Follow-upper

It's cliche' to start a post by talking about how there hasn't been one in a while, yet one we've all been guilty of. Here's mine.

My excuse is at least is one I can be proud of, and that's that I've been off doing what I do. After Amazon suddenly made "The Mountain and The City" free on Kindle, I had even more reason to push forward on the project I had started, which was to turn that story into a serialized novel. A serial is something I've always wanted to write, having always been interested in stories like that of Great Expectations and the way people were so impatient for the next installment they literally lined up on the docks to wait for the shipment to come off the boat. Serials seemed to die down over the past number of years, but now with the internet and the development of ebooks and email, Twitter, Facebook and all the other methods of communication, as well as condensed time and attention, I feel times have strangely come back around to making sense for the serial.

It seemed to me that this story made perfect material for a serial, and having sudden exposure on Kindle (3,000 downloads so far, still mind-blowing) even furthered that, so I hunkered down and completed Part II, which I'm proud to say is out now on Kindle and Smashwords. Already I've been involved in some interesting conversations about the idea of the serial ebook on Twitter and Goodreads, most especially the always active "Apocalypse Whenever" group, where I'm getting some good feedback.

It's an interesting experiment regardless of what else, and I'm curious to see how it plays out. I'll share anything I learn and I invite everyone to leave suggestions/thoughts/doubts/opinions in the comments. I'm, as always, open to hearing what people think about what I put out there and how I go about it.

Something for Nothing

Big announcement: The Mountain and The City just became a free e-book in Amazon's Kindle Store. Either sometime late last night or early this morning, Amazon dropped the price to zero in order to match how it was being offered through Smashwords and the affiliates they distribute to. I'm not sure when it actually happened, but the book has already hit #403 in Amazon's overall rankings, as well as #19 in the Horror genre and #7 in Short Stories, and is being downloaded more as I watch.

This has really made my morning, and I thank everyone for the support you've given me as well as the new people who are just checking out my stuff. I'm actually writing Part II of The Mountain and The City as we speak (to be fair, I'm writing a blog post about it, but I believe we all accept the parameters of this phrase) and I'm even more excited to finish that and put it out there now that this happened.

**EDIT**

Twenty-four hours later, the story has been downloaded over twelve-hundred times and is sitting at #130 in the rankings. I've wanted to crack Amazon's top 100 for a while and this is the closest I've come by a mile or so.

An Epic Battle in Two Acts

I leave words like slugs leave slime.

On all my computers, on my cell phone, even on old, unlabeled cds, I have files of random text. Open some of my closets and you'll find manila folders bulging with stacks of papers, both hand-written and printed. In drawers you'll come across backs of receipts, corners of flyers, with only a sentence or two on them which by now have lost all context. They're ideas I need to get down before they disappear, or conversations I've had. Or people I've met who struck me as such fully-formed characters I knew I'd write them into something some day. Or dreams.

In one such place I had these: two notes which I left for my wife before leaving the house, which I usually do in a text file on our computer's desktop. Screw you, Post-its. The day before the first note, leading up to a trip to Mexico, I had spotted a spider in the corner of the bathroom when I was getting into the shower, but by the time I had gotten back out it was gone. Worse, it seemed to be colored a deep red.

This is what followed.


Dearest Natalia,

I hesitate to tell you the following, as it will certainly put you into a state of distress, however I believe in my heart that you deserve fair warning in these matters. In short, the bathroom spider exists. Yes, the large arachnid which I did briefly spy upon entering the bathroom those several nights ago, half asleep, torch in hand, is real, and continues to be real and to live. I spotted it just this morning, in the far corner to the left of the mirror, as I sat for my morning rituals. I can confirm only this: that it is large, that it is red (yes, I regret to say, red, as a hemophiliac's nightmare), and that it possesses telepathic abilities. This last detail is the only logical conclusion I can make based on what I witnessed of it, which was nothing less than fully developed psychic power. The incident in question concerned the matter of an immediate response in the bathroom spider to my silent retreival of the tissue which I had planned to form my weapon with. It responded by proceeding directly behind the mirror, out of harm's way, before I could so much as stand let alone deliver the deathblow. I feel I've failed you in no small way by falling short of protecting you from this hellish beast which has violated the security and sanctity of our homestead, but I take solace in the unexpected skill my enemy brandished. I was, after all, outnumbered, at least in the area of legs, by a ratio of eight to two. I've formulated several ideas as to how we can proceed from here to fell the intruder, not the least of which is burning this house to the ground and starting over somewhere the bathroom spider can never find us. Montenegro, perhaps. I regret to be the bearer of such grave news but as I stated previously, I believe you have the right to know the particular danger you find yourself in as you await my return. I wish you good luck and humbly recommend you take caution.

Dutifully yours,
Brian Martinez





Dearest Natalia,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and in high spirits. If they are not, I have news which very well may lift them. I say it with great joy: the bathroom spider is dead. I felled the beast.

The day started in a rather dismal and unassuming manner, as I rose feeling the effects of what is surely a touch of the consumption which has afflicted these parts. Do not worry for my well-being, I have already frequented the apothecary, and he supplied me with several tonics which he assured me would cure the illness. It was in this weakened state that I entered the bathroom this morning, forgetting myself for a moment and ignoring the danger inherent in the room. Quickly the thought struck out at me and I whipped around, scanning the corners, the nooks and crannies the beast is known to inhabit, and surely enough it was there, above the shower, with all of its red eyes trained upon me. I feel comfortable in admitting to you that at first I did not feel up to the task, what with my weakened state and lack of sleep. It was only my thoughts of you that steeled me for the task. I thought of you, sitting alone in the house all day, frightened to enter a room of your own home, and the image angered me so much I put my mind to it, right then and there: it was to be the beast, or me.

I withdrew my weapon of tissue paper and went to the beast where it crouched. I felt not only its eyes upon me but the effects of its mind control which at this point I am most sure it possessed. Its shrilly voice was inside my head, taunting me, confusing me. But I would not lay down so easily. I shall spare you the more gruesome details of our battle, but I will tell you this: I felt as if the Lord Himself guided my hand. My strike was fierce and my aim true, and in the end I stood before the fallen monster and, for just the briefest of seconds, I pitied it. Strange, isn't it, how we can pity the very thing which terrifies us. Such thoughts are useless, I am sure, but there they are regardless.

We are free, my dear. We can go about our lives here in the cottage and raise our family in the knowledge that we are safe. I believe a celebration is called for, even a voyage. I have always wanted to vacation in a more tropical region, perhaps the time has come.

Triumphantly yours,
Brian Martinez

Foreshadower

This is the cover for the novella I'm working on. In some down-time I decided to get it done, and I liked the way it came out so I thought I'd share it. It's part of a forthcoming anthology but I might put it out separately as well.

I've probably never mentioned that I make the covers to all my stuff, which owes to the fact that I've never wanted to be seen as an "artist", only a writer. I happen to have the skills necessary to make a decent cover and I know what I want and I don't cost anything, so the choice is easy. I've never once entertained a High-Art view of myself and I don't plan to. This is something I need to do and I do it the way I know how. I've personally never liked the snobbish side of art, and a while ago I decided if I ever start a movement or a group, I'll call it The Anti-Warhols.

An interesting fact about this image- I photographed this wall in the boiler room of the building I work in, sans handprint, of course. Given the story of De-Partment, which you'll know soon enough, I find it pretty appropriate.

