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.