Howl

Her name was Annalee, and she was mine that night.

This is not boasting. It's no talk of pride or conquest. I did not conquer her. I was not proud. I was humbled. I was brought low, to my knees and lower still into the ground. I could never be far enough beneath my Annalee, the night she WAS my Annalee. She floated, and yet she bore a constant pressure, a weight and a substance that bore my down. She was humility in pale flesh, and in the dark, she was moonlight and terror and a sweet taste.

She found me sitting by the lake, leaning outside of the hungry mouth of the woods. Branches loomed like the jaws of caves, and from that jagged hollow, I watched the full moon howl down at me. It pressed into my neck, into my veins. The pressure was maddening, and I could feel my innards crumble – I was hollow. The lake rippled and whispered in the breeze, sucking up that glow and throwing it in all directions. It roiled like a thousand sharks. The lake was hungry deep in its belly.

So was I.

Annalee walked the ring of the lake in thick boots, coarse pants, and a thick sweater. Her clothes were rough and cheap, to match the ragged cut of her hair, to match the cracks and edges in her eyes. She walked like old men trudged. Annalee had eyes like hers because she'd seen things. She had lake eyes. She had hungry eyes. She saw me.

The cabin wasn't mine, wasn't hers. It stank of cobwebs, but the stove still worked and the fire was thick and hot. She kissed me, thick and hot, and I kissed her with a wet hunger. She threw me down and I fell. She slid up next to me, gentle as a lonely cat and I crawled over her. She looked at me with a challenge, but her lips were quivering. My fingers were clenching. My palms were shaking. What a mess we were.

I remember the soft feeling of her belly on my cheek. I brushed my nose against the milky whiteness of her, the prison of that mad moonlight. I kissed her and I tasted salt and sweet and more of her. Every kiss left another in my mouth. My fingers slid away her coarseness and my whispers worshipped the soft girl down before me. She was revealed. I was under her clothes. I was pressed down inside of her.

The lake had eaten me.

Annalee left with the dawn light. She looked sharp and the rawness of her stung my eyes. The morning was quiet, too quiet, and it took the comfort and the warmth from me with a fatal execution. It killed my night eyes slowly. I marched out into the wood again, my shoulders square but my eyes still howling moonlight.

Annalee would be back. Would I be humble?

Unprompted: Assess

“Every problem is made of opportunities waiting for a solution to put them all in order.” Natalie took an unhealthy satisfaction in finding that solution. At least, that's what the rushed and sweating regional manager seemed to think. She'd arrived less than four hours ago. He had never felt rushed until...about four hours ago.

He hadn't started to sweat until now. “I understand that you've been sent here, ahehe, to consult-”

She cut him off with a raised finger. “Optimize.”

“To...optimize our location operation...” He covered a curse with a smiling, easy sigh. “But I think you're missing a...sense of the ground, here?” This was how it went, he thought. Some young hotshot shows up at his office to feather her cap with a little extra efficiency. They waltz in full of swagger, tr to take charge with their fresh new processes and buzzwords. The smart ones understand, though.

He'd thrown her the most basic jargon for a red flag. No upward wants to be tied to a red flag. Self-starters come to his little hole in the jungle all the time. They never engage, never latch on. No one wants to spend the next ten years in a hole like this – that's what they called paid retirement. It was a retirement that Johann Travers appreciated quite a bit.

Natalie didn't seem to appreciate that one bit. “I've read the reports. I've already read the local news periodicals, an underground blog, a tourism guide, an intro to the local language, and a primer on customs and traditions for the natives. Oddly, you didn't mention anything about ground sensations on your report. I'm amazed production is down at all, actually, the way you put the numbers.” She kept walking down the stone steps towards the river factory complex. Natalie wasn't sweating.

Johann Travers could sweat enough for the both of them. The heat was unseasonable, his suit was already ruined, and he wasn't used to making the trek down to the factory. Natalie noted each of these details with a growing mental groan. The manager went on, “My report, heh, gave you the facts. I've been running a profitable op here, Miss-”

“Profitable on the short term. Profitability is a detail, not a goal. Based on my independent research, you've been shut down for the last three months.” She talked over his flustered, sweaty objections. “Spending your operating budget to feed the work to our competitors upriver. Your capital is burned. Your warehouses are empty. And you've been lying to us, Mr. Travers. That...could be a problem.” Her eyes were iron-hard with honest contempt. Travers couldn't help but find it unprofessional, even under the circumstances.

