Why not?

So you may wondering as to the reason for my recent disappearance from livejournal. The truth is that I am working on some far more sinister that I am disinclined to share that at this particular moment. I actually probably will put that work up once I've worked out the kinks and dotted all the T's. I've got some more short stories on queue, but for the moment, I'm too preoccupied. Once I've finished the first part of this new project, I'll put it up for my livejournal friends only. That means if you want to read it, you'd best be my friend first. One warning though... It'll be long.

    We have a strict policy about that, even though we don't let the tenants know about it. They think that a few days past rent day is fair game- well maybe at some places. Here, three weeks. Reason is, we respect our clients. We don't intrude, we give them benefit of the doubt. Three weeks. After that, we can get authorities involved. That's when we check to make sure that they are still in their rooms, that they didn't skip town or anything. This guy, he was a special case though. We didn't give him the full three weeks- we were in there by the tenth.
    You know, when you're in the business long enough, you get to predict people. Call it whatever; stereotyping, prejudice- the point is when a tenant first comes by, five minutes is all I need. Give me five minutes and I can tell you anything: if his credit will check out, if he's had bad experiences with other landlords, if his background check will turn up red, if he'll stay long term or short, if he'll be quiet or loud. Really.
    Here's an example: Few years back, a woman came here looking for a one-bedroom. She said she was a dancer, but from the look of her I knew what she was an escort, and she knew I knew it. I spoke with her and she said that she made thirty a year- on the lower end for the single clients in one-bedrooms here. That was thirty that she made over-the-table at the club; she was probably making twice that underneath, but she couldn't give me any documentation of it. Five minutes was all it took, by the end I knew what she wanted. She wasn't going to bring her customers here. She was looking for a quiet building, to get away from that, to be an ordinary person. You know, some people- I know that's what they want. How they make their money, you know, that's there business. It's only my business if it affects my business. I saw this girl, I knew what she did for a living, and I knew she wouldn't bring that life here. So, I signed her, and she was here for three years; never late on rent, never paid in cash. Not a single problem.
    Anyway, I've been here ten years now, and after a while, you can predict people pretty well. This guy, we checked his room after ten days, not twenty one. He was one of the first people I signed. He called us looking for a two-bedroom a few months after I started. This was back in ninety-six. September. If it was now he wanted to sign with us, I'd say no right away. No question. It's like knitting, you make a mistake and you either go back and fix it right away or it's always there, it ruins the whole damn thing.
    Well, I didn't know better. I signed him. I got noise complaints right away, and then a couple months later I got smell complaints. We've got heavy doors, and they seal pretty tight, so you have to imagine how bad it must have been before the people across the hall called in a smell complaint. So, we'd tell him about the complaints, and whenever he'd come to pay we'd remind him and threaten him about it, but we didn't know how bad it really was. After about eight months of this, we had a neighbor of his who hadn't complained before come down to tell us about arguments he was having. She said he and a woman were fighting, and that it sounded bad, her screaming and crying, things breaking- probably dishes. It was funny though because we never saw him bring anyone over. We know a lot about our tenants, of course we aren't very interested, and we don't snoop, we just pick up on it over the months. We never, really never saw him bring someone over. It was all very strange.
    This neighbor complained to us, but she sounded pretty worried. A few hours later, we came up to his room to check on things. If there was still arguing, we were going to call the police. At his door, it was dead quiet. We knocked, but there was no answer. We decided to wait. A few days later, the woman who complained came by to thank us for taking care of things, and I told her to think nothing of it. Still, the days went by with no sound at all. When rent-day came, we didn't hold our breath; he was always a few days late. By the seventh we were fed up. We decided this was enough, it was time for him to leave, so we consulted with the police, got the go-ahead, and came to demand the month's rent and give him until the end of the month to get out.
    The tenth of the month, Saturday afternoon, we were sure was he was around, so we came knocking. He didn't answer, and we listened and didn't hear anyone inside. What's more, there wasn't any smell at all. Suddenly his room was like all the others. It probably shouldn't have been a big surprise when we came in and found the place cleared out, but it did. No one had seen him move out. None of the neighbors knew that he was gone, just the smell. The place looked brand new, shampooed carpet, painted walls, like he'd never existed. The only thing he left behind we found on the white clean stove: a month's rent. Cash.

