This is a short story I wrote for for their May short story writing challenge. I didn’t win, but I was ready to share this one anyway. What memories of a child will stand out to us, and would those memories echo into a present that we wanted to avoid as a child. I hope you find some takeaway from this story.

Marq rubbed his arms for warmth as the late April sky struggled to keep any heat against the lingering cold front that kept a crisp chilly air this afternoon. It was well past the final bell of the last period, and he was one of the few remaining kids waiting for their ride home. Even though his house was only ten blocks away, the adults of his school deemed he wasn’t old enough to stroll through the neighborhood to get back safe.

It wouldn’t be dark at least, like many of this after school moments he spent waiting for his mother or father to get out of work and come get him. Even after all the games and snacks provided by the afterschool staff, he was still longing to be home in his own room to watch some reruns of Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin. He hadn’t much to do with the other kids on the afterschool program as they only shared the mutual torment of being stuck at the school after three o’clock when they should be home. While it was fun to play some kickball or Heads Up Seven Up or watch a movie if the overworked teachers were not up to encouraging games for the children.

Marq sat at the window while the other three kids did their homework. He kept wishing to see his mother’s teal hatchback turn the corner up and enter the parking lot. But it would most likely be his father’s black coup roaring up the street. He just hoped that the Monster wasn’t the one coming to pick him up today. It had been the case for the past two weeks that the Monster took him home and kept showing up, terrifying Marq endlessly.

His heart rattled him with excited pulses as hear could hear the distinct acceleration of his father’s car. Roaring up the suburban sidewalks like a massive jungle cat bolting across a jungle runway. The black coup with the emblem of the bird on the front panel seemed it was ready to collide with the building but halted its swaying frame at a crooked angle.

“Looks like that’s your ride.” Ms. Akins remarked after appearing next to Marq, who was locked into the view of the car, hoping his father would be the one to step out. But the stumbling form that elevated out from the open door had the distinct aggressive and uncoordinated stride of the Monster. The chill that Marq had felt from the cold draft in the window seemed tame compared to the freezing of his blood as the stumbling creature came to the double doors. He was tempted to yell at Ms. Akins to lock the door, but she couldn’t see the Monster like he could.

“Look who’s here for you, Marq! You finally get to go home.” Marq walked with the hesitant pace of a man being escorted to the gallows as the Monster loomed over the clueless chipper smile of Ms. Akins. She must have been too relieved to have one more student cleared out so that she could head home to notice the towering dark frame, blood red eyes, long ivory keys of teeth with keyhole sized spaces behind that hairy mouth. The Monster bellowed Marq closer with a wild swipe of its massive paw and wrapped around Marq’s slender shoulders like the middle section of a python. He was pressed into the sweat, stale coffee, and Dulce cologne reeking through the frame of the Monster’s white work shirt. Feeling the cold and rigged dig of the metal shield clipped on the Monster’s belt as the great beast thanked Ms. Akins in its tone that sounded like a waterlogged bassoon.

Marq was led to the black muscle car that looked more like a great animal waiting to swallow him whole. He could only imagine it would be quick and instantaneous rather than being picked apart by the Monster. But memory had assured him that if he didn’t upset the Monster, he would be home and tomorrow he would see his daddy again. It had happened many times where his daddy would stomp downstairs to then shuffle down the hallway with shaking hands and bloodshot eyes to head straight for the pot of coffee that his mom always had ready to restore daddy to his more cheerful self. But until the rising of the sun came with a new chance to see his daddy, he had to tolerate and survive another afternoon with the Monster.

He was led to the passenger seat and secured, looking up at the visor that said children under the age of twelve shouldn’t sit here. Marq had another four years to go to obey that law. But the Monster wanted Marq to sit up front, saying it was where the big boys belonged, and didn’t Marq want to be a big boy and not some sissy little bitch. The Monster never listened to Marq unless it demanded an answer, but right now the creature’s paw tried to get the housekey into the ignition, only to swear a series of oaths as the car and the keys before realizing it had the wrong one and that inferno of rage switched to a jovial bellow as it looked for Marq to agree with the bipolar reaction. Marq had gained the skill of throwing up a rapid smile that pleased the Monster when commanded, it hated to see Marq hold a sour face and would warn of worse things to come to make that frown earned by its judgment.

