains, the women, the sky; they all seemed to be saying "Climb me! Fuck me! Fly through me!" Who knew that mediocrity could feel so damn good. I had survived, and we forget that that means something. Today I was valiant, and maybe I will be in future days too, but I cant promise anything. So I come home and treat myself, for who knows what tomorrow will bring.

The Women

Buying something new has a renewing quality to it. These pants, this shirt, these shoes; they don't know me yet, and I don't know them. It's new, different. Fueled by the frustration of the daily droll, I searched for something new to buy.

I tore up the store looking for something that I told myself that I needed. After a while however, I came to the realization that I really didn't even need any of it, so I digressed and moped around my sister, waiting for her to choose what she wanted to trade some money for. "How about this shirt" she said "what do you think? Is it worth twenty four?" "This shirt, does it look like death?" "Yes. Maybe. No." Her choices were made and we walked toward the cashier.

I wasn't buying anything so I felt I was free to look at those last minute things at the cashier's counter. A box of mints, nail polish, themed bandages; nothing anyone really needed, but something people thought they needed. So I sat looking at these things and I heard a woman ask my sister if that was all she wanted to buy. I looked up to see a woman holding my sister's immaturely wrinkled money in her ring adorned fingers.

You could tell that it had been a long shift because her black hair was beginning to spill from her bun to the sides of her face, as if to wrap it in preparation for sleep. Her v-neck was very low cut and you could just see the faint raise in her chest where her breasts were and a mole that ornamented her collar bones. The shirt was tucked into these black skinny jeans that were wrapped around her fragile legs, revealing the very slight collection of fat that sat atop her abdomen. This made her seem real, attainable, but I knew deep down that she wasn't.

She didn't look at me. I didn't expect her to, or any other woman to for that matter. I thought that all I could hope for was this series of seconds for me to admire her. The trade was made, the bag was filled, and the all too familiar tapping of shoes began again as we left the store.

We went to some other stores afterwards in search of a birthday present for my sister's friend. The last store we went to was abrasive to say the least. Abrasive but warm. These people that shopped here and worked here, you could tell that they confided in each other, that they felt comfortable here. We walk over to a wall of shirts and look for the perfect one for the birthday girl. I looked around to see what other options there were and found something much more enticing. It was her again. She was visiting one of her friends that was working there. It seemed weird to see her outside of the act of taking money, bagging clothes, and giving money. There wasn't that wall of stupid mints and nail polish anymore. I was compelled to say something, to exist.

It would be nice for me to say that I mustered the courage to talk to her and get her name, maybe even more time, but that didn't happen. It never happens, and I can't blame anyone but myself for it.

"I think she'll like this one. I know she will. What do you think?" I say sure. My sister trades more torn money for clothes and we leave for good this time. As we walk back to my car, I beat myself up for not introducing myself, but then I think: what if I had? Would we have had that coffee, or giggled at that joke, or laid awake late into a night talking about nothing that mattered for the sake of hearing each others' voices? No. None of that would have happened, none of that ever happens. Those seconds that came from thin air were all that I could really hope for, and I cherished them as much as I could have. I'm content with that. I'm afraid of being content with that, but the time has past and that is all I can do. Until next time of course.

The Plane Crash

I can't be late today. Something horrible and important is happening in lecture today and it's essential that I stay to endure this horrible and important thing. Today is the day I get to spill my beans onto a sheet filled with unanswered questions to suggest to the people above me that they should reconsider denouncing me as someone that can contribute to society.

I walk in and the lecture hall is littered with people shuffling their papers like ants eating a strawberry ten times their size: frantic from realizing how large the strawberry actually is up close. They still have a few minutes to squeeze in as many bites as they can before it's taken away for their examination. The professor walks in and I can see everyone surrendering to him with their eyes. "Hello passengers, this is your pilot speaking, I'm sorry to have to inform you of this, but the plane is plummeting into the ocean and there is nothing I can do about it."

The professor's servants pass out the papers with looks of ease on their face. I always find myself so envious of their stressless position in this merciless knowledge chamber. There is a surge of shuffling and the test has begun. You can almost here the pencils dancing just above the paper as their wielders fearfully realize how much of the strawberry was left uneaten. There is more shuffling as the room searches for some light in the dark, unknown abyss that is the exam. The interior's of the students are beginning to crumble. Watching my peers take their tests around me is like watching kamikaze jets make their final plunge for the sake of their grades. Do everything you can. Write whatever you can think of.

"Pencils down" the professor says, as if to imply that that entire test was just a simulation. A simulation we didn't know we were partaking in. We all look up from the wreckage to see if the people we boarded the plane with are still alive. Oh yes there is the fat man with the hawaiian shirt, and the woman who complained about the food. They are all here.

The heat from the blazing fire of anxiety departs with my face. It's all out of our hands now. The plane has crashed and I'm not allowed to go back so might as well help this flaming debris off this poor man's leg. We all knew we couldn't go back in time, and we relish all the comfort that that offers. We turn our tests into the nonchalant servants and exit the simulation to go about our regular business with one less dilemma haranguing our minds. Until the next trip of course.

The Girl With Golden Hair

The blair of the alarm clock ripped me from my comfort. The warmth from the sheets seemed to be like the fluttering eyes of a waking lover from the night before. The quiet sound of people getting ready for their day hummed through the closed white door of my cold room. Body showered, teeth brushed, urine dispelled, canteen filled, food packaged, car started.

The drive to school was as it was everyday: music playing loudly as my scorning rage is muffled by the glass and plastic box. Today was different though. I thought about her again. I hadn't seen her since the end of the last term and my hopes of ever seeing her were fleeting with my will to do anything this damned school requires of me. The parking structure was wide open and there were plenty of parking spots. It's a horrible thing to admit but I relish these small pleasures. I guess this means my life isn't as exciting as it should be, but I can't complain. We all do too much of that anyway.

I was late again. My heels hurt from pounding the ground beneath them on my way to the lecture hall. I took my frustration out on the poor ground, but it's resilient so I felt little sympathy for it. Finally, the last steps laid cold and lonely in front of my sleepy eyes. I looked to the ground as if to ask my feet to walk faster. You can't blame me, they are quite the unforgiving fuckers. I looked up from unsuccessfully punishing my feet and see it. The gold waves nestled gently upon the light, weathered brown of her blazer. There she was, the girl I lost to the monster that is time and reluctance. My feet decided to disown their slow pace as my eyes become fixated on the subtle, sweet coincidence her presence is.

The demons of inhibitions were pulling at them vigorously. They had won and I had fallen back into the comfort of being alone. But I couldn't complain. We all do too much of that anyway. At the least, she was there, and for that I am grateful.

In seconds she was nothing but an exciting memory, the sip of warm coffee on a groggy monday morning. I opened the door to the lecture hall smiling grandly as my feet tapped quietly on the steps back toward normalcy.