    For the years that my brother was sick, it was like he was stranded in the middle of a half-frozen lake that was just starting to crack: It was like he was lying, spread out on the ice, afraid to stand up or turn over to crawl towards us, the cracks in the ice under him growing with each second. Our entire family was watching from the edge of the ice, each of us afraid to come out to help, lest the both of us fall through the cracks together. For the years of his sickness, we were all afraid to move, as though the slightest agitation would cause the unstable balance to suddenly crumble. For the years of his sickness, we stood around the half-frozen lake waiting for it to freeze over completely, or waiting for it to crack.
    When my brother finally recovered, when we started to have fun again- to behave like normal kids, I couldn't help but feel that no matter how he seemed, he had changed from how he was before getting sick. It didn't matter whether or not he seemed better, to me he wasn't. The cancer was still in him.
    Then the dreams came: Every day I would wake up from dreams that he was back out on his lake, staring at us as we did nothing but wait. Every day I'd fear for him. When we played games, if he started to get too worked up I'd let him win. When we played with other kids, I'd tell them each when his back was turned to "go easy on him". They seemed to understand. I always wondered if he knew that I felt this way, that I was telling this to the other kids. He must have known.
    It wasn't until a few months since his recovery that I began to understand my dreams of his relapse. Everyday he walked around me like he were made of glass. Everyday the same dream: the glass shattering.  I was afraid to touch him, afraid to let anyone else near him. He was my little brother, he didn't know any better, he didn't realize how dangerous it was. The dreams were more than dreams. They were visions. This was to be the future, I knew it. There was no question at all. With the vision came knowledge, a deep understanding that the future was immutable, and that God Himself had spoken to me and told me it. This was not a warning, and not something that would change if I warned others. It was purely an understanding: He would relapse, and soon he would be dead.
    Day by day, the dreams continued. They were never better nor worse, but always the same. He'd start to get sick all of a sudden. He'd go back to the hospital for more tests. A few weeks later I'd go to visit him at the hospital after school and in his hospital room there'd be nurses making the bedsheets. He would be gone.
    I thought for a while about telling him, but he seemed so much better. I wanted so badly to be wrong, but I knew that I wasn't. I wonder if he could see it on my face.
    "What's wrong?" he asked me once after the recovery. We were building model rockets in the backyard, and I was staring off into space, lost in the dream from the night before.
    "Nothing, just thinking."
    "About what?"
    "Nothing. Just, just forget it." Maybe the stammer as I held back tears said too much.
    "I see," he said.
    It felt so unnatural for someone his age to say that: 'I see.' What did he see? It was the kind of response that only a child who'd lived dragging a shadow of death would say. I tried to shrug it off, to lighten the mood and return to the rockets. That night we launched them.
    The next morning I awoke from the same dream to have breakfast. I found him at the kitchen table, too nauseous to eat. He said even sipping water was too difficult. He was back in the middle of his lake. My parents glanced nervously at each other, and I stared into the table.
    A few days later, my parents brought him back to the hospital. He was still sick, but in stable condition. Doctors were running tests. My mother stayed by his side, and I came to visit almost every day with my father. When we were all there next to him, we all moved very slowly and talked very quietly. He was in the middle of his half-frozen lake, and we were all afraid that the slightest movement would crack the ice.
    A couple weeks later, I was on my way to visit him after school. Before I got to his room, I knew what I would find there. The ice would have broken. The nurses would be making his bed. 

"I am alone." The words cling to the tip of my tongue like ivy. With each passing day, I want more than anything to shout it from the rooftops. "Behold! Your friend and brother is an illusion! I am a monster and my crime is cowardice. Like the chameleon, I have crept amongst you. Protection in numbers. Liberté, égalité, fraternité! All lies."

They will not understand. Do you hear me? You will not understand. My skill has been too exacting. I want to shout it from the rooftops: "I am an impostor!" But no one will hear me. You will not hear me.

These are not the ramblings of the drunk or mad. Listen: I have krept into the world of men- your world. I have stood on the shoulders of giants- your shoulders, but I am not your brother. I have grown fat from eating the food from your plate- food that you gave me!

I want to shout these things but I won't. I can not. Instead I'll follow as your brother. I'll follow as you clear the minefield, and when you fall, I'll turn and run back to another.

How I want to be there with you. How I wish I could. We are who we are and I am an imposter, and I will not catch you when you fall.