Click the cover for full-size.

Reaching, Searching

I recently made a return to short stories after being away from it for a number of years. This was the form I started out in, when I was young and didn't have the attention span, or, put another way, enough words in me. I used to struggle to fill a page. I'd get to the bottom and say, "Well, that's enough, isn't it?" and the answer was yes and that was the end. After a while, though, the answer was no, and I moved on to a second page, which I'd have a hard time filling.

My breakthrough came with A Chemical Fire, my first novel which took a few years to finish and came in at just over 50,000 words, a length, I should add, which some publishers don't accept as long enough for a novel. It's short, to be sure, but as you can imagine someone who once had a hard time filling a page might say, I do believe in brevity.

From there I moved directly into writing a second book, The Scapegoatist. Though I had some issues with it and ultimately had to put it in the drawer until I'm ready to dissect and sew it back together, hence its invisible status, that book took about a year to finish and came in at 80,000 words. An improvement in production, if not success.

Then I started a science fiction book, which I'm not ready to reveal the name of, that wasn't ready to be written and told me so. A false-start, but not an end.

At this point I wasn't sure whether to attempt a restart of that book or move onto another project I'm planning, which I've referenced and which involves "A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean", a short story I wrote to pass the time while I shuffled my feet about what to do. Just then, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, came along and offered me a challenge while I made my decision: write a novel in a month. I did, completing 50,000 words in a month, then adding another 11,000 the next to finish the thing.

Still being not sure where to move next, or being sure but reluctant to begin, was what brought me back to short stories. "An anthology," I thought. Write some new stories. Collect some old favorites and give them solid edits and rewrites. I went back and forth on this, even, wondering if I should alter older work or leave them as time capsules, until I compared it to a remastered re-release of an album, like Nine Inch Nails recently did with Pretty Hate Machine, and that seemed to warm me up to the idea.

I wrote "The Mountain and The City", an apocalyptic tale, pretty quickly and very much enjoyed it, even got good reactions to it. Then I moved onto another story, science fiction also, and to my surprise found it growing bigger and bigger until I realized I may have a novella on my hands. Who knew? Not me, and that's the beauty of this thing; the not knowing, the discovering, the sharing of unexpected turnouts. Now my anthology will include a novella, it seems. Who knew.

Before that happens, though, I've been thinking about sharing it in some unique way, something different. I like the idea of broadcasting works through Twitter, as some writers have done, but that wouldn't be fitting for this story. It would be too drawn out, as i think it would be better to write with that kind of sharing in mind. Maybe I'll do that some day. With social networks, blogs, websites, image sharing sites and so on I feel there's something I can do that would be interesting to watch and follow, but like so many other things it's just kicking around right now, shuffling feet, back and forth, through my head, my hands, my heart. If you have an idea, I'm here to hear it. Comment. Post. Speak. I'm here to hear it.

Sell Abrasion

As part of "Read an E-Book Week" I'm giving away Kissing You is Like Trying to Punch a Ghost. Just go to Smashwords between March 6th and 12th and enter coupon RE100. All I ask in return of readers is they eventually write a review on Smashwords, Goodreads or Amazon.

I've been thinking about how it's an interesting time to be both a reader and a writer. There used to be such a divide between the two- fans interacting with their heroes over autograph tables, at best- but now, with all the routes that exist, the table has collapsed. Some mystery may have been lost but in many ways both sides have gained a voice and a face. Publishers and writers can no longer treat the public the same way. They have to engage them head on, listen to them, respond to them. And yeah, maybe some people don't need to be heard. But at least everyone gets a chance to prove it.

Something happened over the past few days that capped off what I had been thinking about. On March 1st, The Information by James Gleick was published. It's a non-fiction title, a history and theory of information and communication, appropriately. On March 2nd nothing happened. On March 3rd I walked into a library, noticed it on the shelf and borrowed it. All normal, but the interesting part happened on March 4th. To join in on the #fridayreads tag, I mentioned on Twitter that I was reading that very book. A little while later Pantheon Books, the publisher of The Information, retweeted my statement and included James Gleick's Twitter name with it, meaning Gleick himself, being an active participant of Twitter, almost definitely saw it. That's it, that's the end of the story, but the fact that it's almost commonplace now shows how far we've come, because what it means is this: three days after a major publishing house released their latest title, I, a reader, had been directly heard by both the publisher and the author. Compared with how things were even five or ten years ago it's almost shocking to be that visible, that connected with a book. There used to be a steel plate between the two sides. Now the wall is paper.

I'm curious to see where we go from here. Technology isn't inherently good or evil, I believe, like any man-made device. A hammer can be used to build a house or bludgeon a skull. There's a responsibility on both sides not to abuse the new handshake.

Momentum

The book I wrote between November 1st and November 30th as a part of NaNoWriMo is complete. It was an experience that taught me a great deal about discipline, which comes down to simply sitting down, sitting down, sitting down and doing the work. It was a huge leap from how I used to do things, which was much more laborious and stressful and took about five years if at all. I think the ideal method is probably somewhere between the two, but I suppose in a way you have to experience both ends of the spectrum to know where the center is.

The book is a strange one, but not intentionally so, not for the sake of it, because that's something I never do, never even read books like that let alone write them. It's on Smashwords and Amazon, on Kindle and in paperback.

On another note, my list of "Top 5 Post-Apocalyptic Television Shows" was just put up on The Post Apoc, a good site for the apocalypse enthusiast. It was fun to do and I'm sure I'll do more like it in the future.

Hands

Good amount going on right now, strong momentum, staying busy. In November I took part in National Novel Writing Month, hit 50,000 word mark on time and kept on going. Finished the book in December and now giving it a polish. Decided against any heavy edits to preserve what happened- a strange book came through, surprisingly clear, that I never intended to write. Plan to put it out there as soon as possible and keep moving.

Wrote a short story called "The Mountain and The City" for a post-apocalyptic site. http://www.survivetheapocalypse.net/fiction/ is the link, free to read, free to enjoy. Thought it came out well. More involving other sites to come soon, small things.

Posted a giveaway contest on Goodreads in January, signed copy of A Chemical Fire. Random winner chosen by site but I was happy with the choice, a girl in Minneapolis who reads horror/zombie fiction. Wrote to her and she seemed like a good person. Happy with the choice.

Sci-fi novel started a few months ago hit a snag; false-start, not quite ready yet. Rather than fight it, let it sleep. It will tell me when it's ready. Not giving up on it by any means. Decided to do some short stories for now, explore some ideas, put out possible anthology. Also series of novellas, more to come on that, but has to do with "A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean".

Good momentum. Staying busy. Only way this works.

