Hedonism, Among Other Things

Another Indie Ink Writing Challenge. My challenge this week comes from Bewildered Bug:

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to

I don’t really have much to say about the challenge this week. The story pretty much speaks for itself.

(You can read my challenge to Operamouth here: Helix)

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Everything has gone to shit, I never wanted this, fucking this going down tonight. All I wanted was to have a few drinks with just a couple of friends, but I guess the word got out that I was going to be doing some off-the-wall-crazy-ass-party or something. Why the hell would anyone think that I was okay with this.

I walk around my apartment and I see some guy I’ve never met puking all over my radiator, which is just delightful. Two others are vomiting simultaneously into my toilet, and missing, while some girl is snorting coke next to them, on my sink. I assume it’s coke at least. And who the fuck are all of these people? Where the hell did they come from?

The lights have been shut off, and someone must’ve brought a strobe light with them. The flashes are giving me a headache. Of course the thumping rave music doesn’t help. Also not my music. People on X keep ramming into me, thinking they’re dancing as I attempt to survey the damage around my home. The people I originally invited over are long gone, leaving me to the wolves. Some friends, I guess. Fuck it, I would’ve left too if it wasn’t my goddamn place.

There is no sanctuary in here. Not even my own fucking bedroom. I walk in and I see a bunch of people fucking fucking all over my bed and floor. More than two, but I honestly can’t tell you how many. Bodies and limbs were strewn about everywhere. A fucking orgy in my goddamn bedroom. I hear more thumping and moaning but I couldn’t tell you where it was coming from, only that I hear it through the walls. They’re not thin either, the walls.

I just want to sit, but I can’t. People are passed out everywhere, on my chairs, my kitchen table, several on my sofa, some on the floor who are risking being trampled by the unceasing dance party. I see this guy drop a pill into a drink before handing it off to some girl. They walk away and are now lost in the crowd. Charming.

Maybe I should have called the police, when 200 people showed up unannounced for a rave in an apartment. But it all happened so fast. And besides, I doubt my landlord would believe me if I told him that I didn’t want any of this and that I was the one who called the cops, especially after this amount of time. Plus I’ve been to fucking busy with whatever damage control I can manage.

Speaking of which, blue and red flashes begin to fill the living room, accompanying the white flashes of the strobe. People think it’s another cool effect until they notice the sound of sirens creeping up from under the music. They start to flee. Every last one of them. Most run for the door, clogging it for a moment while others decide to fuck the crowd and jump out my window. I’m on the first floor anyways, though one moron forgot to open the window as he lept out.

I shut the music off and turn my light on. Finally, there is some peace and quiet. I sit down and rest my eyes, and let the anxiety of the night wash over me. My place is my own again.

At least, until the police come crashing through the door.

In Which There is No Light

It’s time for another Indie Ink Writing Challenge. My challenge this week comes from K. Syrah:

Describe the violent death scene of someone, and describe as something beautiful.

This prompt was right up my alley, thematically speaking. I’ve always been of the opinion that writing, at least good writing, should be about finding beauty in things that are horrible. I had a few ideas for this prompt, and my biggest challenge was picking one. I ended up choosing the one that was the most unusual, someone describing their own death, and the challenge then was simply making it work.

(You can read the response to my prompt here.)

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In all honesty the only thing that you really need to know about me is that I am dead. It’s been 19 minutes and 34 seconds since a man whom I’d never met tried to rob me and shot me in the head during our struggle.

You don’t believe me, do you? That I’m dead. Well, it’s not like I can’t blame you or anything. Hell, if our roles were reversed I probably wouldn’t believe you either. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am indeed dead. So how am I talking to you right now? That’s something I’m not sure I can explain.

I’m also not sure how I can describe what being dead is like. Or what it’s like to die. It’s one of those things that you need to experience in order to fully understand. But I suppose you’re curious so I guess I can give it a shot.

The best place for me to begin is on the circumstances on my death. Like I said before, I was shot. In the head. Really it was my fault, I should have given him my damn wallet, but I thought that I was tough enough to subdue the man. A word of advice: don’t try fighting a man with a gun, you will lose.

It only hurt for the first split second, as the bullet started boring into my skull. I specifically remember the bullet being really really hot. Once it actually began penetrating my brain, I don’t know. It was like, it was like time began to slow down to a screeching halt.