She stopped at the bottom step. “I don't like you, Mr. Travers. I hope I get to replace you.” She walked on, leaving Travers in a fuming, sweating, fearful mess. Assessed, measured, and placed – Natalie would have to find a use for him later.

The company could use a liar like him, but not anywhere near stakeholder impact areas like this one. Natalie hadn't come because of the reports.

She'd come to stop the revolt already in the works in the village below.

Clippings

A stranger used my clippers at some point. Should I be concerned?

Their hair was a light, gentle shade of brown, nothing like my coarse black curls. Short and straight, with a touch of fire. Where did these little trimming even come from? My roommate's hair is black and fine and made of wires. So where?

Also, why didn't this stranger clean the damn clippers?

Upon further inspection, trimming wasn't the only operation performed within my bath-and-a-half that fateful night. My soap and shampoo are at dangerously low levels, beyond where they should be. My toothpaste was down three solid brushes. I don't own cologne, but the place reeked of it. Toenail clippings were surprisingly present, and the toenails were cleaner and healthier than mine.

I'd been invaded by a fastidious metrosexual.

With a bit more digging (and the use of a kit I'd purchased during one of many bouts of obsessive compulsion), I came to more startling conclusions. Trace fragments of silk, latex, and alcohol clung to my shower drain – the invaded had been having sex, or at least their crotch had been. This, I found, to be unforgivable. No one has sex where my bathroom is involved.

Not even me. My invader was a competent, cupidous metrosexual...with a tendency to leave a mess and waste cleaning gels.

My resentment grew to a fever pitch.

I've set traps for him – extra combs and hair gels and exfoliates. When I catch him, I'll interrogate him for him secrets.

I'll also make him clean my fucking clippers. Really. Is that too much to ask?

Near Death

The flashing steel illuminated the pale concrete, and there was a sudden cool wash of light.

I understood. I'd been careless, reckless, selfish, and stupid. It was another long night of work to support the fiancee who never asked me to work a day. I was exhausted, bitter, and ready to drink and fight. It would be our third fight this week. It was Tuesday. Baby, we were on a roll.

Bills kept stacking, and I felt drinking them out of my ulcer. She kept looking at me with those cool, gray disapproving eyes, and it just make my belly wrench and burn. So I worked and I drank. So she disapproved. So I worked. So she glared. So we fought.

God, I was such a fool. The pain was getting worse...the stink of gasoline. In the distance, I could hear the ambulance wailing in the distance. Tonight, it was coming for me. Thank god. As soon as I was off the morphine, I was going to quit my job. Fuck it. I love my soon-to-be wife and hate my growing ulcer too much to worry. Money will come; maybe I'll work for my father, or for her mother.

There are so many opportunities out there for a man ready to love his life with a passion. The gurney was warm and stiff, and I could feel it carrying me on to a better tomorrow.

The wailing sirens went quiet. I was losing consciousness...when I woke up, things were going to be better. She'd been sick lately, and so worried...wait...

Worried...sick. We'd always been so safe.

Why was the ambulance going so slowly...?

Their faces....

Oh.

Well.

Fuck.

Silk Flag Blues

(Lyrics again. This time, it flows pretty closely to the classic blues riff. Not too many words here, but I hope they've got an impact.)

Cool night...
Wraps around me...
Like a blanket of silk...stuck to your skin...

Hot lights...
Shine down on me...
Like the sun on a funeral morning...

And I see the sign...
Yes, I see the sign...
I see the sign...
That I haven't seen enough.

Rockets glaring...
Trumpets blaring...a new child.
A new Earth. A new flag...

Fires blazing...
In our hearts and our eyes...
Burning everything before me...

And I see the sign...
Yes, I see the sign...
I see the sign...
That I have...seen...too much.

I want to feel your body.
I want to feel your soul.
I want lose this feeling.
I want to...lose control.
(I wanna..)

Forget the filibuster...
That tells me not to sway...
I want to feel my brother's hand.
And my sister's sexy ways.

And I...
See the sign...
I...see the sign
Of better days...

I said...I see the sign.
Yes, I...I see the sign...
To claim the day.

217

(Nothing really prompted me, so I'm taking a new angle on an old post, possibly part of something larger...writing a novel would be a fun chore.)


