Category: writing

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.

i’ve taken all the boxes and all the magazines and left them beside the front door. your jackets and suitcoats are folded neatly on the boxes. some items, the duvet, for instance, the vinyl records, the wicker laundry basket, i’ve kept for sentimental value. others were thrown into the pool, and you are welcome to retrieve them. i’ve changed the locks on the door so you may leave your keys here, or you may take them with you. the movers are coming at 8am sharp and their service will be charged to your debit card. i hope you understand. i thought long and hard about who should keep lulu and decided, ultimately, that we should both keep her; that being an impossible scenario, i took her to dr wiggins and had her put down. she’s buried in the backyard, and you are welcome to come and visit her grave, so long as you call to arrange an appointment beforehand. we did not have a memorial for her, as she was a dog, so please don’t feel left out in that regard. i have saved her eyes and her canine teeth, which you will find in a jar of formaldehyde in the box labeled “miscellaneous paraphernalia.” please take it as a token of compromise. i will keep the bowflex machine but will give you the free weights and bench because i know you like them. i removed the fish from the aquarium; you will find half of them in small plastic bags in the box labeled “perishables,” and i recommend you find them a new aquarium as soon as possible. half of your shoes i have burned. they, along with other items, are in the box labeled “items i’ve burned.” if you have any other questions or concerns you will find the number of my lawyer written hastily on a legal pad and placed on top of the box labeled, “you fucking piece of shit, you ruined my life.” please do not proceed beyond the line marked in yellow tape on the floor, or else i will be forced to shoot you until you are dead. i hope you understand. thank you.

i think my life would be better if i was just okay with more things. you know what i mean? if i just let things slide. if i was okay with my ex-girlfriend’s love of expensive purses and “essential” oils. if i just ignored all the people at work who can’t figure out how to print documents. i love people and i want them to be better than me, so i push them and i yell at them and i’m screaming because i’m screaming at myself. literally projecting my voice onto them. DO BETTER. EXERCISE. BE NICE TO THE HOMELESS. et cetera. because i don’t do any of these things, i avert my eyes to the disenfranchised, i eat ice cream for dinner, i play video games all night long. life went from a fun voyage to a cruise alone through smoky doldrums.

so this is why we should break up, not because i don’t love you or care about you dearly, but because i suck, and am not worth your time. i am a perpetual failure and i set myself up for it with the one-two punch of lethargy and depression. i am frustrating because of my extreme inability to connect with others, often self-inflicted. i tend not to care about people’s trivialities, which makes me feel like a dick. because maybe i am a dick. and, i, i can’t talk about these things because then everyone will know and i’ll be damaged goods forever. and also because people who constantly talk about their depression are depressing and annoying. the worst part about depression is that it turns people into morose assholes who are wholly self-concerned. that’s me in a nutshell. i pretend to care, which keeps me at arm’s length, but sometimes i’m aloof enough that it masquerades as confidence, and then i slip into relationships because it’s nice to have someone to love and a warm body beside you at night, even if they’re fundamentally wrong for you. but my aloofness is like a mountain, unmoving, unwavering, a peak so high you need an oxygen mask and a sherpa to ascend it.

the truth is that i love you beyond phonemes but if you stick with me you’ll be sticking with a dead husk of a man. everything i touch turns to shit, every relationship wilts into blackened stems. i spend all of my bus commute deciphering the hollow pit in my gut that sloshes with occasional guilt and sadness. i am a burden. i am unburdening myself from you. i’m giving you the opportunity to avoid months or years of feeling like you fucked up. i don’t want your pity or your sarcastic response, i don’t need your hate or your love. i’m a self-righteous asshole and i deserve the hell pit i’ve dug for myself. that’s all.