Hello,

Today was one hell of an exhausting day. Woke at 6 to go blueberry and raspberry picking at a farm a couple hours out of montreal. Beautiful, intensely hot. Now it's late. I have a story for today, but it's only half written. No harm in a day late, right? Here's a hint: it's called "The Imposter".

Every hour is sticky hell, like I've been damned to eternally go about my business after rubbing gluesticks all over my body. I don't know how many cold showers I've taken today, but I'm about to go for another. Maybe it's the sunburn.

OK so apologies. I know you're (meaning 'I'm') dying to see what comes out. Hey, maybe I'll actually like this one perhaps?

a

    The fish was turning golden on the frying pan, the boiling olive-oil bubbling around its face and tail. "It's working," he thought.
    He had never done things like this until a few months ago: Flying the kite, beginning the journal, joining the gym, learning to cook. The last few months had been full of activity. At first, he was inspired to try the things he felt like he had somehow missed during his childhood. He read and reread the great children's books, found instructions to build a kite and flew it, started teaching himself piano. Once he had begun to exhaust ways to live the lost parts of his childhood, he began to look for new things that he hadn't even considered to try before.
    Initially, his search for ways to fill his time with the new and the foreign had a purpose. It was like all of a sudden there weren't rules and habits dictating his life, and when he did do the old things- the work for his classes at university, his collecting books and reading, waking early to brew coffee to drink on his balcony- they seemed fresh and revitalized, like he had suddenly remembered why he began to do them in the first place.
    After a while, though, he began to forget why he was doing it all. Doing the new was becoming a routine. He stopped thinking about it. He felt changed, like a new person, but he could feel that beneath it all he was himself: That he would change on the outside, and the same person would always keep growing out through it.
    The dullness wasn't in his life, it was in him. It was a disease that he carried around, that killed off his passion whenever it started to grow. A leash around his neck: even with an infinite chain it was still a tether. Some nights he would wake up to find it choking him.
    Frying in the stagnant summer heat, even with the windows open and most of the lights off, he'd worked up a heavy perspiration. The fish had some time, so he removed his shirt and in the bathroom ran cold water over his head and face. Dripping, he walked out to his balcony that looked over the nighttime cityscape.
    "I've worked so hard," he said aloud to himself. "But it's still there. Still so empty."
    He remembered that back before he began to occupy all his time, it was like a haze. He lived from day to day doing nothing, and the days all seemed to blur into each other. From that time, he could remember a few important moments here and there, and he could remember the things he did often- ingrained by repetition, but that was it. He wondered if this was worse.

The sunset lit the puff of clouds a pink and orange hue. The grapefruit colored smoke rose above a neighboring rooftop and seeped into the violet sky. As the sky grew darker and all around the violet shifted to a deep purple, I put my legs up on the chair opposite me. On the small balcony table were a few lit candles and a glass of water.

Suddenly, in a commotion of flapping gray wings, a bird stood on the table, within an arm's reach. A pigeon. For a while, the bird bobbed its head, from me to the edge of the balcony, back and forth. I sat perfectly still, afraid to scare it off. Finally, it gave up and sat down on its legs, watching me. I could have reached out and pet it.

I thought for a while that I hadn't seen too many pigeons in the evening. They were common in the day, and were often getting sun on my balcony, but I almost never saw one so late in the day. I reached out, slowly taking my glass of water, and drank from it.

As soon as I brought the glass back to the table, the pigeon frantically began to flap its wings and for a few seconds, it hovered over the glass until it finally knocked it over. The pigeon went back to its previous position, sitting and watching me. I reached out for the glass, more quickly this time, and walked back inside. It was completely still.

I came back after a minute with a small metal frying-pan half filled with water and a thick slice of bread. It watched me slide the screen door to the balcony and sit back down. As soon as I had placed the pan down, it was perched on the edge, pecking its beak into the water.

After it had finished drinking, I tore off some bread and fed it. That was when I noticed that the bird was missing an eye. It pecked the bread, the dark gray skin healed over the wound and scar along its cheek. It made me think of the phrase 'stool pigeon'. I heard somewhere that the phrase came from hunting, where clay pigeons were used as decoys to attract other birds to be killed.

I watched the pigeon eat. The way the wound had healed made his eye look closed, like it were asleep. I wondered what could have caused it. Pigeons are hearty animals. I've seen pigeons missing feet, perching on their grizzled stumps, growing thinner and thinner as they eat less, hobbling up to scattered crumbs after the other pigeons had had their fill. How long could a bird live like that? How long had this one survived?