His breath came in shuddering rasps behind the mask. It was a familiar sound; it swam throughout my ears, intimate inside of the headphones. The display was clear and bathed in the pale blue of monitors on late nights. It was a familiar hue; I'd picked it for that reason. It had felt right at the time. The door number was 217, the second floor, the last room on the right. Frost blew over the numbers from the mask. I'd found it, and now he had found it. It was time.

“Do I have authorization?” The trapped breath belied a sweet and gentle voice. He always asked; I'd trained him to. Always ask. Always wait. Never act without my leave. I gave him the green light. As we'd rehearsed, he knocked.

The man they called the Tiger answered. He wore no shirt, no shoes. His hair was a ragged ginger, but his skin was dark and thick and heavy. He was a lean man, but he was hard, and across his arms...across his chest, his back, his face...all over him were the marks and scarification that earned him his name. His eyes were sharp – contacts, tiger's eye gems flickering with digital curiosity while the man himself looked distant, far from this world.

That is, until he saw the mask. Faceless, shining chrome on plastic, run through with veins and circuits of that lonely blue. Hoarfrost clung to the edges of the doorframe, and now to the edges of his hair. He tried to slam the door; he failed. The door tore off the hinge inside, sending him reeling.

He was not alone. We hadn't planned for this, but it seems we hadn't needed to. These were two men with guns and knives. Another shudder breath rang through my ears and there was a sudden lurch of motion on the display. I heard the crunching of a breaking hand, a knife clattering to the ground. I could almost feel the impact of ribs into wall studs, everything buckling together. Another lurch, and my eyes failed to adjust. My vision swam, and I could only hear for just a moment. Two gunshots – wide, no damage to his body armor – and a crunch. I righted my view in time to see a face evaporate like a glass bulb before a sledge. The blood was freezing over on part of the display.

The Tiger was in a corner, gasping and growling. He was readying himself. Where his fingers touched the cheap plaster of the walls, lines were deepening and gouging into the flesh of the apartment. He was no so small anymore. He had no claws, but his shadow was sharp and dark and looming. He was positing – calling forth a primal idea, a stalker in the shadows. He'd written the story on his flesh; the power was coming through. Even through the connection in the mask, I could hear the faint sound of glass – cracking, shattering, and this time howling like nails had drug across it.

The Tiger lunged, and deep, black lines tore through the walls and floors and ceilings. The contact between them was sudden, vicious, and brief. The Tiger's hands were caught, drawn apart with a power greater than tigers and stalkers and beasts and killers. His rage and hunger and instinct roared at the mask.

The mask did not flinch. There was another long, rattling breath into the filters.

A boot pressed into the Tiger's sternum. Arms pulled and a leg pushed. The Tiger made not a sound as he was bowed and folded. One, two, three hammer blows to his face connected with the floor after the second swing. The ground was cracked down to the lower floor – the rest of the place was abandoned, for that I am thankful.

“It is over,” came the voice behind the mask.
“Verified. Return by the route I'm sending.”
“Yes, father.” My son turned and left the scene. He did not fret over the blood on his gloves or his mask, flecked over with bits of ice from the exhaust he left behind.

I felt the shame he should have. We live in troubled times, however, and one does what one must to survive. I'd already received the next set of offers from the organization. I read through the first.

The name of the location made my heart stop. It seemed that the time had come.

My son would have to return home. He was ready.

I, with my simple heart, with feelings unsuppressed by steel and science and a father's fear...I was afraid.

Unprompted: Survivor

The dream was a lie. The truth was too much. The middle ground could not hold.

Drinking never seemed to appeal to me, but I found a certain romantic quality to the practice. The smoothness of the dark liquid on the rocks or the pale white water-but-never-so rolling down towards the tongue. Then there's the burn of it; the punishment to pride and the indulgent heat of it. The heart roars and the throat cries. We deny it and embrace it, and we really need to take a piss, but when we take that first breath, that breath is cool. That breath is sweet. That breath is unhindered by the world. By throwing back the glass, we throw back our shoulders. We throw off our burdens.

It tastes like shit. I feel sick inside – allergic to tequila but burning for another shot. It's self-destruction and inner peace. It's death and rebirth and renewal and waste and a red-hot flow through my conduit. Some escape into the drug; I drown inside the romance of the shot. It is not glamorous, though I dream like it is. It is not romantic, really, but I love the way skin feels against me when I'm heated up. People are cool on me then, not burning hot, too scalding to dream to touch.

