Author: zornog

it’s entirely within you. it’s all within you. the light, the darkness, the gray in between, it’s encompasses your entire being. i see it in your eyes, i see the churning of colors, of lights, i expect your future and secret your dreams. when you sleep i watch your spirit rise from your corporeal body and drift lazily about the room, searching for something. what is it searching for? what is out there that is so important for it, that it removes itself from you, or you remove yourself from it, your body. what are you searching for?

when you wake your eyes go from cloudy to clear. you touch your fingertips to your temples, two spots revered for reasons unknown, acknowledged with their own name. you rub your fingers in a clockwise circle on your temples, you massage your temples, to re-create the connection between your soul and your body, like a spark starting an engine. and then you proceed about your day, never realizing that for hours in the dark you roamed around your house in an ethereal form, passing through walls, hovering over your children, your wife, this blue melancholic light slowly flowing from within you. what are you searching for? and what will you do once you find it?

i have said my peace already. it’s entirely within you, not the thing you want, but the tools to find it, but you will only find it when your spirit and your body work together, and understand each other. one morning you will wake up and not feel the need to massage your temples. that is the day you will find what you are looking for. be conscious of yourself, and you will sleep soundly.

i was third on scene, after roger and carl. it was … like walking into a horror movie. dispatch had told me that some teenagers had walked by 1305 chamber st thinking that the body parts strewn around were decorations left over from halloween. one of the kids dared another to steal the arm jutting out of the, eh, you know the end of the banister, there was a sort of decorative wooden spike-looking deal on the, ah, i don’t know what you call it. mcloughlin had skewered mr crawford’s left arm on the spike and one of the kids ran up and grabbed it, and it was, you know, just one of those moments where he took it and knew immediately that it was real. he dropped it and they all took off, they called the cops, and i just happened to be on i-5 north, just south of sutherlin. i raced over as fast as i could and as i did i radioed roger, and the way he described it just made my skin crawl.

once i got there roger and carl had managed to get police tape around the area and were keeping people at bay until the coroner and other investigators arrived. obviously everyone in springton knows everyone else, so there were several people who knew the deceased and were quite upset. carl spent most of the time talking to the gawkers and getting them to leave so we could start assessing the crime scene. it was … grisly. it was terrible. i’ve never seen anything like it before in my life, and i hope to never see anything like it again.

i’m keeping everything you sent me. i’m keeping it. the lawn darts, that old bowling trophy, and scissors, everything. if you want it back you’ll have to come down here and take it. the corduroy slacks, that giant poster for life cereal, everything. these are my keepsakes now, the remnants of four years lost to long distance. the telephone wires, the cable tv subscription, the four dollars worth of penny candy, all of it, i’m keeping every last bit, even the shoebox full of chipotle receipts. the plastic lemon meringue pie, the sack full of doll hair, the four lemmings floppy disks. i’m going to set them around my house like little museum pieces and invite the neighbors over for tours. i’ll say, “there’s the knitting needles, here’s the tapioca recipe, the dragon pendant, the marbles made out of marble, the paintball gun, the thirty bags of animal rennet.” i’ll charge them five dollars, i’ll make a fortune. because this is all i have left, all of this stuff–the carbon tubes, the graphene squares, the lasagna–this is all i have left of four years of what i considered a blissful state of affairs. i mean, even if you were halfway across the country.

maybe … maybe i enjoyed the fact that you were so far away. it meant i got gifts every week, the toaster oven, the duvet, the tiny oak caskets. i got those every week and didn’t have to worry about the toilet seat lit being up, or the dishes being dirty. the candelabra, the disco dancer costume. when you’d come by for a weekend or a week we would have a blast, we’d do so many things together, we’d have sex and be close, but then you’d leave and i would have the house to myself again and … i’d like it. maybe you liked it too. maybe you liked sending me the baklava, the dinosaur faberge eggs, the toy story figures, the pant suit, the variety of coasters from bars in the southern states. maybe that was your thing. but … i guess not, since you’re done. maybe you liked being away so much that you’ve decided to be away … forever. and that’s okay. i will be fine. i will surround myself with the porcelain teeth, the crocheted sandwiches, the little diorama of a slaughterhouse, the bean bag full of funyuns. i will remember the love letters and the tiny origami cranes, the beef bullion cubes, the nascar stickers. they will remind me that maybe love needs to be … closer. i will miss you, but … i won’t, too, because you were barely here. only these things were here.