After it was finished pecking the bread, it stood up, bobbing its head up and down towards me, and then flew away. I never see that many pigeons at night. I wonder where it went.
 

    A bedroom in the summer heat. The window is closed, the blinds filter horizontal sheets of light. Everywhere there is scattered clothing and dirty dishes; half empty bottles filling with drowning beetles. On the bare sweat-stained mattress, I am naked.
    "Sir, what happened to you?"
    "It's all the same, isn't it?"
    Are we are delusional? Everywhere is meaning, or beauty, or absurdity... It's all patterns out of chaos, like constellations in the sky. There's meaning only when we stand and watch from the right position.
    "What have you been doing here, Sir?"
    "Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for you, Lieutenant."
    There's no use to go out there. Time passes just as quickly within these walls.
    "When was the last time you, you went outside, Sir?"
    I Laugh. "What, you don't find this beautiful?" I hold up the bottle. It looks like it's half full of coffee beans, the top few are still moving. I turn it upside down and pour its contents onto the floor. I am laughing. This is my beauty. This is just as beautiful. The Lieutenant is hurrying from the room.
    "I'll be back in a moment, Sir."
    They'll think I'm insane. They are insane, too. We are all dead, and the dead are walking. There is so much beauty, and we are blinding ourselves. All we do is wait. Get through today until tomorrow, until next year, until we're settled down, until the end. Our lives are melting away. When are our lives?
    Figures standing in the doorway. Lieutenant, a man in a white coat, two officers.
    "When are our lives, doctor?"
    "This," hands in the air "is life. This is your life, Major. That's why you need to come with us. We're here to help you."
    They are all surrounding me. The Lieutenant and Doctor are speaking quietly. The officers are holding my arms apart and trying to lift me by them. "You don't understand at all, do you?"
    "Wait," the Doctor says. The officers stop struggling to move me. "What don't we understand?"
    "You think you can help me."
    "That's right. We can help you, but not if you resist, you have to let us-"
    "No. You don't understand." I am laughing. "The blind can't show the blind the way!"
    They're taking me away, but I'm still laughing. "Just like watching clouds. Our whole lives, just watching clouds!" Always waiting. We are waiting for nothing.

    The door had been closed since my family had moved in a week ago. We found it, the last door in a corridor of bedrooms, with a handwritten note with simple red letters:
    "Private".
    We had rented the apartment for a few weeks as a summer home. I spent my days overwhelmed with activities at the beach; my evenings exploring the town with my parents. My older sister was staying with us also, but she acted like she wanted nothing to do with us, as though her very being there was a tremendous source of grief. Soon we were only seeing her around lunchtime, when she would wake up.
    Although I enjoyed the time there, the entire idea of that place bothered me. My father explained it to me: "Someone lives here part of the year, and when people like us come during tourist season, he rents it out and moves away until we leave." I imagined our home back in New Jersey and wondered if while we were there in Delaware, some family was renting it, some other boy sleeping in my bed and playing with the toys I'd left behind.
    Around the sixth day of the trip, my parents and sister had a bad argument while out at lunch. She ran away from the table, and we finished eating in silence. Late that night, something woke me in the dark, and I walked out of my room to find the doors to my parents' and sister's rooms open: I was the only one home.
    I stood in the hallway, surrounded by doors, all open but one. In the gray dark it looked like a tombstone, its single-word epitaph the only decoration. It had to be locked, but I reached up and tried the door anyway. I found myself in another bedroom. It was a girl's bedroom: photographs and drawings covering the walls, dolls looking on from a bookshelf in the corner, a teddy-bear by the pillow. Without turning on the lights, I walked through it. At the end of the room was a heavy wooden cupboard covered in candles. I knelt down and opened it; the doors were lined with photos, probably dozens of them, all of the same teen-aged girl. In the center was a simple ceramic vase.
    From the window I heard voices shouting. I jumped from the cupboard and ran out the room, slamming the door. I was in bed by the time my family came in. We left the next day, a full week early. On the ride back, I wondered if I had been dreaming. If it had really happened, then I'd left the doors to the cupboard open. I wanted to tell them about it, but in the car no one was speaking.
    For months I expected the apartment's owner to call or mail us about it. Whenever the phone rang, I would hide my face, but no one ever said anything.