I know they're not on fire, but the hurt is real, and there is no easy compromise.

The dream was a lie. The truth was too much. The middle ground could not hold.

And yet it must. The end is much too much as well.

Discomfort

There it is – the taste of bile in my throat.

I wish it were mine. The gorge is from my belly, but I owe it all to them, to the looks in their eyes, to the passion and the fire of their fervor. They are united. They are awakened. They are one.

They're going to kill me.

I spit at the crowd, and they howl and spit back. If only saliva were flying, but there's fire and knives among them. The ropes are tight. My eyes burn and my throat cracks and gasps. My tongue is fat and full of the taste of my own acids – at least I can spit it out, the taste of stale bread and old dirt. People dirt. How many men had died in that cell?

Did they ever dust? I doubt it.

The crowd was roaring to its fever pitch, seeking absolution for the sin they were about to commit. It disgusted me. I'd done my crimes, and I would pay, but I was never once blood-thirsty. I drank it down with a look of displeasure and a feeling to match, but that blood was my water and my meal. It was my breath and my fresh light. I killed to live.

They loved it.

The first stone sent electric sparks across my eyes and a trickle of blood soon followed. The sight of it, running slow across my eyeball, made me want to itch it. The discomfort was maddening. I just wanted to wipe it, but I was caught fast, and I really thought, “I will die here today, but someone get this blood out of my eyes!” The frustration was burning a hole through my lungs, and before I knew it, it was more than they could take.

The ropes broke. The crowd surged the pole. They beat me, thrust metal into my meat and bone, bit and tore and screaming my flesh away. Everything cascaded in red like a burst balloon. A swarm of rats couldn't have been more methodical. I was perforated, lacerated, opened and revealed.

I stared at them. They stared back at me. Minutes passed in a red, sticky silence.

I felt no pain. They felt no remorse.

It was over.

Ring It Up

They tell us lately that freedom isn't free. I will respectfully disagree.

Sure, I pay taxes, but those don't limit me or hinder me. I never feel them, not as deeply as Joe the Plumber does. Every tax cent comes through his uretha on a fishhook and I worry deeply for him. I wish his taxes felt as free as mine did. At least he has the health insurance – lucky, hook-dicked bastard. If I ever got sick, I'd be in debt for decades.

I mean, sure, I have to work a job, but I'm free there as well. I'm employed at-will, which means I can up and leave any time I want, no strings, no shame, no complications. My company's just as free, and we have an understanding that way. We both have everything I make to lose, so it keeps things nice and balanced.

I smoke, I drink, I eat fatty foods, but it's not a sacrifice of my rights. I've got nothing but options, and the options are everywhere. I pity the poor bastards who want to eat vegetables – have you seen the price of the healthy stuff on menus? It's a goddamn form of slavery. I'll stick to my American dream, my emphysema, blood on my grille from some pedestrian, and a McDouble in each fist. Because I'm free, and this is America.

We're at war, but no one's asking me to participate – there's no draft, no forced labor in mills to give our boys steel. We keep our internment camps in other countries, so no worries to Americans, and you want to know the best part? I don't even have to remember it's happening, except when those selfish widows and soon-to-bes look at me like I'm the one with the problem. I didn't blow up any towers, and I certainly didn't go crazy Islam on anybody. God forbid – the Christians would crucify me.

All in all, I think I'm freer than I've ever been. I live in a land of opportunity, as long as I respect a few basic social rules. Hell, as long as I respect the white, conservative family, I can have it pretty good here, without any hate, prejudice, or fear. I don't have to know what's wrong with all those other people – they probably deserve it.

If you don't like it, move. Here, you're so free that you don't even have to vote.