on second thought, maybe i’ll just throw them away.

i took sally to the mall food court for the first time today. she loved that shit. remember when you were a kid and going to mcdonalds was a special treat? that’s what it was like. yeah, so she was loving it, first time, we took the escalator down because the food court’s in the basement of the mall. and there’s a bunch of fountains down there, i guess for atmosphere. looks like an underground cave surrounded by sbarro and various chinese food places. but it’s her first time and she’s having a blast. she loves the escalator, and when i told her to walk up the down one she was so excited and everyone who was coming down had this big grin on their face watching her. it was pretty cute, i must admit.

we get to the fountain, and there’s all these pools in the ground, you know, where the fountain water goes. it’s looking like a grotto, stay with me here, and there’s a barrier so people don’t randomly fall in. and since they’re fountains there’s a bunch of coins in there, and sally just shouts “I WANT THE MONEY” and nearly topples in the fountain. she’s like I WANT THE MONEY, CAN I HAVE THE MONEY and i say, “no, sally, that would be bad luck.” she asks why and i say, “because people made a wish and put those coins in there for good luck, and taking them out would be bad luck,” and i can feel, like, in the back of my head, this nagging voice shouting STOP, DON’T CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION

but she says, “what is luck?” do you know how to answer that? because i don’t. i was like, “well, luck is when something happens by chance, like if you were riding your bike and you fell, but you didn’t get hurt, people would say you were lucky, because there was a good chance that you would get hurt falling off your bike.” and she said “okay” and then started eating her pizza. i thought it was over. but then she said, “if i take the money out of the water, then the people’s wishes wouldn’t come true?” i said no, not necessarily, it’s just a superstition, really. she says “what is superstition” and i say, “it’s a belief that doing something will create or stop something else from happening. like, people don’t walk under ladders because they say it will bring you seven years of bad luck. that’s a superstition.” “is that true?” she says. and i say, “no, superstitions aren’t real.” “then why do people believe in them?” “i don’t know, honey.” so she sits there for a second, eating her pizza, and then she looks over at the fountain and says, “that’s not real?” and i say, “well, no, honey, not really.” and she says, “so i can take the money then and nobody will be hurt?”

and i’m like … yeah. yeah. you can. and now she’s all excited to take money out of the water and what can i do? my six year old has better logic skills than i do. so we finish our food and then spend the next few minutes on our knees, lurched over the barrier, fishing pennies out of the fountain. and nobody messes with us. nobody asks us what we’re doing, no security guards come and harass us. sally makes about two dollars in change and we go home. she spends it on candy at fred meyer. at first i was horrified, i thought people were going to think we were monsters, but i looked up at one point and some old lady had sat across the pool from us, just staring and smiling so bright. how can you deny your child that kind of amusement? you know? i figure, one of those wishes was to make my daughter happy on her first day at the mall food court.