   "It happened a few weeks ago, two or three in the morning." We were in a bar like an old cavern, ancient stone walls sloped into each other forming a massive semicircle. Windows with heavy iron bars opened into black- a cool earthy breeze seeping into the room.
   We were talking over beers. A jazz band was setting up to go on in a few minutes. He was looking into his glass, rapping his fingers along the table top.
   "Yeah, I was on the balcony having a cigarette." His voice had taken on the sombre tone he reserved for serious matters. "First I heard footsteps- loud, like her shoes were heels or something. Not something meant for running."
   "Did you see anything?"
   "I looked over, but it was too dark. My balcony sort of looks out onto an alley right? At night you can't see anything if the light is off down there. It sounded like she was right under me though, ten stories down."
   I imagined running through the alley in the early morning. I'd never seen anyone else walking through it whenever I did. Maybe that was what made it so frightening, even with the light on. The area wasn't especially dangerous, but if someone were after you, you were a goner. You could feel it as you walked around.
   "I heard the steps for a few seconds, really frantic sounding, and then suddenly it stopped. Then she started screaming, 'Help! Help!' over and over, 'Somebody help!' It was terrifying."
   "What happened?"
   "Well, a bunch of people ran out to their balconies. I didn't hear any footsteps after that. It all just... stopped."
   People were quieting down, the band was tuning their instruments. I checked if anyone was listening, but they were all too far away. "Did you call the police?"
   "Well, someone did. There was a cop car down there twenty minutes later, you could see the lights. I saw the cop with his flashlight looking around, but nothing happened. He left and that was it."
   "I can't believe you didn't call the police," I said, imagining myself in that position. Would I have called?
   "There were a lot of people that came out to see, somebody was going to call."
   I didn't push it further. The band was ready to go. The bassist started a line and the drummer was joining in with his brushes on a cymbal.
   "That's horrible," I said quietly.
   "There's one thing that really bothers me though." He was looking at me, leaning his head in to whisper. "That light down in the alley. It's automatic. I've never walked down that thing more than a few steps without it going on." 
   I turned to meet his face. I hadn't realized it before; I had never walked through that alley with the light off. "You're sure she was in the alley, not on the street?"
   "She was right under me."

    The two were drinking whiskey on the moonlit porch steps after "The Boys'" twentieth reunion. By now, the others had all gone home. Dennis nearly jumped from his seat when the cellphone in his pocket rang. He turned and looked towards Nathan, who pretended that he hadn't noticed the jump. They both knew who was on the other end. Nathan took another sip of his whiskey and watched a car drive by as Dennis waited, looking up at him. 
    The phone was still ringing when Nathan broke the silence. "Going to pick up, or what?"
    "I don't know. I wasn't really expecting her to call back."
    "The note told her to call."
    "Yeah, I was kind of hoping that she wouldn't." He laughed like it were a joke. "Yup, that'd be her," he said, checking the phone's display. He hadn't lost his childhood habit of staring when he was nervous. With his pale skin, thin hair and long nose, the stare brought on the unmistakable image of a rat. 
    "How long's it been?"
    "Since we spoke? Oh, I guess five years now."
    "Well you should probably answer," Nathan dug into the gap between his coat and massive stomach and extracted two long white cigar cases.
    Dennis stared at the phone, his eyes bulged. The ringing stopped, and both sighed loudly. Nathan removed his cigars and cut their tips with a cutter shaped like a credit card. Nathan was always the one who organized "The Boys'" reunions. It had become a tradition for the two of them to wait for everyone else to go home and stay talking into the night. The first time this happened, it was unplanned, just as it was that Nathan should have brought along a pair of cigars in his pocket. Every year since, the two would smoke cigars with their whiskey and talk late into the morning.
    "I don't know. I don't know what to say."
    "Fuck you, yes you do. You told us earlier. Look, you can't live like this. It's dangerous financially for you to stay married. Not even that, this is your wife, who knows how many people she's fucked since you- since you two separated."
    "Julia was never promiscuous. She's been with that Andrew Hall since we were still living together."
    "If they're such a happy couple, how come she hasn't said anything to you about a divorce?"
    "This is hard for both of us, okay?" His tone changed, his eyes were returning to normal. "Whose fault it is doesn't matter after this long. It's hard for both of us."
    "That fucking dentist." Nathan took a sip from his glass. "You sure that you want me to stick around?"
    "You sure you don't mind?" He smiled and hit redial. "Thanks, man." Nathan passed him the cigar.
    "Hi Julia, it's been a long time."  He lit his cigar.
   

