Untitled?

Stale sunlight filtered through smudged and swirled glass plate. The fly ringing between the chipping sill and case of the window sounded the final alarm of the morning. Even as he rolled over and off of the mattress, Chip could feel the weight in his chest anchoring him to those last few minutes of sleep. He fought a heavy under tow as he made his way from the bedroom, bracing himself against the door frame and staring blankly into the abysmal gray of the midmorning hallway.

I can't do this.

Adjusting to the dim light, he shuffled along the uneven hardwood planks. Chip eventually found himself in the kitchen. The front door let in a vertical thread of light. Darla's coffee mug was still on the counter. The ring around it formed a dark brown crater in the smooth, thick wood. Some fuschia wildflowers had wilted and weeped onto the kitchen table, their dry petals dusting a stained and ink-smeared napkin. He peered over it and read around the debris. The handwriting looked childlike and rushed.

"They say it's ok, now. They want me to do it. They say they will take care of it."

He'd seen it last night, while getting a drink at the tap. His sister would rather write than talk more often than not. It was easier for her.

He sighed and brought the heel of his hand across his cheek, covering his mouth. Chip picked up the crumpled note. Frowning, he held it up to the south light in the window. There was something else written there. Near the bottom, in a microscopic scrawl, he found a post script:

"It's the right thing for me to do. The right thing to do. I understand. Tell little brother goodbye. And thank you."

His brow twitched, face going slack.

He was able to catch hold of a chair before collapsing. Head in hands, he slammed to the table. The heartbeat in his throat was choking him. Gasping like a banked trout between sobs, gripping handfuls of mahogany hair, unfocused pupils rolling around the woodgrain as if they'd detached-- That was it. That was what it was. She's done it. It's done. Oh God.

The thoughts came racing as a merry go round of childhood snapshots: riding bikes past whitewashed railing in a faraway town, warm ice cream cascading over sticky fingers, wool-socked feet bathing in the glow of a brick fireplace, toads clambering out of mom's canning jars. Even since the diagnosis, even since the separation, the isolation, the stigmatization, it hadn't been that bad. The sun would still rise on the ebb and flow of fields gone to seed. Not that bad. Still set along the trails they'd walk quietly listening for the shift to dusk. It wasn't that bad. No, it was quiet. It was good. It was a good life, damn it.

He let a fist hammer into the table. The pain jolted him, reeled him out of a fog of whirling thoughts. His eyes began to bore into the tile wall. They lasered in on that blue hand painted rooster directly ahead, as shallow forceful breaths began to bring his mind and body back into alignment. Chip stood, still focused on the tile, shoulders still heaving rhythmically.


The heavy door whined as he pushed it wide. It's cry shot over the open porch veranda, echoing out across billowing waves of gold and green and magenta rolling back into the hills. The view that harmonized so well with coffee and orange juice and creaking doors and quiet contemplation, that gave solidity to unspoken understanding... The noise was a violation of the frozen atmosphere trapped before him.

He turned as he stepped onto the worn painted blue deck. A midsummer breeze blew through him. The hot, dusty air stirred a cast shadow to the east, playing with the hem of a summer night dress. His gaze fell leaden; he drew it slowly as a blind man's cane across the overturned kitchen chair, the deep cobalt silhouettes cast in morning light, the dull corona reflected off of splotchy fading paint, finally alighting on the toes that dangled just a few inches from the simple, contented life they'd walked the day before. His whole face clenched. Maybe, if he could've shut his eyes just a little tighter, they would never open again. He wished to just blow away, like a stack of ash snowing over the fields, and never have to be again.

In a small, violent jerk, he forced himself to face it. To look into the contorted grim reality that was now his responsibility.

Back lit almost directly by the ascending sun, the figure looked like a saint cut into the fabric of the sky. In the high contrast her slept-in strawberry blond hair seemed to blend with the black shadows, wafting, fanning out and combining with the body of her gown in perfect parody of a deathly snow angel.

His life drained into the ground. He was a machine of arms, legs, and slow deliberate motion. In working to release the tight knots in the rope, his nails bent and broke and knuckles begain bleeding freely. The pace was steady. He barely noticed her weight once freed. Cradling her, he stepped down one one step, two steps, dirt.

Standing in the middle of a sun-drenched field, his young, squinting upturned face was lined with the dried traces of dirt, sweat, tears, blood, pain. The sun was at its apex. A cool zephyr swooped gently in from distant foothills; he let it steal the last scents of emotion, washing him with an emptiness not felt in years. Eyes closed, he released himself down onto the bed of warm grass.

A muddy, trembling hand crawled into his jeans pocket. He drew his father's revolver slowly from its hiding place.

Holding it above him, he watched his reflection in the polished barrel. Weighed it between his thumbs. Traced a finger pensively along its outline. With a deep and measured breath, Chip flung the shining metal piece far into the obscurities of nature.

I couldn't have done it. Thank you, Darla.

The Writer

The writer sat there, knuckles balled up and all white, no blood left in the veins. He was ancient, a fossilized glint in the eye of his bastard son, the son he never knew or would never know. The writer had ordinary eyes. Nothing was special, there was nothing inside them, brown, maybe some black, no beauty. His body was scrawny and frail. It was broken many times throughout his life and it never healed. He had a beard that he grew for many years. Its tobacco stains and smell told stories that even he couldn’t remember. But the beard had stopped growing. It remained even with his bare ribs. He too had stopped growing. He was the same person standing on that shitty altar thirty five years ago, only now, the writer combed a beard and dipped Copenhagen.