hey, i need you to help me out. i need you to take this letter to the king. i know you’re probably wondering why i can’t do it myself, but here’s the deal: i can’t move from this spot. i’ve never been able to move from this spot. think about it. how many times have you spoken to me before now? and how many things have i said to you? three, maybe four different things? i just keep saying the same things, over and over. it’s like … i don’t have anything else to say. i don’t talk to anyone, and no one talks to me except you, and now since you’ve completed some quest i suddenly have this new thing to say to you. why? why now? why is this so important? all i need is for you to take this letter to the king. i don’t even know what it says! it’s just a letter, it’s sealed, i guess, how i physically hand it to you i have no idea. you take it to him and then come back and i’ll give you seven gold pieces as a reward. again, i think you get them, i don’t actually hand them to you because i … don’t … move. look, please believe me, please: i want to take this letter to the king myself but i physically cannot move from this spot. look behind you. you see that guard wandering erratically? first he moves a step right, then up, then he walks to that bush and just stands there, staring at it. god, i wish i could do that. instead i have to wait for someone like to you to come to me. but now that you’re here, god, i’m so glad, i don’t get to talk to any of the other town members. so many of us are stuck in one spot, and others, they just wander around as badly as the town guard. what kind of world is this?! and how did you get this miraculous ability to go as you please, to take whatever quest you want, to get all these big fancy swords? what makes you so special, huh? huh?! if you’re the “chosen one,” or whatever, why can’t you choose to free me from this stationary spot i stand on since time began? i don’t eat, i don’t drink … WHAT AM I?! WHAT IS MY POINT IN LIFE?! to give you a letter?! is that really it? is that really all i’m here for? WHY DON’T YOU TALK TO ME?! YOU’RE THE ONLY PERSON WHO HAS INTERACTED WITH ME AND YOU DON’T EVEN TALK TO ME! WHY?! WHY?! TALK TO ME DAMMIT TALK TO ME! I’D SHAKE YOU RIGHT NOW BUT I CAN’T MOVE MY ARMS.

(long beat)

anyway. here’s the letter. just … take it from me, i guess. i’ll see you after you’ve killed the dragon and saved the kingdom. yeah. bye. don’t … be a stranger.

everyone’s got the story of the first loved one they killed. some people did it before they turned, some did it after, but in the end, almost everyone did it. it’s like a rite of passage, bridging the gap between those who run from the truth, and those who embrace it. some sick fucks did it the moment they knew their loved one was bitten. this guy taylor, i met him about eight months ago, he was a loner too, a nice guy, met him out in the woods one day, just both of us passing through. we ended up spending a week roaming around the forest together, killing zombies. one night we find a shack, like a little log cabin dealie, and there’s booze inside, i mean an unopened bottle of decent bourbon. so naturally we drink, and when we’re all good and sloshed is when he tells me he was in a survivor party with his wife, carla, and a few other folks, and they got trapped inside a mini-mall in i don’t know, some bumfuck town in the south. the zoms manage to break through the glass, start chasing the group. there’s a ton of them, and they’re running through a back hallway when carla rolls her ankle. suddenly there’s a zombie at her foot and it takes a bite–just a bite–out of her leg before she kicks it away. she manages to stand, hobbling onto her good foot, and looks up. there’s taylor, shotgun pointed at her face. he pulls the trigger, no questions, no concern. this was his wife, for eight years! he said their daughter emma got pulled into a sewer drain by some zombies four months earlier, and, but his own admission, that sort of rewired his brain something strange.

naturally, the others kicked him out of the group near immediately and he had been a loner ever since. i stopped drinking after he told that story and ended up leaving him at sunrise while he was still passed out. that’s the nature of the world today. can’t be around someone who would just as soon shoot you as love you. gotta figure out who’s in it for the others as much as for themselves. cause truth is, we’re all gonna die and we’re all gonna be zombies, so it makes sense to keep us all alive and unbit for as long as possible, you know what i’m saying? watch each other’s backs. that’s all i’m saying.

(third day in a battered women’s shelter. outside. she is smoking a cigarette and is calm.)

steve was kind of a charmer, but in that dopey way, and i didn’t have the heart to tell him that dopey guys are kind of out these days. self-deprecation was a late 90s-early 2000s kind of thing. it’s really unattractive these days, even when they’re trying to be humorous. it’s like, women know you’re really confident, or more likely arrogant, so the last thing we want to see is you pretend you’re not. these days we want confident men–i mean all days we want confident men, but especially now, with this onslaught of manchildren. we want men who support us rather than destroy us. and women are okay without men. we’re fine with it, really. they’re angry, they’re needy, they pretend to be bad at things so they don’t have to do them. it used to be guys were  just horndogs, and i would be fine with that, but they’re not even that anymore. they feel like they deserve sex. they’re angry and they feel entitled to that anger, which means they beat the shit out of women they don’t get sex from. it’s so stupid that it’s that simple, but it is.