The massive V8 roared to life as if a mechanized lion declaring its presence to the Serengeti, before lunging out of the parking long in a massive turn that scorched rubber in the repositioning. Within seconds trees and houses and parked cars blurred by but Marq could only catch the few details above the edge of the door’s window, his eyes were not level yet with the window to look straight out. The sudden stop and go at stoplights and sharp turns with faster corrections to avoid parked cars or curbs without witnessing the actions, sent Marq’s stomach into a configuration of nauseating twists.

Suddenly the mechanical lion halted, too soon from the home of the Monster. Marq caught the glimpse of strobing red and blue lights in the side mirror as the Monster garbled some curses while fumbling with the shield on his belt. A tap at the window from a uniformed officer, dressed ready for armed combat in these suburban streets, and the drop of the electronic window to have the officer and the Monster meet eye to eye.

“License and registra—” The Monster dropped the decorative clip of solid gold into the hand of the officer, and his confident posture seemed to deflate with the weight of the shield. His tone dropped from the strict business of authority to a plead of forgiveness as he altered his speech,

“My great apologies Lieutenant, I didn’t realize you were from the force.” The Monster grumbled back through its clenched fangs,

“Mistakes happen. Just don’t repeat them. I’m just getting my kid home from school before catching a few winks and follow up with the Donovan case.”

“Oh shit. They got you on that detail? I heard it was a bloodbath at the house.”

“Needed more mops than stretchers to clean up those kids. And civs’ wonder why we drink.”

“Practically a requirement to keep us from turning into those animals that do that shit.”

“Amen to that...Ahmed. You be safe on your tour.”

“Thanks Lieutenant! Same to you.” The Officer lowered himself to see Marq in his seat and threw up a jarring smile of whites through his brown mouth as he said to the boy,

“You must be proud of your papa. He’s a real force for good and catches some real bad guys.” Marq gave a slow nod as the Monster motioned for his shield and bid the officer farewell. After another series of lunges and shifts on the roads, they were angled at the familiar dented white door of the attached garage.

The jolting open and subsequent slam of the heavy car doors reached deep into Marq’s memory, and he felt the stinging bite on his upper arm from two months ago. When the Monster had shut the oppressive weight of the door on his small bicep and deltoid like the snapping of an alligator’s jaw. For nearly a week, the Monster was banished from the house by his mother. Thankfully his arm and body were spared from the physical pain of another bite from the door, but the memory returned the ghost of the pain and the burning of the tears.

“You got homework?” The Monster growled between the swears of its efforts to locate the right key for the front door. Marq nodded, only for the Monster to curse after dropping the clutter ring of keys and then screamed at the barking through the door of Cerberus and then the red eyes of the Monster turned on Marq and for a brief moment the heat of tears and urine were ready to fire out of his body.

“You got a frog in your throat or are you just deaf boy! I asked you if you did your homework. Give me an answer!” Marq withheld the liquids ready to stream from his eyes and his private as he choked out a wet,

“Yes sir.” The Monster pulled back its disgusted rage and then turned to curse a demand of silence at the barking of their Akida on the other side of the door. When the riddle of the lock was solved and the Monster opened the door, a massive frame of fur and drool with a bear trap of white and yellow teeth barked and jumped and nipped at the Monster who shoved and kneed and swore oaths to the energetic dog. The Monster shuffled straight to the kitchen and unlocked the sliding door to direct both Marq and Cerberus into the backyard.