**edit** "The Mountain and The City can now be found on Megaton.us or downloaded on Kindle or Smashwords.

Sympathetic Braking

A guy I used to work with had the strange habit of laughing at inappropriate moments. By that I don't mean he was bizarre for finding humor in awkward moments because, Jesus, I hope we all do, but rather that he would laugh at things that simply weren't funny. I would tell him about some new procedure we were supposed to follow or maybe a product we had gotten in and, absolutely guaranteed, what would follow was a laugh of some kind. Now me, I have a pretty decent sense of humor. In fact I do what I can to laugh everything off since it's the closest thing I've discovered to a perfect defense mechanism, so I can tell you with some certainty that if a joke was present, even the slightest inkling of a grain of an iota of a speck of a joke, I would see it for what it was. But this guy, he would find it where it simply didn't exist. I swear his default response to sound was laughter, immediately followed by processing it in the auditory cortex of his brain to determine volume and pitch. The result: it reduced me to shambles. I would lose focus entirely, stop talking long enough to return the laugh or ask what was funny or try to roll with it and find some non-existent thought-train. Just trying to keep up, my face became a roller-coaster. It went like this. Talk. Laugh? Scowl. Smile apologetically. Laugh. Talk? Continue. Repeat? By the end of the ride I could barely stop my own face from spasm-twisting through a tense supply of vibrating clown-smiles. This was one minute. One minute of an eight hour work day.

Absolute shambles.

The reason I bring him up is he taught me a phrase, which is sympathetic braking. Telling me one day about his pet peeve, he explained sympathetic braking as a driver applying the brakes because they see the brake lights of other cars, even those of oncoming traffic. He told me how it really pissed him off because it slowed down the flow of traffic for no good reason. I suppose it's another defense mechanism. A way of responding to danger, of saying, "What do they know that I don't?", of playing it safe. Maybe there are horrors just out of sight, ready to be driven into. I can see what he was getting at. But I can sympathize.

Lately I've noticed the power of smiling. This isn't where I try to convert you to Christianity or preach the power of sportsmanship by showing you a kid who refuses to cheat at basketball, this is an honest observation on surface-level instinct. Working with the public, I've noticed how little you can get away with talking to people if you just flash a smile. It's become almost a science experiment, to see human interaction reduced to its most simple form. Subject One approaches Subject Two. Subject Two smiles. Subject One returns the smile. One minute later, Subject Two smiles again. Subject One smiles and exits. I don't mean to brag, but it's been working.

People read into things. They infer and they fill in the gaps, which is another defense mechanism. Mystery breeds confusion. The less you give them the more gaps they're forced to fill, in order to enact the completeness required by their psyches. They seem to have only two filler materials at hand: if they don't like you, it's everyone they've ever hated. If they do like you, it's the one person they like the most: themselves. Neuro-linguistic Programming is based partly on this idea- reflect a person back to themselves and they will like you. Cross your arms when they cross their arms. Adopt similar speech patterns. Smile when they do.

It's so easy. People want to smile and feel comfortable. They want to fit in. They want to be among like people with like thoughts and like actions. Give them a chance to do that and they'll love you for it. And then you've got them.

If this all sounds very artificial of me, it is. In public, at work, I tend to be a bit awkward. Not crushingly so, but a bit alien at times. I don't know if I'd call it self-conscious as much as I'd say self-aware, like a computer which has come to realize it's a computer. So aware of the impact of my sounds. Constantly streaming footage of my own expression in the top-left corner of the screen. I understand the effect I have and so I second-guess it, see it vividly halfway through and become forced to analyze it in real-time. It's a bit like when you're watching a talk show and you see the guest notice the monitor with their own face on it. They stare off, entranced by their own image and how it appears and how it moves. There's just no disguising that look, so specific in its spiraling horror, and I've come to recognize it as my own, as my standard, funny as it may be to say it. If it were more pronounced I might not function at all. Less pronounced and I might be someone else entirely. I seem to have a handful of such malfunctions.

The reason I fell apart working with that guy is simple: I used up all my energy in a race against his smile. I distrusted my own, often stoic but not unhappy expression and darted back and forth trying to follow his map. But his map was wrong. I tried to fit in with an earthquake.

You have to trust your schematics, the way you were built. Me, I waste too much time on face upkeep. I should be my own madman.

This Woman

Woman I know
Woman I know
There's a woman I know with glass in her eyes, this woman I know
She has contacts made of mirror shards
She had them made this woman made them special order so she can see you, so you can see your faults See what's wrong with you
But never with her
This woman I know, she had them made, like the hair on her head this woman had it made
Had it made so she can wear her old self the previous self the younger woman
What she looked like before the baby came and ruined her complexion
The child who can't speak except to cry
This woman
This woman I know
Her husband doesn't want any more children
Because of that boy
Because of her
It's all the same anyway hey if it's not his motorcycle hey
His motorcycle, his precious baby, all cherry red,
Had it made special order so they could shout at each other across its cherry red chassis
When she hears the motor running she knows not to knock, just keep making the dinner he disapproves of over
Bedtime kisses and
Prodding of
Just one more kid, one more kid, this time we can get it right, this time they can get it right,
Just one more kid
One more time
They can have it made, special order, have mirror glass inserted in his eyes, in her eyes, beggars can't be choosers
As long as it's healthy that's all that matters
As long as it speaks that's all that matters
As long as she likes to cook
As long as he fixes motorcycles
Beggars can't be choosers when they have alleys like this
This woman I know
Her appetite runs heavy and her
Smile runs thick
This woman I know, she takes classes and likes perfume
And if you met her in any other spot you might come to like her
But you met her in this one, same as I, and you looked into her eyes and you saw the mirrors
Not the reflection like she'd hoped you would
But the mirrors themselves
Let her lottery ticket come up
Let her rave diet work like a charm
Let her ovaries unwrap and spit like a viper
Let her become this woman she knew
This woman I know