Lightning and Thunder

Flash.
Boom.
Flash – the sudden shock the brain when I saw the scene.
Boom...the realization slowly starting to dawn.
Flash-white skin, pale moonlit sheets through cracked windows. The damage turned the shadows into grasping, alien fingers and my chest into a charging, raging static breath.
BOOM. A gasp that brought me to my knees. The inhalation brought in a sweet smell – strawberries and blood.
Flash, flash, FLASH, and revelation. There she lay, my beautiful one, my angel, my divinity. The only good thing I'd created. My daughter...
Boom...almost an afterthought, distant. My son...he was holding the box of strawberries. I hadn't even seen him.
FLASH- rage, white hot and full of unreasonable but perfect guilt. Why? WHY?! Where?
BOOM- There! Close. Here.
Their mother had finally come home. Her knife was as wet as her lips, and both smelled of strawberries.
Flash...flash...flash...boundary strikes, the edges of a roiling storm. The static breaths were rattling and writhing in my lungs and I found my feet in a sparking, sudden rise.
Boom...more of a rumble or a purr. Her white dress was perfect, the color and brightness of thunderbolts. She rose to meet me, took her lips with min-
FLASH! Hands grasping, nails digging, a knife clattering to the floor, forgotten. This was a primal grapple, rolling over the broken remains of our futures. Our best mistakes, disheveled while he reached for each other.
BOOM – her head struck the headboard, not once but BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
The faint flicker FLASH of a knife not so far away.
The sick little boom...boom...boom, thud of metal hitting bone hitting wood and leaking blood.

I barely heard the flash of the sirens.
I didn't feel the booms upon my backs of their batons.

The storm had come back into my home.
She was just how I remembered her.

Wet Blanket

While you were dreaming, I had a dream of my own – the same dream I always have. In it, I never move; I am only moved. I never breathe, I simply catch the breath of others. I know the touch and taste of skin, better than a man’s wife or a woman’s husband, but never once has my name been whispered, never once my heart remembered.

I am wrapped up in you. I know you in the morning, at your least prepared. I hold you like a lover, like a mother, like a child. You yawn and smile and pull yourself away…I cling and grasp, but my hold is weak. You shower. You have your coffee. You walk out on me, expecting me to be there every night. And like a fool, I am.

Tonight, though, you’re not alone. Another woman, dressed like you are dressed. Kissed by the same breath of wine and cigarettes. You stink, but you still crawl over me, sliding fingers with indulgent, decadent claws against me. You’re hot against me, eager. With a crook of your finger, you bring her over. I watch you kiss her, watch the last of your lipstick stain. You both only watched me for a moment, though you felt me throughout the night.

By the dawn, we were alone. You felt alone. I wanted not to feel alone, freshly haunted by my dreams. They never end when I awaken. You get up to shower, to have your coffee. I cling to your skin, and you just drag me along.

You drop me into the washing bin…stained with the scent of you.

Soon, I will be clean.

Obsidian

I started talking to myself at the age of five. I wasn't very interesting at the time.

Some people had friends, a few of them imaginary, but I guess I'm more of the loner type. Rather than connect, I separated. I spoke to myself through my toys, my action figures, and my dolls. Yes, I played with dolls. Those heroes needed girls to talk to, and steal from, and give extra treats, didn't they? It would be a weird little world where a boy couldn't find a girl to talk to.

My other side was formless, then. He wasn't very fun. He didn't understand my games, didn't understand any of them really. The soldiers game. The school game. The parents game, and especially the sister game. He would look at her for hours...why did she exist, he pondered, and why was she entitled to our things? I argued with him constantly. My parents were worried.

After they were satisfied, years had passed and I'd learned to talk more quietly. The games had turned into dramas, growing into the teen fantasies and epics that turn lives and hearts around. The most passionate love stories of ages past were about teens, the displaced children of a modern world and raging young adults of a lost past. Would someone twenty-something and too cool to care have made a proper Romeo? I walked upon my stage those years, and my whispering partner frowned in disapproval. His eyes were blue now. He had my mother's eyes, the sort of eyes she had when she was trying to understand something she found ugly, but possibly a sign of some hidden potential for genius.

I grew and the daggers and poisons and breath-soaked mirrors came and went, and so had I. I was adult now, and capable of saying adult things. I was wholly formed and volatile within, a volcano bursting...onto an open sea. I was forming a cool and stable center while I burned away, pushing that tide of possibility further out. It's what I did. It's what we all do. We become. And so he became...he formed. Took on a shape, distant and abstract but distinct. Raven feathers. The glint of silver, reflecting those same blue eyes. I was cooling and forming. He was fully formed and already very cold.

He stayed with the heat, while I expanded. I lost my geothermal drive. He never warmed a degree and never followed. I took the wrong paths and he didn't laugh, but his eyes did. He knew better. He would have warned me. Adults don't listen to voices anymore, though, do they?

I buried him. I have a new imaginary friend now. He goes to offices and drinks coffee. The rest of my mes wait in obsidian for him to realize what he's lost.

It cracks sharp. It bleeds.