Your life really does flash before your eyes, at least as the bullet is passing into and through the frontal lobe. My guess is that as your brain is being turned into a mushy soup by hot lead the memories just sort of flash. And flash is the right term, I think. You don’t see your life as a movie, you see quick snapshots. They aren’t in any sort of logical order either, and it’s stuff you don’t really expect to see.

Honestly, what you remember are the tiny insignificant details that you would never be able to recall no matter how hard you try. As the bullet first entered the frontal lobe I remembered the striped tie my Mom always had me wear to piano recitals. I remembered what I ate on July 18^th, 1994 for dinner. It was macaroni & cheese, the kind that were dinosaur shaped. The perfume of the girl who I first said “I love you” to at age 16. There were hundreds of snapshots. Thousands.

And then the bullet began running along the line between the Parietal and Temporal lobes. My senses started to become mixed in my head, all the while more and more snapshots flashed in my eyes. Have you ever tasted music? The song that was playing when my brother and I got into a car crash tasted like blueberries. And chocolate. The apple pie I shared with my wife on our first date sounded similar to a piece by Bach, it started and stopped with each bite I took. And the colors, oh how they smelled.

Images disappear when the bullet hits the back section of the brain. It becomes more like, I don’t know, it’s really hard to describe. It’s sorta like those images cease being pictures and become sensations. You remember goosebumps during a snow day. Or sweat after a five mile run. You remember the joy of having your first child, but you can’t picture the child, just what it felt like to have one.

All of that stopped once the bullet exited out of the back of my head, spitting out bone and brain with it. The exit wound in the back of my head is approximately the size of a baseball. My brain is slowly oozing out the back as some birds begin picking at it. As I lay there, the authorities have yet to find me, and they won’t for another 7 hours and 34 minutes.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel. As you die it’s just the memories. But it’s not simply nothingness after. It’s more than that. Much more. You actually transcend time and space. You are everywhere and everywhen. It’s really hard to explain. It’s like you’re witnessing all moments that ever were and ever will be and it’s happening simultaneously. I am looking back on my life, and I am also looking ahead on yours.

It’s not like you’re God, but it’s pretty damn close.

Certainly the End of Something or Another

And it’s time for another round of the Indie Ink Writing Challenge.

This week I am actually going to put what my prompt was after the story. The reason for this is because I fear that knowing the prompt might spoil what I have now dubbed “The Something or Another Trilogy.” (Part I and Part II) I will say that the story came together in my head almost instantly after reading my prompt.

It’s funny, I never intended to make this into a series. It basically started because I liked the sound of the title. My prompts for the past two weeks just worked as perfect continuations of a story that I didn’t plan to continue.

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Police came to the door of The Mother the morning after the jump. The pounding at the door woke her up, hungover to the point where she wanted to perform a lobotomy on herself with a corkscrew. They told her that her son had died. Jumped off a building. When she asked if she was needed to go to the hospital to confirm that it was indeed her son’s body they told her no, there wasn’t any real body left to be identified that they had to go off the dental records and DNA found on the scene and that they were truly sorry for her loss. It was the first of The Man that The Mother had heard since the social worker took him away, all those years ago.

Preparations for the funeral began the next day. There was no coffin; there wasn’t enough of a body left to even be put into one. The Mother was forced to get The Man cremated, though she didn’t want her son to be burned. She wanted him to be buried next to The Father. Body by body.

The funeral itself had few guests. Three, to be precise. There was The Mother, of course, and she had a hidden flask full of vodka with her. The other guests were an older woman with a young child. A girl, crying uncontrollably. The Mother did not recognize either of them.

And the death of The Man is not to say that he actually had nothing to live for. He did. In the most important way imaginable, he still had something to live for. It caused him to delay the inevitable for as long as he did. A daughter. She is currently five years old.

The Man was barely out of the foster home by the time that he met The Wife. He was in the early stages of his alcoholic depression, and she was happy to oblige The Man. Drugs too, there were a lot of drugs at this point in The Man’s life. After The Daughter arrived, The Wife ran away, leaving The Man to raise the child on his own. There is still no trace of The Wife, she is believed to be on the run from the authorities.