Free-Writing VI

10/29/10, 11:31 am-

In 1993 I broke my parents’ hearts. I got suspended from school for stealing, and to make things worse I did it right before Christmas. The way it happened was I was with a group of friends who weren’t trouble-makers and weren’t nerds either, but somewhere in-between, thinking ourselves the occasional rebels while still being liked by our teachers, still maintaining decent grades, some better than others but all passing, doing well. The way those groups go is if someone decides to start trouble everyone joins in, and then a group which was fine before suddenly starts some shit. One of our group, I don’t remember which at this point, noticed our social studies teacher’s keys were left unattended, and this teacher also happened to be the lacrosse coach. I don’t know how he knew this but somehow he realized that one of these keys was the master key to the boys locker room. This meant that every, single locker in that place could be opened by this single key. I’m guessing it was someone elses idea, because in these situations each player always seems to add one ingredient, that those lockers during gym class held dozens of wallets filled with cash. It’s amazing to think back now and not realize that these were people, kids like us, whose money was in those wallets, but one of the painfully unaware realities of childhood is you don’t fully understand the consequences of actions yet. I remember, and with some of those same people, standing at the side of highway underpasses where the trees are dead and no one goes, and throwing small sticks at speeding cars. Then it would graduate to larger sticks, until the point where we were throwing entire branches and once even a baseball at cars to watch them smash and make sounds. The fact is we could have killed someone, sent something through their windshield or made them panic and swerve and crash, but at the time all we could think of was how funny it was. The sounds it made. Who could make a bigger sound, get a louder laugh. This is how kids are, and like I said, we weren’t even bad, just bored. So back to that stinking locker room, we took that key and did exactly what we’d set out to, we used it on those lockers and it worked perfectly, opened them right up, and most of them had wallets in them, and some of those cash, and we snuck in and snuck out with our treasure and divided it up and thought we were just the coolest kids out there, just quality product, and we wished we could brag about how cool we were but it had to be a secret. So of course we did what everyone does when they don’t get caught- we did it again. And again. The problem came when one of our group, a kid named Juan who no one really liked just tolerated, which is another insane symptom of childhood, hanging around people you don’t even like and you don’t know why, but the problem was he got greedy and when the end of the gym period was coming close we told him to stop but he said, “One more” and then when the ten minute bell rang, which was to let the gym kids know they could hit the lockers and get changed before the true end of the period, he still said “One more, just one more” and when he was happy and we were yelling we all piled out of the locker room and went right past the kids who were heading in, saying hey to them, one of them even starting a conversation, and we anxiously said bye and headed off and split the money as always. But this time we’d been made, because obviously kids started noticing their money was missing, and I’ll never know who it was or how it happened but someone obviously remembered seeing us leave the scene, and it doesn’t take a genius, and they told who they had to tell. Still to this day when I think of impending doom and rapid heartbeats, one of the worst times, best examples, standout memories is of the day we were all called down to the office, but not as a group just one at a time, a few minutes between. We were all in the same science class because that year they were trying something new at school, which was that all eight periods were filled with the exact, same kids, we shared identical schedules, so that in every class would be the same group of thirty-odd kids, which is a good idea for familiarity sake but I guess the down side is it can cause miniature clutches of boys who scheme all day long and end up stealing. I still remember that, the first of us being called to the office, and we watched him go suspecting what it could be but not convinced. And then the second name came and kids started to whisper, and then the third, and at this point I wanted to scream, to run, but where would I go, what would I do, and finally they called my name and my face went hot and I grabbed my bookbag and my entire body went numb, but somehow my legs took me down to the office, stopping first to hide most of the money I had on me in my sock, down to the office where I found the group was all split into separate rooms for interrogations, the prncipal and vice-principals keeping us apart like the half-assed detectives they were, coming on tough, looking at us with odd expressions because we weren’t the usual suspects, all of us or nearly all of us invisible because we were those middle kids. Not popular, not picked on, not jocks, not criminals, but apparently we were. Those idiot detectives, they played us against each other, and I tried to say little but I knew they knew some of it, and they’d say things like “The others are blaming it all on you, they say you planned it” but that was ridiculous and definitely not true, and I doubted they were saying those things but even if they were it just wasn’t true, and I maintained that and eventually they said “Open your wallet” and I showed them how little I had and they said something like “That’s all you got? They held out on you” and on the inside, even in the middle of my life crumbling I had to smile a little bit because on that level I’d outsmarted them, made myself look like the lackey and even managed to keep some of it. But the victory didn’t last long because then they were calling all of our parents to come get us, suspending us from school for four days, and this was the day, literally the day before Christmas break started, which meant it was just added on to the end of break, which in a way made it seem less real, made it less effective because it just felt like a longer break. When my mother showed up she’d clearly been crying and that was the worst feeling I could think of, and can probably still think of. She walked me to my locker so I could collect my coat and when we got there she said, “So are we going to fight this thing?” and I had to look at my mother and say, “I don’t know what to tell you, mom, there’s…nothing to fight” and in that moment I saw her heart break. I can’t even remember the ride home, I think it was silent, and when I got home I was sent directly to my room and didn’t come out until I heard my father come home from work. I heard him come inside, heard my mother say something to him which made him say “What?” and then the footsteps down the hall, my door opening, his face there, and just his hand coming up and his finger telling me to follow him. We sat at the kitchen table and he held in his hand the letter from the school, the notice of suspension, and for the reason all it said was “stealing from lockers”, and I can just remember him reading it over and over, trying to take some meaning out of it, trying to extract everything possible from those few words, but he couldn’t, and he talked low and quiet to me. Never lost his temper, and that made it worse. As he spoke he had indigestion because it was bothering him, upsetting his stomach, and to my father’s credit the best thing about this was his speech involved Star Wars. He explained, “You know Star Wars? There’s the good and the dark side? Things like this,” and he held up the letter and the three words I could see through the back of it, “this is the dark side, this is going over to that. And that’s not who you are.” It’s funny to think of now but it’s probably the best way to explain evil to a kid. And so I disappointed my parents that year, my first year of high school and already this, and I had to earn their trust back, their words, and I did my time at the end of Christmas break, and Christmas was a little quieter that year, and then I went back to school and got raked over the coals by my classmates, including one older kid who was friends with us and apparently we had stolen from him though I had no idea, and definitely wouldn’t have if I’d have known because he was that rare kid from an older grade who threw that aside and still hung around with us, or us with him, and we looked up to him. And finally things got back to normal, but for a long time I was so embarrassed by that story I never told it, in fact barely ever have, and because of that very few people know it, and it’s silly to feel that way now because enough time has passed that it was something stupid I did when I was a kid, and all that, but still some part of me knows yes, that was me, I did that thing to those people, but these are the things, and we live with them, and they make us, and sometimes that’s just our history, and history can’t be chosen, only told and written.

12:07 pm, 36 mins, approx 1,782 words

Free-Writing V

10/27/10, 1:37-

I’ve seen myself through the bayou. I’ve gone through gas stations and trees, broken down shacks and stores with jukeboxes and second floors with holes down to the first. I’ve shot men for the noises they make. I’ve called for rafts and then called down the vengeance. I’ve ridden boats pulled by rope, debarked and continued. I’ve passed outhouses, walked over walkways, found what I needed and moved on. I’ve been there when the panic set in. I’ve seen the monsters men become. I’ve held my drink to the sky and lit it on fire wishing I didn’t have to waste it but knowing without that sacrifice there’d be none later. I’ve seen their legs trail through the muck as they closed in. Gone through windows and come out into hell. I’ve kept the path until it ended in steel and supplies. I’ve known these headspaces more than most men. I know this will serve me well in the end, but until then it’s drying my eyes out.

I was there the day the satellite fell. Pulled men from the wreckage and didn’t bother asking if they were okay because all I had time to do was run as it all crashed down. I’ve seen the outcome of this, and it’s not good, and it’s never good, and I look forward to the day that this is all a story but until then it’s my fucking nightmare life extension mission and it’s not a living it’s a dying, so the guitar man says. I saw him on the corner as he sang his sad song and the walls closed in, and the line broke. I don’t wonder where he is now because I know where, and I’m heading there myself but I’m putting it off as long as I can. Our group was larger back then. Larger by one. Now I’m a nothing, an alone, a weakness they watch from rooftops, the others, the every others. This is what I look like through sights. The call goes out and I have to put my knife into another neck. This isn’t a living, this is a dying, and I can still hear his song. What a sweet kid I saw back in that town, but that’ll be a problem for him, always is with his kind. I wish I knew how to help, what to do, but every time I come close it just gets worse and they cry for me to leave and I hesitate. They insist and I go, knowing I ruined it again. Such a sad way, but I suppose it’s always been this way just not as pronounced, not as obvious. The trail is just worn in now. Ancient paths. Deer have those kinds of paths. You see them in the forests between the trees, worn down places where they’ve been cutting through, going to food sources, and you can almost miss them, seems like a trick of the light, a space between bushes, until you see one of them emerge, come out there, and then you might still miss it but you see it again, and you realize these are the legacies cut into the dirt for them, left to them by their parents and grandparents and going all the way back farther than there’s been a name for them, father back, farther back. The forest bends for them, loving them, knowing they bring with them seeds and berries and rubbing their fur on the bark to itch themselves at shedding seasons but it doesn’t just help them, helps the trees too, takes off the old bark to let the new stuff grow. And that’s how it works, feeding. Sometimes the whole arch just shifts on you, drastically, and you find yourself on the bleeding end of it, and hey, it’s nothing personal, and it’s not business, it’s just eating. Just a living that’s just a dying.