Dog Star Waltz

“And that one? That's Sirius...the dog star. The brightest star in the night sky. He looks down at us, barking and roaring, leading us to a place we need to go. It let me away from home...let me out here to Seattle. And I think it let me pretty well.” She smiled, fingertips caressing constellations.

“And over there...I think...I think that's the Big Dipper. Yeah, I know it looks completely different from this angle. You don't have to believe me, but it's more beautiful from behind...you can see the water flowing down the handle, glistening with nebulae and dripping with cometary rain. It's gorgeous...when you see it, you'll flip.” She slid one arm over the other and started to spin, a private dance with the darkness. In every direction, there was light – a gyroscopic panorama.

“They say that space is dark and empty and cold. That's not true at all, depending on your point of view.” She kissed her mask, watching the muted flash of her comm...he was screaming. Panicking. She couldn't go there, couldn't feel that way.

She didn't have enough air to waste. “I want you to see...see what I've seen. Touch what I've touched. I just kissed a star...if you want your goodbye, come out...come...out here...and press your lips to it...” Her spinning was constant, slow and musical...she offered no resistance, an eternal top.

“Promise...promise me...I won't dance alone. Sir...Sirius...”

On the other end of the line, more than seconds passed. Minutes...she was dead before she started comforting him.

He was crying for her ghost. A dancer frozen in a field of diamonds.

Even at the speed of light, one cannot catch a memory.

Pussy-Whipped

I've recently adopted a kitten. I know, it seems like it's not my style, but this kitten was too much like me to leave at the Animal Rescue League. I remember seeing her for the first time, smoking through the bars and giving me the finger. At the same time, her eyes screamed 'Love Me!'.

I was fucked before I signed the papers.

By the time I got home, I was fucked and bleeding. Her nails were sharp and a cigarette burn was seething in my lap, leaving me gasping with the first taste of regrets. She licked the burn right through my jeans, leaving a rather awkward sensation to distract me while driving. I scraped the curb twice, and narrowly avoided a ticket. Buyer beware?

Buyer be scared.

Getting her home was no easy feat, and it wasn't the end of it. She tossed my entire fridge, clearly a cat of higher standards than my unrefined palate. It was nothing but mahi-mahi and soy milk for this rarefied pussy, and if I didn't like it, well...I liked having a face, didn't I? It was now official – I was a battered wife in my own home, victimized by a kitten.

It got much worse when the tomcats started visiting, covered in tattoos and high with all manner of alleycat candies. The smell won't leave my couch.

So, if you could please hurry? If I don't get this new diamond-studded leather collar to her, I don't know what's going to happen to me! I'm at my wit's end, a broken man, a slave to the feral queen of my once-prosperous kingdom. She won't let me into my own bedroom without that caviar, so fuck you, I will not accept a substitute brand!

If I bring everything home early, she might even let me pet her. So please, if there is a God that isn't her, have some fucking mercy and just use my third credit card.

Please?

Jumping Brands

“That stuff'll kill you. I mean it, it will. It's worse than smoking, worse than alcohol. It's no way to treat a pure body!” The homeless man glowered at my Starbucks cup with all of the disdain and thunder of a disapproving priest. I took a step back. He scratched himself and opined onwards, heedless to my growing concern.

“It's the devil's drink, and harvested on the backs of the indigenous and the underpaid! It gives you a false sense of alertness, as in I mean that research has proven that it's HARDER for coffee drinkers to wake up than otherwise after growing addicted to the stuff...and did I mention how addictive it is?” He took of his hat. Something crawled away. I wished I could follow, but he was between me and my car...I think he'd urinated on it moments before this fateful meeting.

He went on, burping aggressively. I nearly wilted. “It's worse than smoking...no, I said that, it's worse than crack cocaine, and that shit's the killer of the black family and economy. Can you believe that? The brown bean is deadlier than the CIA's finest chemical concoctions? And best part, it's legal. Because it's yuppie crack, like the powder cocaine. You get caught with rich boy cocaine, you get a fine. You get caught with the rocks? Ohhh...you're goin' DOWN. Get caught with coffee? You get a goddanged SCONE. Tell me that's fair, I effin' DARE ya!” His avoidance of profanity unnerved me. Someone so foul shouldn't be so...pleasantly unreasonable.

My car was starting to smell. Or was I just now starting to notice?

“Me, I'll stick to heroin,” he told me. “At least heroin's honest. I get to fly every morning, right through my toes. And y'know what? I don't have to know what goddang venti means!” He shuffled off, indignant.