HEY

Yes, so I've got another change to make. I've been thinking about it, and noticing that I've been having the most trouble making the Thursday deadline. I like the idea of three stories a week, but I think that having the one 3-day gap between stories over weekdays makes the most sense. If I submit on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday, that places the largest gap over the weekdays, when I'm generally the most busy with work (and class later on).

So I think that's the new plan. Submitting stories on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I may have to readjust it when school begins, but for now, it makes more sense.

SO THERE YA GO.

He awoke to beat of his own heart. It pulsed into his ears, its frequency dropping from the rapid tempo reached during the dream. The sheets clung to his body like rope. As he did the last time the dreams came, he pealed himself from the bed in the middle of the night and poured a glass of whiskey. The burn down his throat brought on a coughing fit, but once that passed he exhaled deeply. He was wide awake now. As the heat in his chest and stomach cooled, he felt the grip of the dream release him. Soon, he could barely remember anything about it- all that remained were distant memories like fresh wounds, and the dull sensation that was almost hatred.

There was a part of him that said he should have hated himself, but he didn't. The dreams sometimes told him that. The dreams would rehash a story he'd pushed as far away from himself as he could; he left the country, shut out the ones who'd known about it, learned a new language, became a new person- just to get it away from him.

Just as love is an experience completely unlike any portrayal of it in literature or art, completely different from everything, that nothing can prepare you for, so it is also with death. Of course, he felt a loss when he found the crumpled body on the street outside the apartment- curled up like a dog having died of neglect. He felt a tremendous loss, but beneath that there soon surfaced a hatred that had lied dormant long before. He hated himself at first- hated everything, especially the dead. Then the dreams came, and little by little, the hatred passed. The wounds scarred up leaving a numbness that had once been pity, then fear, then sorrow, then hatred. Now instead of hatred, he felt an emptiness, like the part of him that had known his friend had been surgically cut from his mind.

He moved out soon afterwards- back home for a few weeks, then visiting friends all over the country, and then when that wasn't enough, he packed up and left all together. He said a few goodbyes, but no one asked him to stay. They all understood that he couldn't have stayed. Too much of him had been lost.

He didn't think about getting back to bed. Instead, he left the one-bedroom apartment. In the yellow-gray stairwell, he pulled the rope to lower the stairs that led to the roof. He climbed up and walked out on the roof of the five story complex. Even in the early morning, the city was luminous. Despite the light, he could see the stars as well as he could have on a deserted midnight highway. He stepped out to the roof edge, and peered out. The ground was shining after the day's rain. He spat from the roof and watched it fall.

Hi, so yeah its 00:30 on friday, and I'm late. I haven't started the story yet, but I think I have enough inspiration from today to come up with something tomorrow morning. I'm not job-working tomorrow until afternoon, so I'll probably wake up early and get something up by afternoon.

SORRY THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING,

A

"Well, it all went like this," he said. He cleared his throat. The windows in my small ground-level office at HQ opened out to a grassy courtyard. Even with decent wind no breeze made it through. It was a hot day- the room was stifling. 

"I was on my way home from Nickels, that's the bar down on Seventh near Central. Probably around two in the morning. I was a bit drunk, but I was still thinking pretty straight."

"That's when you saw her, on the walk home?" I had brought in two cokes, but they were already going warm. Besides, there's only so much you can drink to keep cool. He shifted uncomfortably. I felt the heat rise from the open collar of my shirt up my neck. Beads of moisture rolled down my nose.

"Yeah, a block away. She was sitting at this bus-stop bench, watching me. I remember thinking that the buses were coming hourly by then, and she either just too late, or way too early."

"Did you recognize her?" I opened my yellow notepad and set my pen to be ready.

"Not right away, but she kept staring at me as I walked, so I racked my brain thinking where I'd seen her before. Then I noticed the umbrella."

"Umbrella?"

"Yeah, she had this little red umbrella with her, just sitting neatly on her lap. She was wearing all black; in the light from the street lamp you couldn't miss it. That's when I recognized her; she always left it hanging on her doorknob whenever it rained."

"You mean you saw it on her apartment door in your hallway as you went out?"

"Yeah, that's it. Our apartments were on opposite sides of the hallway, hers right by the stairwell. I noticed it all the time."

I jotted this down on my pocket notepad. 'Little red umbrella. Hung on door. Couldn't miss it.' "I don't remember it raining that day, do you?"