That’s how I see that guitar man and the kid and all the guitar men and all the kids. All those towns I found as obstacles. All the ones that fed me before driving me out on horseback and rifle. My memories of them are travel guides of the damned, laminated in panic sweat and worn at the edges. I miss the rest of my group. Just one, but what a one she was. I can’t talk about this anymore or it’ll show on my face. The next time I pop up on a scope they’ll see it on me and then I’m a dead man. Can’t let them know these things unless you’re ready to draw back, throw it in, let them turn you into another week alive. Never could get past the taste myself. Not the stuff I’m used to, though everyone needs a way through.

-1:51, 14 mins, approx. 799 words

Free-Writing IV

10/26/10, 11:53 am-

When I’m walking with my dog at night the world feels so empty and perfect. All those houses with lights on but no activity, no one in the yard, rarely in the windows, just the cool street and the rustle trees and occasionally the sound of a dog barking because we’ve come too close. We pass garbage cans and get a peek at their inner worlds. Old playground pieces, toys, television boxes, an old toilet, sticks from pruning, books, bottles of beer on recycling days along with spaghetti sauce and water, all these things that explain in filthy terms what’s been going on in that house for the past few days. Our lives, boiled down to the bi-products. The moonlight makes it look better, the starlight barely there, and it’s disappointing, genuinely, when someone appears on the street. Cars are okay. Their headlights slice past and invent shadow, illuminate hidden things in the gutter, so long as the car doesn’t stop and give birth to a driver. Drivers give berth, cars give birth.

When I look at a yellow notepad I think about all those days in school, taking notes, reporting the words of a teacher and their plans for us. I never used yellow notepads, though, just looseleaf in binders and then later when I got tired of carrying around binders I would just take a folder around with loose paper in it, and that’s when things got much messier, but I tried to keep them together as much as possible. Then a teacher would spring a trap, a binder check, even though they never warned there would be one. If I knew about it ahead of time I would find an empty binder, or rather a useless one and make it empty, and then sort through the omni-folder to take out everything from that one subject and push it into the binder according to date. The other problem was that half of my notes were drawings. At some point I found it impossible to listen to what a teacher was saying without doodling at the same time, still hearing them, just drawing also, but they could never believe that, didn’t want to, never listened. That was how I distracted myself into paying attention. That was my method. But schools only allow one method, their own method, and anything else looks to them like laziness or disobedience. I was only learning how I knew I could, and I did, my grades were always good, I learned the material, but somehow they needed to see that binder. I guess like a lot of other things it’s because they need to control a certain percentage through behaviours like that, but that’s not fair so they have to apply it to all. Not fair or it’s just easier to do the same thing across the board. And I can totally understand that now, looking back and realizing that my teachers were people with jobs, didn’t exist for us only, and it takes a really rare person to apply individual methods to several hundred students. The problem then isn’t the teacher or the student, it’s something more, because more can be learned, more can be achieved if its specific to the person, so new systems have to be in place, and teachers need to be paid what they deserve, and not over-worked and stressed and be made to fit certain goals without the environment to achieve them. I have no idea how yellow paper turned into this but so it happened and I have to deal with that. This is the brain in action and I’d like to think I’m unique but I’m definitely not, this is just why people sound the way they do when they talk to themselves, because thought processes are interwebbed and forever darting and that’s a symptom of complexity. The problem comes in with a lack of filters. And is it so crazy? Maybe we’re doing this to each other, living in constant censorship, "I don’t want to hear this or that", but we’re all thinking it. It would be interesting to see a world where everyone’s thoughts and spoken words are exactly the same, and maybe it would be more peaceful, but maybe there’d be no use in living anymore, because the mystery is what makes things interesting, the distance between knowing and not knowing, what’s said and what isn’t, just like men and women confuse each other constantly but if we didn’t what’s the point, no more mystery, less laughs, no need to keep on digging. Maybe we need our secrets.

-12:08, 15 mins, approx. 961 words

Free-Writing III

10/25/10, 9:39 pm-

She was a frightening girl. She had eyes like icicles, if you looked too long they'd shake and fall and penetrate your head, bleed you out. It was as if fire had no troubling her, heat had no stance, as if the ends of the earth were too brittle to hold the weight of her being there in her fine shoes and tight pants. I watched her every day like that, talking on the street with the winos, breaking the quiet morning with her easy laughs and taunting screams. Men in suits looked at her like a nightmare version of their wives, the worst parts of them distilled and pasteurized into something so pure you could only snort a little or you'd drop. She bled men out. She was the end to their boyish dreams. If she spoke to you, if you were lucky enough to catch her attention, you'd find yourself ten minutes later waking in a daze with no money, no will to live, lipstick on your teeth. She was what the boys called a blood diamond. Sure, she'd solve all your problems, but at what cost.

The day I broke into the convenience store for a pack of smokes I learned her name. Something with an E, I think. I did the smartest thing I could think of and went about forgetting who the hell she was. The way she screamed at me, I knew it would end in love, and that would end in crime scenes, and that would end in my mother coming down from the mountain house and crying in a chair. I couldn't have that. She couldn't see me now, not when I was so close to dying completely in her eyes. It was the second nicest thing I could do for her.

When the train shook me awake that morning I could smell the diesel in my hair, the rattle of bones and veins, the old men coughing up vodka phlegm. It was a way of life for them, a job, and they'd tease me about my clear complexion saying it was a liability of the highest order. I knew one's name was Lem and the other King but I always mixed them up. I'm not sure they knew the difference themselves so I left it alone, let them eat their ketchup and cereal, towel their armpits with paper bags they threw to the ground and let blow into the fence in yellow shame. I remember something about a dream, and in the middle of it Lem or King asking me what her name was, and me saying something with an E before I could catch myself and they laughed themselves hacking.

When I hopped down, I could see her eyes already. Something with an E. She'd be the death of me and you could tell she knew it the way she watched me across the street. It was an inkstain. A bleedout. She was the reason I'd hopped down, I was sure of it, felt it in my toe-bones, felt it in the hot gum of the morning blacktop, the shuffling, the magnet that took me into the backroom of that store where they kept boxes, and when I turned around she'd followed me in before I could tell her not to, not that I could, and she held her hand out smiling, not smiling though, maybe mock-winking, I can't remember her face only the brush against my hand as I put the carton in hers and she ran and I ran, and she pushed the clerk and he grunted and went down and I laughed, I think I laughed, I can't remember, just the wind and the whooping of Lem and King thinking they'd get their share but they never would, I gave them nothing and they gave me nothing, not the usual rules of the streets but fuck them, they'd watched those bar kids fuck with me, kicked my stuff, so fuck them, I don't owe them anything.

I remember when we stopped. There were shopping carts and it smelled like chinese food from last night's drunkeries, and we were breathing lungfuls of acid and she was looking at me knowing she'd be the end of me. I was looking forward to finishing the cigarettes. They felt expensive the way they weighed. I was sure it started with an E.