His house was still, it was always still. It was circular, not a single corner showed promise of change and the writer took to no notice to the lack of the light and the dust that sucked the paint and lacquer off the deteriorated walls. His studio sat at the top of the house in the attic. The stairs leading to the room were damp and the wood boards soft and caved from the years. A metal lamp hanging from a rusty hooked cracked in the ceiling dimly lighting the scarcely traveled staircase. Crows would circle the address for days and their wings would tire. Eventually they fell dead in their puddles on the writer’s lawn of overgrown dandelions and mustard weed. Air inside the house was scarce and when one found a patch, it was dry and fowl and hurt the back of the throat like the hurt of burning tobacco. The only decoration in the house was a cracked vase perched on the table. It had been purchased years ago from a pawn shop. The price tag was still attached, 6.99. Dandelions and tap water were added to the vase once a week and for two days those flowers shown a brilliant yellow attacking the terrible vagueness of the structure. Then, those flowers died and the water mucked up with blue bottle flies. The water and flowers putrefied for a week and everyday, the writer would look at the vase and smile at the flies bobbing up in down, stressing their wings. He enjoyed studying those flies.

There were no stories or thoughts left in his head.

His wife had passed on years ago. Leukemia maybe, or possibly lung cancer, she did smoke a lot. There were still Black and Mild butts lying around the rotten porch. That was all the writer had to remember her by, cigar butts. He didn’t pick them up or didn’t smoke their wet tobacco, they were left out on the porch, some days they were there, others, they disappeared. The wife’s face never appeared in pictures or movies or TV. She never talked on the radio, she was no one and some days, the writer wondered what she was, why he married her, what she had for him. But the only words that ever came out were on paper and they ended up in loose balls floating softly in the trash bin. Eventually they gave birth to a son. They never named him, never said a word to him. He never saw them, never knew them. The kid knew one thing, the inside of his mother’s womb. Maybe he knew the streets of Manhattan, that’s were the couple left him two days after his mother’s water broke.
The pencil he held hovered over his paper but it would never touch. His mind was flayed, his thoughts, shattered. Every inch of him was dead yet his heart was pumping blood, just enough blood.

The writer was once a man. His parents named him Robert Owen but he took the name of Harvey in his beginning years. Harvey began writing romantic stories at a young age. Short stories, novels, essays, his pencil was his mouth and his mouth was beautiful and filled with stories he would never write again. Having no friends, he began to isolate himself, he killed himself. His thoughts warped, his mind twisted to dread and despair. Nobody wanted his stories; his stories were true, true to the unwanted, true to the retarded child stuck in the corner, true to the beaten dog living off street garbage. His books never sold. The hundreds of copies pressed, sat restless in his attic, rotting and decaying somewhat like his life. He was no longer Harvey, no longer Robert.

Knuckles were still white, still clenched. The pencil still lingered above the paper. The writer drew a blank ten years ago, he hadn’t written since. But the pencil hovered there every day taking breaks at noon and dusk for the usual peanut butter sandwich and water.

Harvey tried various times to save himself. He wrote romantics for a time after his transformation but the beauty wasn’t the kind he once had. He now knew the beauty of death and anguish. He pursued photography and failed. He didn’t quit, he failed. Harvey took one last step before accepting death, he pursued god. There was an old building down the road, rotting, torn with moss and the dead wind that passed through the town of Malta once a week. During his years of despair, Harvey watched the edifice decay into a church. He spent days studying the people moving in and out of the stained glass doors, they were all smiling. He wanted to smile but he couldn’t, it was too hard. He entered the church one day, it smelled wonderful. His house smelled like misery and decay. The room was lighted and figures nailed to crosses were displayed everywhere. Water was decanted over his head. The spine in his back shivered and his skinned crawled. He spent months at the church confessing sins praying to his holy savior Jesus Christ. The writer sat, transfixed in blank devotion as his leader spoke to him looking down at his crumpled face with a great raging eye. He hit himself and hurt himself when he sinned, god became his only hope. His only hope failed him. Once, Harvey spent an hour or two at the market buying peanut butter, Wonderbread and milk. He might have bought cereal as well but he was only there for 2 hours. The money was on the bread, a 5 dollar bill and three 1 dollar bills. He went for the milk and returned. The money was gone, stolen, put in the hands of a drug dealer or maybe a hooker. Harvey sat down on that market floor; the dirt and hairs clung to him. He prayed to Jesus and to Mary and to God all asking for the return of his stained, torn, and crinkled bills. They never answered, those dollars never returned to Harvey. He sat there and wept and grew a beard and chewed tobacco. He lost his name; he lost hope and lost faith. God didn’t exist, god never had, those months, that water, that wine and bread, all waist.
The writer held the pencil tight. It hurt to think. But he thought anyway. He could remember now, the despair, the loss, the waste. He put the ideas into a story and brought the pencil close to his paper and stopped. He got up to make a peanut butter sandwich. He was nervous. God didn’t exist. This might be the last story he ever wrote. Was it worth it?

He sat back down chewing, thinking, dying. He put the pencil to the paper and his heart hurt. He wrote the first 3 words.

Palpitations.

2 more words.

Palpitations.

He stopped and put the pencil at the top to write his name.

The lead snapped in two.

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