"No," he said. "That's the odd part- clear as crystal. Anyway, I didn't think much of it then. I was just thinking about getting home, going to bed. I was sort of drunk, remember."

"What kind of expression did she have?"

"I wasn't too close. It certainly wasn't happy. Maybe sad, maybe lonely."

"Did you think she wanted to speak with you?"

This seemed to catch him off guard. "Why?"

"Well, the umbrella. Maybe she wanted you to recognize her. Yours is the only other apartment on her floor, correct? So you'd probably be the only one who would recognize her, right?"

"You're saying she was waiting for me there?"

"Can you think of any reason that she would have been?"

He looked down at the table. "No, we've never even spoken."

I drew the folded sheet from the notepad. "She wrote this note before she killed herself. It's addressed to you."

(no title)

Time halts not
for our good graces,
Memories blur
and darken, fast.
Here we wait
for resolution
And find our lives
have come to pass.
Time halts not
for our good graces;
Like sculptures craft
in clay, we set.
Now, we brittle-
soon to crack
under the pressures
of the day.



"I do not wear a watch"

I am dying.
I am sick with an incurable disease.
I have no family- my friends are all gone.
It's been so long since I've been with someone
that I won't know what to do.
I'll get things wrong, and there won't be time for me to try to fix them.
But that's good, isn't it?
Entire lives wasted- doubt, regret, guilt, fear.
Slaves to possibility- prisoners of freedom.
There is no time for convention, or hesitation, or second-guessing.
There is only enough time to act if we start now.
I am afraid of nothing, and there is nothing tying me down.
There is much I wanted to do-
now the only things left, I can not do alone.
I hope we find each other in time.
I do not wear a watch,
and I will not talk about the past.



"Midnight Reflections"

A day of remembrance
is finally past,
The dregs of the hours
and loneliness lasts.
A thought of tomorrow
is one of reluctance;
Here, as I grasp
for the time that’s flown by.
Why must this moment,
a stagnant delusion,
Provoke such a longing
for all that is gone?
The clock is here, ticking,
good memories are fading,
Tomorrow approaches
And I am still lost.

The Mouse

Out the door, into the cold wet night- the drizzling end of a thunderstorm on his face and neck. He stood outside his Paradise of One like a mouse having found the door to its cage open. He looked towards the busy street. How long had it been since he had spoken with someone? Seen someone in person? Days had felt like years since they had all become the same. There was a burst of daylight- thunder like a gunshot. A beautiful rainless storm slumbered over the city; distant thunder rumbled with its breath.

He had lived at that apartment for a month now. The new city, job, streets, people; he had gotten lost among it all. It was his tragedy, the tragedy of the meek and timid, that shyness should so easily be mistaken for aloofness. Solitude had all but won, but something that day- perhaps just the magic of the storm- had drawn him out. There was a bar near his home, a small place on a side street, easily overlooked. He had wanted to go there, but there was always something that always had stopped him.

The clouds were low upon the city. In the mist, the glowing peaks of skyscrapers looked like they were burning. He continued along the narrow brownstone apartments, made a left at the church, then his second right. There it was. It was empty. In the dark window, he could just make out a person behind the bar: a narrow woman with straight black hair. She was reading some papers that were in a stack on the counter. She read one closely. Then she turned to a shelf lined with bottles, and propped the paper up. It was a photograph. She returned to her stack. He felt a pang of despair as he wondered if the place was open at all. On the door a hand painted sign with red letters invited him, "Come on in!"

By the door, his heart was pounding in his chest. He was playing conversations through in his head: He was awkward. He stumbled over his words. She was not interested in talking with him. "What'll it be" she'd ask, then fix his drink and not look back to him. What if there was nothing to say? He thought about turning and going back home. There was a burst of thunder and the rain started. He ducked into the awning above the door.

He thought about her empty bar. In the window, he saw boxes. The bar looked under-decorated. He wondered if it had opened just recently- maybe she had just moved to town also. He looked again at the sign, "Come on in!" Then he thought about the picture she had put up behind her. He smiled and exhaled a deep sigh. His heart calmed. Suddenly he felt like himself. He swung the door open and walked in smiling.

"Crazy weather!" He said as he approached the bar. 

It was the summer before my final year in university. I was living at home since classes ended, and had been putting off looking for a new apartment for months. Before I started reading classifieds, I already knew what I wanted: A studio. A one-bedroom. Anything, provided I lived alone. I'd spent the last three years and most of my childhood living with people; brothers growing up, boarding school, residence at University, then the four-person apartment the previous year. I was ready for life alone- I could feel it.