-9:58 pm, 19 mins, approx. 740 words

Free-Writing II

10/25/10, 12:32 pm-

Sometimes I think, when people ask me the question “what’s your book about?” I should tell them, “It’s about a pair of magical shoes. A little boy finds them and gets into all sorts of hijinks”. The reason for that is, against all my better attempts, I just end up fumbling my way through a ridiculous simplification which has nothing or next to nothing to do with my book anyway, and in the end I get strange looks either for my ideas or probably more accurately my portrayal of them. This has a lot to do with who’s asking the question, however. If it’s someone my age, especially a guy, but the age is the most important factor it seems, I’ll give them a one-liner which comes pretty close to what a Hollywood pitch would be. “This guy does this in the middle of this. It’s like this existing property, only better” and the reaction is more or less positive. If they’re as little as ten years older than me, it’s time to REALLY simplify, because any more seems to incriminate me as some sort of maniac who spends his time murdering imaginary friends. Which, of course, is what I’m doing. The best example of this was when I started at my job and I let it slip for the first time that I was a writer. I usually stall out this reveal as long as possible, not for the sake of mystery, like I’m an onion that can be peeled at random times and still show new layers, but to delay the disappointment and horror that always follows. In fact the only time I reveal this information about myself seems to be to justify why I’m thirty-one and working at a job which I have no intention of turning into a career. I explain that every job is a temporary job to me, because in the long run I plan to make a living as a writer, at which most people get fairly excited in a bewildered kind of way, and then ask me what I write, is it poetry or essays or movies, somehow they always seem to avoid the right answer. It used to be, when I was younger, that I’d tell people I wrote short stories since it was all I did in those days, and that would seem to awkwardly end the conversation. Now I tell people I write books, novels, and at the outset they seem much more impressed, more interested, more able to keep the conversation going in that next logical step, instead of attempting to ask something like “Oh, short stories?...What are they about?” and I say “Like, all of them?” and they say “I don’t know, I guess so. Are they mysteries?” which makes me laugh to think how accurate that actually is to so many conversations I shared over the years. So now it’s novels and they can simply ask, “Ooh, what’s IT about?” pertaining to whichever came up, likely A Chemical Fire since it’s completed and in print and so on and so on, and I can answer and then we can move on to them talking about how much they love Dan Brown. But the best example of having to simplify and censor that answer, and I can’t remember if I started talking about this or just thought about it but I can’t stop to look back now, was when I was surrounded by my new co-workers (and yes, I did start saying this) and they asked me what my first book was about. And I looked at my bosses, and the other employees, and three of them were mothers and one a very strict Muslim, and I thought about my book about zombies and painkillers and the awful people I’d dreamed up who burned up and put bullets into one and abused the other, and I thought about the questions it would raise, and how it would make me seem like, AT BEST, a weirdo, and at worst a drug-fueled murderer, and I thought about it a second and I replied, “It’s pretty much about the end of the world.” And then I realized that maybe it made me seem like I WANTED that to happen, like I was a pissed-off Travis Bickle type (is that his name? From Taxi Driver?) so then came the fumbling even if I’d tried to avoid it, and I explained that I always enjoyed movies like Children of Men, which was the most respectable piece of art in that genre I could think of, which sort of worked because none of them had seen it, and most of them seemed to buy it and smile and go about their business happy to have something a little different around walking among them. And then I got into a weird conversation with Kulsoom, the Muslim of the group, about how her religion is so much about waiting for the world to end, and how did I envision it happening, and it would be interesting to compare that with how her faith did, and then I realized something interesting which was that in her own way she was far, FAR stranger than I, because she was telling me how she passionately prayed every day for the end of the world, especially for her kids, and it highlighted the truth about how I feel so different from these people, which is that I feel out of place for not being as crazy as them, or not the same type. Every time I start to think my processes are a little out of whack I turn around and see a married mother of four who is convinced of some idea which I literally think is that of a sick person, and I compare it to how I feel, which may be the opposite, and then I objectively weigh them against each other and realize, no, I’m right here, it’s not right to think that way, and so all that time I feel apart from them it’s not that I want to be a part of them, because to do that would be to accept their fucked up way of thinking and being, their isms nd phobias, and so its not that I want to be a part of them but maybe just appear that way, just wear the camoflauge, like small talk, god I wish I could do that mindless small talk thing. Not that I can’t be friendly and have a good conversation, but so many people are capable of that “So how’s things treating you? Good, good. And the kids? My word, he’s getting so big” and I try it on and it always seems to fall off like a pair of overalls ten sizes too big all floppy down to the floor, and the sound it makes when it hits the tile is so fabricated, as if a .wav file with poor compression plays on impact. It just feels wrong and so I get by on smiles at places like work, and it’s shocking how well that works, but I’ll never memorize their names, or rarely, never get into ten minutes of filler, but people like that, without it they think I’m shy, but no, not really, maybe at odds and maybe anxious and maybe quiet when there’s nothing real to say, but not shy. How could I be? They never give you the chance.

-1:07 PM, 35 mins, approx. 1,237 words

Free-Writing I

10/22/10 12:15 pm-

A few days ago I woke up in the middle of the night, or maybe it was the morning, about 4 am and I looked over at my wife sleeping there to my right, and I looked down at my dog, our small Pomeranian mix Frankie who weighs seven pounds and six of it is attitude. It was quiet and peaceful, really peaceful, and I knew I had to get up for work in a few hours but I didn’t care. It normally would spoil the moment, push feeling into my stomach pit, a dread for my job, which always happens but especially when you don’t like your job. But this time, it didn’t effect me. I don’t know why I was impervious in that way on that morning, but so I was. I had the distinct feeling in that moment that I loved my life. Not my job, of course, and not our debt and the absence of end in sight to that and other problems, but my life, the one I’d created for myself. I chose the right person for me, or had the right one chosen for me depending on how you feel about fate, which I feel mixed but generally positive about, in agreeance, believing that it does exist but not to use it as an excuse for why things happen, simply as a way to smile at them when they do. So whatever it was, fate, choice, all that combined, came together to make a life that I appreciate, that I love. I knew in that moment that I had friends off sleeping somewhere who I valued as people, who were smart people, funny people, good people, that I’d surrounded myself with a wall of quality. I knew in that moment that while I don’t enjoy the company of my family, being so different from, feeling so alien, so wrong, so childish, so something, I knew that I did love them and that they were also good people. The apartment was right, if for now. The things I spent my time on, enjoyable, at times worthwhile. I had the passing feeling that I liked the person I was if for nothing else than I was a sum of those things. Even if my mind may be off, and my way of dealing with people can be flawed, that my anxieties hinder me and make me odd, even if I’m self-conscious and bizarre I’ve still managed to attract and keep these things around me long enough to let them define me, and I believed, in that moment, and now, and hopefully always, that that should mean something, and so it does.