After the funeral had completed the woman at the funeral walked up to The Mother and began speaking to her. She told The Mother that the young girl there across the room was The Man’s daughter, The Wife is not around and that she, The Mother, is The Daughter’s closest living relative. The Mother took a long drink from her flask as the woman continued. But given her ‘history’ the state has deemed The Mother unfit to care for The Daughter and that she would be placed into foster care.

She didn’t care, The Mother. The Man had run away years ago, called the social worker. It was he who severed all the ties between the two, not her. That girl is not her problem. Besides, with every single person she is close to, that person’s life turns to shit. The Father died in the snow after years of fighting, and now The Man…well, she didn’t even want to think about that. She was unfit to care for The Daughter and she knew it.

The Mother started drinking more. A lot more.

On the night of his suicide The Man had written two notes. The first note was held in an envelope and remained in his apartment. It stated that it was to be read by The Daughter when she was older. In it he wanted to explain himself. And he wanted to say he was sorry. Pain had won out against love. The second note was mailed and addressed to The Mother. It arrived about a week after the funeral.

When the letter arrived, The Mother was in a rare sober state. In truth it was early afternoon and she was nursing a massive hangover from the night before. She was surprised to see handwritten mail addressed to her, and it took her a few minutes before she realized who had written it. The letter sat on the kitchen table for quite some time, The Mother was afraid to read what was in it. She was sure that The Man was going to blame her for his suicide. She killed him. Even in death, he was going to find a way to ruin her life more.

The Mother took a shot before finally reaching for the letter with trembling hands. She found that it only contained one sentence:

Please take care of her, I know that you can do it.

For the first time since The Boy had been taken away all those years ago, The Mother cried. She cried for the fighting she and the Father did and how it affected The Boy. She cried for the day he tried to drain her vodka. She cried for the day he ran away and the day he was taken. She cried for the fact that she couldn’t have been there in The Man’s final days. She couldn’t save him. But what she cried the most for was that even though she had been such a horrible mother to him, he forgave her.

It has been 15 years since the sink in the bathroom smelled like fat black markers and the drain tasted vodka. Only this time it was The Mother, not The Boy, pouring it into oblivion. She finally decided she needed to make some changes to her life.

After all, she had a granddaughter to meet.

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My prompt this week came from Bran and it was this:

Tell me something bitter, but then turn it sweet.

I took this prompt to mean “The Something or Another Trilogy” as a whole.

On the Edge of Something or Another

Here we go with another Indie Ink Writing Challenge. My challenge this week comes from My Plaid Pants:

Falling off the edge of the world

This challenge has the honor of being a sort of sequel to the very first piece I wrote specifically for this blog, called To Walk Through the Valley of Something or Another. Overall these two works tell the story of a very hard life. In my opinion they are some of the most brutal pieces I have ever written.

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The Boy, now grown to The Man, is standing at the top of a 32 story building and in precisely 3.4 minutes is going to leap off the edge. Suicide. Nothing left of The Man except a stain and some bones shattered so fine they might as well be sand. It is night, as he doesn’t want to be seen. He doesn’t want a crowd looking up to him, telling him he has so much to live for while one asshole tells him what is he waiting for jump. This isn’t a cry for attention. This is it, the final moments. The ‘real deal,’ as it were.

The Man is 25, but on the inside he felt that he had lived for over a thousand lifetimes. He was tired. And sick. It’s not that The Man was ill; there was no painful, incurable disease. No, it is more like there’s a darkness eating away at his soul. Like there’s a parasite feasting on his will to get up the next morning and start everything over again and again and again and again and again. He wanted to go to sleep and stay that way.

Staying asleep and death are not the same thing, obviously. For The Man, it wasn’t that he ‘wanted to die’ so much as he ‘wanted to not live.’ And there is a difference between the two, make no mistake. The Man was scared of death. Everyone is. But it’s a cost-benefit analysis: is overcoming that natural anxiety to death stronger than the desire to wake up the next morning? For The Man, the scale had finally tipped.

As The Boy he ran away from home shortly after The Father had died while shoveling the snow, now over 15 years ago. He stayed hidden as long as he could, living in the forest at first, using some of his Boy Scout training in order to survive, picking berries and attempting to trap animals. But he couldn’t stay in the forest long. The Boy was caught trying to steal food from the supermarket and brought back to The Mother. Not long after he placed an anonymous phone call to a social worker, The Mother was abusive to The Boy for everything he had done; for running away and for the day The Father died… He was taken by the social worker a week later.