The thought made me nervous, but also exhilarated. The idea had a mystique to it. It made me think of my father, and the hazy years between his graduation and his marriage. He'd told me plenty of stories; his youth, his college years, about meeting my mother, about our family. There was a always that gap, though. From my calculations, my father must have spent six years unmarried, not a lawyer, having his own life. He seldom mentioned these years to anyone. His friends were mostly from after he met my mother. The others had rarely seen him over this period. It was like he disappeared in the city he'd always lived, living a life he intended to keep to himself. All I knew about it was that he'd lived alone.

He volunteered to drive us to the city and check out a dozen places over a weekend. In each apartment we saw, he wouldn't tell me anything, just "I think we should keep looking." There were some places I liked, but he was adamant. It felt like he was looking for something, and as soon as he didn't find it, he completely turned off to it. Sometimes this happened as soon as he saw the building.

Between the time we spent looking, he and I would catch up. Back home the house was full- we seldom had time to talk one on one. We spoke about a lot of things, but I kept pressing the topic of those hazy years. He answered me vaguely, and redirected the conversation to me.

When we visited one of the last places on our list, I was struck with a sense of familiarity. It wasn't déjà vu, really- this was more like I had seen it before, like it were a set for a television show.

"It feels like I've seen it in a movie or something."

My father had been instantly enthusiastic about it. "Son, that's because it's the right place."

Later, we signed with the landlord. "Son, just promise me one thing: Promise that you won't waste your time here. When you leave here, that's it. You'll have a new life- be an entirely new man. It's fine, it happens to us all, but this:" He rasied his hands to the ceiling. "This is yours, and you can't take it with you."

Damn! It's late! It's 2:50AM friday, and I'm still not done!!

I've been doing computer shit, aka absolutely nothing useful, for the entire day. I began writing around midnight, and actually have a fairly ok idea coming together. The problem is I also have work tomorrow, and really don't want to be up too much later.

I'll be writing tomorrow as soon as my schedule allows, so I expect to have the story for 7/23 up by early afternoon.

This was my fault, really. I've been getting too lazy about writing earlier in the day. I'll write more about all this tomorrow, now its bedtime!

g'night!


 

On the balcony high above the street, a cold breeze circled the inside of his shirt. The sky was dull green above where the sun would rise. On his back he could still feel the cool ocean breeze from the dream. He was breathing deeply. Even with the fresh early morning air, sitting still for so long had tranced him. He remembered the dream as though he were back on the sand by his brother's side. This was the most he'd thought about Saul in months.

"Well, I haven't had much time lately. I tried to write a bit in the beginning of the year- but that doesn't mean I've lost it, poetry's just not on the mind right now."

Saul paused to look at his brother for a moment, and then kept walking. "Don't tell anyone else about that though, you hear?"

He once asked Saul why he never showed the poems to any of his girlfriends, or to his writing teachers. "They wouldn't understand them. Maybe they'd like them, I don't know, but they don't know me well enough to get them. That's why I only show them to you. You get them." 

The silence between them grew until the only sound was the hiss of crashing waves. The waves rolled over their feet and then tugged them towards the sea.

"What about you" Saul said finally, "you still writing?"

"I wrote a new poem last week, can I read it to you tonight?"

"I was actually going to go out to a movie with this girl from the pool."

"I thought you would be around for my birthday!"

Saul smiled and rubbed his hand through his brother's hair. "I'll be around! I'll be there for the cake and presents and everything, same as always. I just thought I'd head out after all that, not too early. That's OK with you, right?"

The sun had set and he felt the cold breeze on his neck. "Can I read it to you before you leave?"

"Yeah, of course, I'm not going until pretty late tonight. Definitely. Great, I knew you wouldn't mind." He slapped his brother on the back. "What's it about, anyway?"

He told Saul about the highway and all the people that follow it straight to the end.

"That's a neat idea, I wonder if I'll be one of the people that never drive off it."

They were almost home. Before they reached the door to the high-rise, Saul turned to his brother. "Happy birthday. Stay off the road, kid."

On the balcony, he stood and yawned. In his bedroom, he reached for the box beneath his bed. Opening it, he removed a folded paper. He opened it to a poem, the last poem he had written. His brother had never read it.