i mean, you can drink that water if you want to. ah, i’m, i’m sorry, i shouldn’t have said anything. it’s perfectly fine water, the glass has been sitting there for, what, an hour, tops. you should just drink it. i’m not trying to–you already drank it, is all. you’ll be fine. i’ve been waiting for my car to show up and the water was there when i got here, but it looks fine. look at it. did it taste funny? look, i had a glass of water too, alright? i drank a glass too, and it was here when i got here and it was fine. and i’m not dead. right? do i look dead to you? i’m not dead. the water is fine. don’t be a pussy. i can tell you’re thirsty, just drink the rest of the water and you can wait for your car too. i’m telling you, it was here when i got here, i didn’t touch it, and besides, you’ve already had a sip. that’s what you get for being absent-minded. here look at my glass. there’s still some water at the bottom, i’ll drink it right now, okay? see? see, all the drops in my mouth? let me swallow. mm. yes, just water. simple, ordinary water. not even fluoridated! can you believe portland? ridiculous. your water’s fine though, just drink it. come on. drink it. drink the water. now you’re pissing me off. at first i was like whatever but now you’re blatantly not drinking the water–it’s FINE, okay? here goddammit i’ll drink your water.

(goes to drink, stops)

look, i, i don’t want to drink your water. that would be rude. i just got over a cold, a bad headcold, i don’t want to give that to you. but look, i promise you, i’ve been sitting here for an hour and there were two full glasses of water and i drank one of them, just as absent-mindedly as you did–i even thought, “why did i do that? why did i just start drinking water without thinking about where it came from?” but by then i had drank half of it and if it was going to kill me, well, i’d be dead right now. and i’m not. we’ve established that. and all i’m saying is that sometimes you take a risk in life and it ends up paying off. i’m hydrated! i feel great. so now you can be hydrated. that’s another reason, i don’t need any more water because i just drank my own. so go ahead, drink up.

(a very long pause)

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? DRINK THE WATER! NOTHING IS WRONG WITH IT DRINK IT! DRINK THE WATER!

(a very long pause. knocks the glass over)

fine. now you don’t get any.

a young man sat next to me in the mall food court and began speaking japanese into his voice recorder. i knew this day would come. the japanese cia is following me.

i had seen the signs weeks before. one morning i woke up to find my cat had puked a perfect replica of hokkaido onto my bedroom carpet. i asked her what was the matter and she replied “nyan” rather than “meow.” i knew something was afoot. i tried to dissect her to see if there were any bugs embedded in her skin, or if she was, in fact, a robot cat, but she escaped into that nook in my closet that i cannot reach. after i lured her out with some food, i deemed her safe. robot cats do not need to eat.

later that week i got on the bus and two stops later seventeen japanese exchange students boarded, all dressed in their school uniforms despite not needing to. they sat at various places on the bus and yet none sat next to me. i glanced to the back of the bus. two of them were taking photos on their cellular phones, both with hello kitty faces on them. i looked back and they winked at me. both of them. at the same time. at first i’ll be quite honest i was a little aroused, never before had one japanese girl dressed in a schoolgirl’s outfit winked at me, much less two. then they both took a picture of me on their phones, and my arousal quickly dissipated, replaced with worry. why had they taken my photo? what did they need it for? my mind raced with possibilities, until today. until today.

i know what you’re thinking. i’m crazy. i’ve gone off the deep end. well if you think it’s crazy to know the japanese cia is following you then i guess i’m crazy. i’m telling you, i’ve seen the signs, i know where this is headed. i’m not exactly sure what they want me for, maybe they want me to be a spy for them, but i promise you that they are coming for me, and when they want me, i’ll know. which is why it is incredibly important for you to buy all of the items on the list i gave you, okay? i can’t leave the house. they will track me down, hell, they probably already have cameras in this building. shit. listen, buy those groceries and meet me at the address written at the bottom. LOOK AT IT OUTSIDE, don’t look at it here, they’ll see it on the cameras. i’ve got to go. i’ve got to get out of here. take it to this address! no later than–well, just get it there, okay? now go, go!