It feels good to let go. I know that this project is a daunting one but I think it’ll be great for me, great practice, build up the muscle memory of free-flow, turn off the inner editor until later on, when it can come out and thrash and knife. This is how I need to write. I need to grow the grass and then cut it. A terrible analogy, but what I mean is, perhaps better, to make the block of ice first, then take a chainsaw to it. That probably sounds better. Fifty-thousand words is a lot of words but it’s not like I can’t repeat any. I wonder how many words I’ve written in my lifetime, not a fully grand total but just the ones for literature's sake, enjoyment, language, not the ones for work but for me. I wonder if I’ve succeeded at hitting the ten-thousand hour rule as defined by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve absolutely spent hundreds of hours doing it, and I feel it could be up in the thousands. The ten-thousand hour rule has to do with being not just good, but great, but I don’t think it should be something to look at like, hey, I hit ten-thousand, now I’m a genius. Of course that’s because I was born a genius. No, really. We’re all born geniuses is what I mean, not to say that I’m full of myself, but I think that kids are capable of the most brilliant thoughts and wordings and ways of being, that in an adult would be crazy and what’s the word for crazy with money, eccentric, yes, and just the way they live is in a constant state of brilliance that at some point we shed along the way like an old shell for the next kid to come across and move into, and I think the struggle, always, the struggle is to get back to that point, let go, go mad, and I’m really trying very hard to lose my mind. If I could lose my mind I’d be set. People would point at me and say, “Look at the incredible way he went insane. I’ll pay to see that.” And then I’ll have a career being insane, but with structure, always with structure. No one wants to see a man painting the wall with his shit, but hey, some artists do so I shouldn’t even say that, but in general people want to see a very refined madman. Jack Nicholson is a perfect example. I’m positive that Jack Nicholson is insane, he just happens to be really good at it and really charming, and what is charm if it’s not egomania, and people just love to watch him, love to be around him, tap into that energy, hoping to absorb the power he has. All the best actors, comedians, writers, and possibly directors, photographers, designers and so on are all insane. I think that’s why they all move to one place, so the normals will stop judging them and they can relax among the people who are just like them, maybe worse, and that’s fine because it’s better to keep them all in one place where we can keep track of them. So I think what I’m saying is I need to be tagged and tracked too, because there’s good money in it.

-12:45 pm, 30 mins, approx 1,013 words

Vocabulanche

I made the decision to take on the challenge of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. This means during the month of November I will write an entire novel of at least fifty-thousand words. Some people use NaNoWriMo as a way to finally write a novel, which I can fully respect. The goal of writing a book is something too many people plan to do but never quite get there, and nothing motivates better than a deadline. For me it will be a personal challenge to write as fast as I can without being harsh on myself, shake things up bit, and in a lot of ways have fun without over-thinking anything. I want the thing to have a stream-of-consciousness feel, to be almost a road map of thought that finds its way through the story rather than be a very rigid, planned-out affair, which is my normal route. There's nothing wrong with that of course, it achieves an effect, but at some point it's good to step outside the normal path to get a better look at it. So I'll be writing as fast as possible, almost too fast, to bypass the internal editor, to stumble into new ways of wording things before they're pushed away by years of school and such.

Until then, I'm practicing. I'll share the results up until the end of October. Then I'll disappear.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part V

"I'll be damned."

The old man stopped, scanned the room. I waited to hear what he'd say next, made sure not to give up my position, my angle. Finally he said, "He actually cleaned."

That's the problem with erasing, a place has to be pristine to let you get away with spot-cleaning. Otherwise you have to keep going as far as it makes sense, until you leave no line where it's clean on one side and dirty on the other. Some places, with all the work I put into them, I've had half a mind to send the landlord a bill. That's why most guys will tell you to bring the whole mess to a second spot, something you can control, something unrelated, outside a cop's eye. You hear it a lot in prison, which in my eyes makes it worthles advice. Myself, I make house calls. Find them where they sleep.

The old man wheeled into the living room. He strained against the carpet, going around the craters, the ones that showed where every piece of furniture had sat in the place going back a decade. I glanced around like it was all new to me. The art posters, so proud of being up their own asses, the used appliances I was sure some fashionable store had labeled vintage to jack up the price by forty bucks. Somehow these things came together to make a man she chose over me. His touch, his everything. I didn't understand the math.

"Anything to drink in this place," I asked.

"Jesus, you're still thirsty?" He was parked three feet from the TV screen, banging the remote against his thigh bone. "There's usually a beer in the fridge. Grab me the closest thing to seltzer you find."

I took the green dish towel that hung from the oven handle and used it to open the fridge, then did the same to grab the one can of seltzer in the middle of Malcolm's pussy beer. I didn't want a drink anyway just the chance to offer the old man one. I popped the tab on the way over, before he saw.

"Get out of the way, would you? Trying to watch the race." He craned left, right, left again to see around me. All it did was make him look like a bird, maybe a chicken, something they keep in a cage until its time. I held out the can and he reached for it, then I pulled it away.

"You didn't answer me," I said. He settled back down.

"What would he do, join the circus?"

I said nothing.

"Look I'd be as screwed as screwed can be. Is that what you want to hear? Shit, you're the only other guy helping me out and I just met you an hour ago. If that's not the saddest thing I can think of, then, well, I don't know what sadness is."

I handed him the seltzer, promised I'd help the best I could. Then I sat on the couch and watched him drink it. His eyes were intense as they traced the race cars in their screaming paths. Every so often he took another sip and it would ripple down his neck.

"The wife used to drink this," he said without breaking his stare. "Me, I could never stand the stuff. I don't know why I keep drinking it, guess I got accustomed." He seemed weighed down, his eyes having trouble following the action on-screen. "Does it seem purple in here to you," he asked after a while. His words ran together, mixing like cold cubes in a warm glass.

"I think so."

"Damn kid keeps the purple too high. Waste of money if you ask me." He'd barely finished the sentence when his head slumped down and his fingers let go of the can. It fell to the carpet and glug-glug-glugged into it until I bent down and grabbed it up, put it to the side, most of the seltzer still inside along with the pill. I'd have to remember to bring it with me.

I pushed my fingers to the loose skin of his neck and felt the weak pulse, felt it go slower. And slower. And slower until I felt nothing at all anymore. When it was done I wheeled him to the bathroom, put him in the tub and took him apart.

Some guys throw up at this part. Others cry. It doesn't really matter what you do, the bleach takes care of it.

Picture a man finds a poem. It's about love, about a woman, about a love for a woman stronger than acid, older than the mountains, all that shit. The kind that can't be waved off. The woman is supposed to read the poem, but the woman doesn't read it her man does. Picture what happens to the poet when the man who reads it isn't a good man. Is paid to be who he is by men worse than him but without the gut for it.

Picture what a man like that would do for free.

I ducked out the back. The bag was easy to carry, couldn't be more than seventy pounds. As I felt the weight of it going up and into the back of the pickup, I realized it was the nicest thing I'd ever done for someone. No matter. I went to the ocean, then I left town.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part IV

It took ten minutes of cursing and two minutes of struggle. After half the block was leaning out their windows with their necks stretched as far as they'd stretch, the old man was finally sitting in the passenger seat. I walked around the pickup and got in, found him talking to himself about how the same assholes who make the cars must make the barstools, too.

"Why do people think they need to drive goddamn tanks? You, I get it, you can't fit in no sedan lookin' like you look. But I'm telling you, nothing scares me more than a soccer mom behind the wheel of a plexiglass Panzer, while her kids are jumpin' around pullin' at her bra straps." He put up a fight with the seatbelt until he realized he didn't care.

"I use this for work. It holds a hell of a lot of tools." Duffel bags and handsaws, mostly. I pulled away from the bar knowing I could never go back there no matter how bad a jones I got for shitty gin. I wasn't about to come down with nostalgia over it.

"You know where you're heading?"

"The bartender filled me in."

"He's got a name, you know. It's Andy. I think. And I didn't hear him do anything of the sort."