so steve was so charming when he got what he wanted, and when he didn’t, get flew into an adolescent rage and tossed me around like i was nothing. it was like this for years. in public he was self-deprecating and seemed harmless, but even in public settings if you said the wrong thing you could see that minuscule change in his demeanor, that little twitch in his eyes. maybe it was just me who could see it because i was used to it. and i tell you, 95% of the time he was harmless, he was downright respectful even, took care of the kids, we went on dates, we made love, and it was great. but because of the 5%, i always worried, waiting for that day he would break and hit me so hard i would get a concussion or something.

so that’s why i’m here. because he did that. fractured my orbital socket in two places, cracked the back of my skull against the banister in our house. because he had a bad day at work and i wasn’t feeling good, so i opted out of sex. that was it. really. i barely remember that night. i remember the emergency room and i remember ginny telling me that we were coming here, and i remember arguing with her about how i couldn’t, how i had to go home. that whole fucking time i felt so guilty, felt so bad and upset that i let this happen. a miasma of emotions that were all bullshit.

(long sigh. drag from cigarette.)

that’s what charming gets you, laura.

the existential sludge you are currently drowning in boils down to one point: who cares? this is the plight of the atheist, the plight of the 21st century secular human. instead of choosing to believe a magic man in the sky cares about me, you have to confront the awful truth: very few mortals actually give a shit about you. it’s the truth. people will try to make you think they care about you but if you take anything away from this, let it be a newly found ability to ferret out liars and sycophants. but the fact that so few people actually care about you is what makes humanity so amazing, if you can manage to see it from a positive angle. some people care about you! your life could be lived without anyone caring for you, so the fact that a handful do is quite surprising. and of course what i’m talking about is a cultural revolution for people in most first world countries. america, well, parts of america. the united kingdom. france. countries who have embraced science and secularization, who fight for the separation of church and state, these countries continue to struggle with their sense of purpose. why are we here, if not to please the god that made us? to please ourselves? or to please others? and to what end does either one of those options get us? we live, we die, we’ve taken care of ourselves or of others … if that’s it, it seems so empty. it reduces us to animals, which, we are, but also demeans our intelligence, our ability to do and think more than a cow or a dog. so i ask you to take that question–why are we here–and let it drive you through the rest of your life. do not make it a statement of defeat. do not come up with the conclusion before you have exhausted all possibilities. you are the result of billions of years of evolution, and your mind deserves better than self-deprecation. use that question to guide you to whatever your life becomes. don’t let it sink you. use it to float. and come back to me when you know you have the answer.

civilization hinges on this moment, ladies and gentlemen. you are humanity’s last hope, the one final chance we have to save whatever we can. we’ve got four lifers in orbit above earth and roughly twenty minutes to get them from here to sun for departure. if any one of those ships goes down, we lose a fourth of the human race, do you understand me? we cannot afford to lose those ships. in the middle will be the a-ring, that is also of utmost importance. without it, the ships can’t get out of the system. twelve capital ships will also be defending the lifers, and two–the abraham and the cygnus, will be running a skeleton crew to hit the enemy when they jump in. those ships are loaded to the brim with nuclear warheads, and the hope is when the buggers arrive they’ll attack and blow half of their own fleet away. i want you all to understand right here and now that there are twenty men and women aboard the abraham, and fifteen on the cygnus, and those people are going to die with those ships. that was their prerogative, and everyone in the terran galactic alliance is in awe of their bravery. but you are also brave, and you will be the surgical strike defense that we will need during every second of the time between leaving earth and reaching the sun. we’re going like this: alpha and beta, your squadrons will primarily focus on defense of the lifeships. gamma, your squad circles the a-ring. delta and epsilon, you are tasked with taking our enemy bombers. we are anticipating a shitload of bombers. chi, rho, and sigma, you’re reinforcements. omega is working on a special project, as always.

ladies and gentlemen, we are go in t-minus two hours and counting. every single person in the galactic military has someone they know up in those ships, and if you don’t, pretend like you do. we want everyone alive at the end of the day, am i clear? good. your squadron leaders will have more specific instructions. the alliance thanks each and every one of you for your service. we’ll see you at alpha centauri. dismissed.