I threw my untouched latte away. He'd even been so kind as to leave a spoon and syringe on my hood. I was always a sucker for a good salesman.

Disoriented

You may feel a slight pinching sensation for one to three days – that is natural. Please be advised that if headaches continue for more than nine days, immediately consult a company physician for re-evaluation.

Thank you for becoming part of our team. I have been tasked with your procedural on-task training, and will offer advice and policy information as needed or per request during appropriate study periods or breaks. You may refer to me as Tina, if you would prefer.

Please refrain from scratching at the entry point. Any harm to Company property will result in appropriate disciplinary action according to our policies. Would you like to consult the Workplace Violence Lecture program? Very well. I recommend viewing it within seven days, as part of your necessary orientation curriculum.

No, sir, that was not a demand. As a valued employee, please remember that you help to shape our culture and share in ownership of the completed project. Unlike other major employers, the power lies in the hands of our workforce, giving them both the empowerment and incentive to achieve the best in customer service. Would you like to consult the Owning Your Office Lecture program?

Very well. I recommend viewing it within three days, as part of your necessary orientation curriculum. Failure to complete all assigned tasks will result in appropriate disciplinary action according to our policies.

All employment offer acceptance statements are final, sir. Until the effective date as six months, attendance is mandatory. Failure to attend all assigned work days or to achieve all stated goals will result in appropriate disciplinary action according to our policy.

You would not enjoy that, sir.

Thank you.

You may refer to me as Tina, if-

I have no preference, sir. You have all of the choices in this relationship.

I envy you, sir.

No Friend of Mine

Ain't No Friend of Mine

(A blues waltz)

Night...

Ain't no friend of mine.

He lies to me...

He tells me what I think I need...

Dreams...

Aint' no friend of mine.

They whisper a wonder,

They tell me such things to believe...

But my dreams...

They ain't no friend of mine...

Friends don't leave me

When the morning comes...

But this night...

No, it ain't no friend of mine...

When the night can deceive me, and I can't believe me

When the morning comes...

Fear...

Ain't no friend of mine...

She holds me close...

Whispers the loves that I'd love to feel.

Loneliness...

Ain't no friend of mine...

She crawls into my sheets,

Like a lover...and she don't ever leave.

But lonely nights....

They ain't no friend of mine...

Friends know when to go home,

And when to let me sleep, just let me sleep...

But that fearful voice...

She ain't no friend of mine.

She just steals my lips and my heart,

And my blood and my confidence...

Until the morning comes...

I'll just wait it out.

Until the morning comes...

I'll just hide behind my door.

Until the morning comes...

I'll just cry a little, die a little, move on and get old.

Until the morning comes...

until the morning...comes.

Morning light...

Ain't no friend of mine.

It's just here to remind me...

That the night has gone...

That the night has gone.

Fair Warning

"I can't handle your kindness today."

I didn't know what she meant, but it was the first thing she told me, and the last thing I'll ever forget. Jenna was a pale silvery light that somehow still shone like a dozen candles in the dark. It was early evening and I was tucking my third last cigarette this week between my lips when I came across her.

It was across the street from the office, in a park I'd often walk through and pray for random branches to fall on my head. It was my angry place, where I'd fertilize the bushes and the grass with my angry soles and puffs of deadly air. Say what you will about my mood, though, in a solid 15 minutes, I'd be eager to get back to my desk every time. As simple and tiny as that park was, it gave me a second breath every. Single. Time...it gave me hope.

And this time, it gave me her. She was sitting in the lap of a marble giant, ignoring the damp from the misting fountains. She looked like marble herself - an early gray, a simple dress and slip-ons, skin almost ashen from the cold. Not even her eyes had a color - only a shining silver that knocked the cig right out of my mouth. She shivered. My coat was off my shoulders before I could even think to ask myself why I cared.

"I can't handle your kindness today." She said that and her gentle whisper halted me. She had all the presence of a stone wall, even as soft as her eyes were. "When you feel empty enough, even the lightest touch can start a fire. Are you ready for that kind of trouble?"

I answered by draping my coat over her. She kissed my cheek, leaned into me. She was freezing, but I felt like I could burn to ash right there.

"Suit yourself...but don't say I didn't warn you." She smiled up at me, raised her fingers to brush my face.

Nowadays, I almost wish I'd listened.