The old man was sharp. Sharp for an old man. "Twenty-two Holland Street, fifth floor," I said. It was an easy enough address to remember. Especially when it shows up on an envelope hidden at the bottom of your woman's shoe closet.

"That's it, alright," he said, squinting at the sun.

We passed a cop dicking around by his squad car, meaning we'd have to drive all the way to the building for sure, no stops. A few minutes later and we were there. It was one of those hotels people check into and end up living in until they can't pay anymore or someone smells something coming through the wall. I hadn't expected to ever go back there but there I was, just a few hours after I'd left. Just shows you, you never know where a chore might take you. I helped the old man back down to the ground and we went inside.

The same puffy-eyed kid was behind the window in the lobby with headphones plugging up his ears. Flyers were hanging around his head advertising girls with limbs twisted in uncomfortable poses, laying between red phone numbers. I recognized one of them. She'd had a good body but a total lack of dedication. I tried to sneak the old man past but the kid noticed and looked up from his book, taking his headphones out.

"Hey...you're back," he said. He seemed to live in slow-motion, like his button got stuck.

"Don't know what you mean. Just bringing my friend here upstairs."

"No. Yeah. You were here already, before."

"Afraid not, kid, I'm not even from around here." I attempted a smile.

"What? No-"

"How many times," the old man blurted, "how many times have I told you to stop smoking that shit?"

The kid looked at me, then back at the old man. "A couple," he admitted.

"You only remember a couple but I tell you every goddamn time I come. By all means, chew and snort whatever you need to, but lay off the smoke. It's destroying your ability to be a helpful dipshit instead of just a plain ol' nitwit dipshit." He went on walking, leaving the kid to his headphones and book and confusion and embarrassment and just a little suspicion. Our eyes met until they didn't.

The hallway still stunk like it was someone's job to throw up in it. I had expected to see a clock where a guy punched in and got to work, but instead there was an elevator and next to that a dinged-up wheelchair. I'd seen it before, wondered who it belonged to. The old man was already lowering himself into it, again with ugly sounds. Then he leaned back to slap blindly at the call button. I came over and pressed it, asked him if he was stealing someone's chair.

"No, no, it's mine. Malcolm leaves it for when I come over." There was a ping and then the elevator opened. I wheeled him in and shoved myself in, too. It was small and I could feel it complain as the door slid closed and as it did the old man said, "That idiot at the front is always trying to throw this thing out, but every time he does Malcolm takes it right back. I tell you, sometimes it's good to have an asshole on your side."

I pressed for the fifth floor. "Have you thought about what happens when he's not here?"

"If. If he's not here. Christ, try to be positive about things."

"I'm pretty positive."

Searching his pants pockets in clumsy stabs, he chuckled. "Friend, pretty and positive are two things you certainly are not." He pulled out his hand to reveal a rusty key with a yellow twist tie looped through the hole. He held it up, showed it to me, victorious. "Don't worry, you're not stuck with me."

When the elevator hit the fifth it dipped down as if right at the finish line it had given up and was ready to snap from its cable and tumble all the way back down the shaft. There was a hesitation, a real quiet one. Then the five light pinged and the door opened and I wheeled the old man out. I could almost hear the thing sigh as my feet came off it.

We rolled to Five-Fourteen and the old man pushed up in the chair to knock on the door. When there was no answer he did it again, this time with angry shouting. Then he used the key. "Don't know where this boy disappears to," he mumbled as the door swung in.

"Maybe he's at the beach."

It was a cheap shot, even if he didn't know it. I pushed him inside and locked the door behind me.

A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean: Part III

Malcolm Greenstone was dead. I knew that because no one could live through what I'd done to him.

"I can't do booze," the old man said. "I spent twenty years pickled in the stuff but my stomach just can't take it anymore." The more I looked at him the more I saw Malcolm. The chin. The nose. The way they'd looked before I got to them. "I'm switching to beer, you want the rest of this?"

"You've given me enough."

"Don't go pussy on me, just take the damn drink. If it's not you it's the sink, and I think just enough of you to give you first shot." I pulled the glass over and my hand came close to his, nearly touching it. His hands were impossibly dry. Malcolm's were not. He called for a beer while I worked with what I had. "What line of work are you in then?" He was playing with the veins in his hands, pushing them around under the surface.

"I'm between jobs at the moment."

"Of course. Only two men drink that way- the heartbroken and the unemployed."

The bartender brought a beer; shitty, domestic stuff you could see right through. He said, "Women are like jobs and jobs are like women. What do they call that? Interchangeable? You put on your best suit at the start but by the end you can't be bothered."

The old man took the beer. "A big guy like you could find a new one in no time."

"Which are we talking about," the bartender asked.

I said, "You're not making this easier."

"Don't imagine I could." The bartender finished wiping the bottles off and moved to the wood, taking a thin layer of greasy dust up with his damp rag. Then he took out a spray can of lemon cleaner from under the counter and set to filling the air with a choking citrus as fake and constant as the people you find on boardwalks.

"What's that gonna do," the old man asked. "Nothing but a squirt of piss. This place is filthy. It needs a good clean, a harsh clean, with real chemicals like, like..."

"Bleach," I said.

"Did you know that shit kills HIV? Doctors are out of their minds looking for a cure and it's right under their noses. 'Course you can't go injecting people with bleach, but I'm sure they can figure something out, you know they can, just have to be willing to break some eggs."

I pictured Malcolm's white basin sink and a spiral of pink swirling around and around and down the drain, and in my hand the jug I'd brought from the car, spreading it around, covering my hands when the sink was done.

"Listen, the bartender said, "shut up. Neither of you knows a thing about running a business. You think customers will stick around if the place reeks of noxious fumes?"

"What the...noxious fumes?"

"Yeah. Noxious fumes."

"You really think that's a problem? Look around, you have no customers!" The old man turned. "You wouldn't mind the smell, right?" I shook my head. "See? If you're gonna clean a place at least do it right. It's called being thorough, and people appreciate it."

I stood and walked along the bar, past the stools and to the door with a sign that read 'men', not that there was a second one for women. When I reached for the handle I missed, reaimed and found it, and I wondered if it was the gin screwing me up or everything else. Then I went in.

The bathroom was small, dim, a toilet and a sink and a fluorescent strip in the ceiling with one tube working, the other a faint, purple pulse with a voice like cicadas. As I pissed I could still hear the old man talking out there, arguing, giving his opinion. He never stopped. He had a gift for words which he'd passed down to his grandson, though it hadn't worked out as well for him. Words get people into trouble. Especially ones that rhyme. I tried not to think about it, then I flushed. When I came back the old man had the bar phone to his ear, the cord stretched across the bartender's workspace and over the counter. He seemed annoyed.

"He's not answering," he said, handing it back. "How the hell am I supposed to get home?"

The bartender hung up with his finger and waited for a dial tone. "I'll call you a taxi."

"Are you crazy? I can't afford that!"

"You're drunk, even if you had a car you couldn't drive it. Hell, I'll pay for it if it gets you out of my sight."

I sat again, noticing my drink was gone. I realized it looked done but the ice holds onto some. "Problem," I asked and he sunk down.

"No, no. He lives a few blocks away, I'll walk, see what's going on. He falls asleep in front of the TV sometimes. Lazy idiot."

The bartender said, "It's none of my business but you probably shouldn't be walking that far at your age."

I threw some bills on the counter. "Don't worry. I'll take him."