He has not seen The Mother since.

The Boy was 10 when he was placed into foster care. The Boy was too old for adoption, most families choose to pick a young child, no older than two or three. They want to be able to raise the child from scratch, as if it was actually their own. He was in foster care until he was 18.

The darkness hit The Man shortly after leaving the foster home. He just stopped wanting to do anything. There would be days in which The Man would wake up and just lay there, motionless, just waiting for the next time he could shut himself from the world. He started drinking to numb the pain of living. And it was a pain, or it felt like one. Or maybe it was a lack of pain, when looking inward on himself The Man saw nothing. He felt Nothing. There wasn’t depression or anxiety or anger towards his family, the pain he felt was the pain of nothingness. It was the pain of knowing, for a fact, that he had nothing to truly live for. The pain of pointlessness and obsolescence.

It is cold, on top of the 32^nd floor. It is always windy on the tops of tall buildings like that. Wind from the city below hits a high rise and shoots straight up. It is now 30 seconds before The Man is going to jump. He thinks back to his life and wonders what was the point, if any, to his existence. All he can remember in his final moment is pain, sadness and loneliness. Or at least that is what he thinks he should feel. Heaven and Hell also creep up in The Man’s thoughts. He supposes that he is now guaranteed to go to Hell, if it does exist. Oh well, it’s no matter, eternal peace and bliss probably gets boring after the first thousand or two years. At least Hell manages to stay interesting. The Man leaps from the building.

Before the jump, The Man pictured himself majestically swan diving off of the building. He thought it would be beautiful. He hoped that something about himself would be. Beautiful. The reality is not so. The Man is tumbling, tumbling and he can see the sky, ground, sky, ground, sky, ground, sky and The Man knows that noth

Whore.

Indie Ink Writing Challenge. Again. My prompt this week comes from Dafeenah, the challenge:

There was a 5.8 earthquake today and it got me thinking. 

That even if I lost everything, my hate for you would still be intact. 

Not much to say except that this piece is pretty dark. I must also admit that I didn’t put in as much time on it as I should, as I’ve actually gotten my first paid writing job as a community reporter and that has been taking up a bit of my time. It’s really great that I’ll start seeing my name on paper. And getting published is key, right?

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You bitch. You bitch, you fucking bitch. Fucking whore. How could you do this to me. Fuck me over? Bullshit. No, that’s some fucking bullshit. What, I wasn’t good enough for you or something? And your reasoning, oh, I’m just too busy for a relationship right now. You weren’t saying that shit at first when you came into my work unannounced.

I don’t get it, I really don’t. One minute you’re practically stalking me, and the next you tell me that you need ‘personal space’ and that I’m ‘stifling’ you. You don’t see the hypocrisy in this? You never saw the hypocrisy in this?

God, what’s the point to even be angry anymore, she’s gone anyways. It’s been months, why, how am I still even fucking angry at that bitch. I need to move on, need to move on but it’s hard.

Fuck, it’s not even that I’m mad at her, why I’m so pissed when I think of her. When I see her face as I’m drifting to sleep. I think I’m mad at myself, for having stayed affected by her for so fucking long. Four months, four fucking months and I still can’t get her out of my head. It’s pathetic, I’m pathetic.

But hell, I’d rather be angry than sad. And I have the right to be angry, after what she did. And over the phone, with friends around. You know how degrading that felt? I’ve never seen someone pull away so fast. And pull away she did. She wanted to spend endless nights together at first, then out of the blue she bails out.

She said that she had work, that it was going to be the busiest time of the year for them. That we wouldn’t be able to spend any time together. But it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to send out a goddamn text message. A ‘hey how ya doing?’ or something like that. Is it so hard? No. That’s why I sent plenty of them out. All day.

Because I cared.

And I’m the one who need to back off? No, fuck that. You’re the one who needed to come back in. I really liked you, all I wanted to do was show that to you. That I cared about you, care about you. I was frustrated that you said that, back off. It’s your fault I was angry, you bitch. Whore. And now you’re gone.

Because I cared.

Whore.