The looming clouds that had formed in the last five minutes seemed to indicate that outside was not set to be welcoming. Marq tried to swallow his hesitation and doubt that the world would remain dry in the backyard as the Monster yelled for a hustle as the glass door was sliced closed like a vertical guillotine. Once outside the air had gotten cool, a fridged drop, as was to be feared on a late April day. Marq could only wrap his arms around his waist as his windbreaker wasn’t thick enough to offset the icy wind in the air. Cerberus bounced and pounced around the grass, sniffing in the holes he had dug by the edge of the flower beds and then curling on his feet to leave another organic landmine for Marq to avoid stepping in.

There wasn’t much in the yard that Marq could occupy his free time with and with his mother still away, he couldn’t go inside. The Monster didn’t like when Marq was inside while the sun was out, claiming that lazy kids that turn into degenerates were the ones who spent the daylight sitting in front of televisions or on computer screens. The Monster would be getting into more of his stash of cans, from the spare fridge in the garage, the one that Marq was forbidden to go into if he valued the comfort of sitting down. Even with the double-panned glass door sealed shut and lock Marq could hear the signal of the Monster’s can, the metallic puncture that released a popping hiss of the contents that gave this Monster its power and kept his daddy away. Marq decided to make use of his time and played fetch with Cerberus, throwing a knotted ball of rope that was tattered and caked with dirt that the dog would now add another layer as he saturated the binding fabric with slimy saliva before Marq would snatch the knot and launch it into the barren dirt by the half completed koi pond that his daddy had started last summer. The knot bounced over the piles of dirt next to the muddy pit and tumbled over the bare frames of the swing set his daddy had promised to have built two weeks ago, but then duty called.

Duty always seemed to call his daddy away and by the third or fourth day of duty seizing his father, the Monster was the one who came back to shove and bark Marq into somewhere out of sight. The only one who could face the Monster was his mother and it was always a gamble when she would come home. Sometimes she didn’t when the nursing home told her she was mandated for a double, all that translated to Marq was that he was stuck at home with the Monster yelling at the television people or the sports teams or grazing on leftovers out of the Tupperware and by nightfall ordering Marq to get to bed. The Monster would follow him to his room after he had brushed his teeth, and the hot breath of the creature would suffocate Marq as he was trapped under the covers, just patiently waiting for the Monster to decide to leave so that Marq could try to sleep. Sometimes it would sing in a graveled croak that sound damp and stalling like a leaky engine, sometimes the Monster wanted to read or tell a story but would lose its place in the tale and curse and repeat and then curse and then give up and call for the lights to go out as it vacated Marq’s cramped bedroom. Often his attempts at settling in the dark were ruined by more cracks of the cans and shouting at the television or at Cerberus for not getting inside quickly enough. Only when his mother came home did she fight the Monster and end the evening.

Marq always worried on nights when his mother didn’t come home, and he was alone with the Monster. On at least three occasions the Monster would stumble into his room, ready to withdraw what was behind its zipper, only to realize that the toilet was in the neighboring room. Marq would often hear a growling remark of,

“Damn kid, always getting in my way.”

After the sky grew a more neon pink haze across the stratus clouds and the chill of the air became sharper like a find edge blade on the exposed flesh of his cheeks, Marq heard a salvation as the squeak of brakes came from his mother’s hatchback. Her car must not have been able to situate into the driveway as the engine cut and the door snapped open with an audible curse from her voices,

“Not again!”

With a slam of the door Cerberus barked at the solid white vinyl gate to sound ferocious but with too much playful leaps and turns to be of concern to Marq’s family. With the barking came the declaration for silence from the Monster, echoing through the tight hallways of the house. Now Marq headed to the unfinished koi pond as he knew that the rattling exchange of screams was coming when his mother entered the house to fight the Monster. Cerberus jumped and nipped and licked at Marq’s back and elbows while his icy hands, balled into tight fist, remained hidden in his jacket pockets. The shoving gusts seemed to send sharper chills of the sunset into the collar and up the waist of his windbreaker. As he rounded the massive dirt pile and took a seat on the muddy slope, his head just below the peak of pile, his mother was cursing at the creature in her living room.

The details of the yelling were not reaching out the window, but the tone and venomous outrage from his mother and the booming roars from the Monster seemed to rattle the house and send a soundwave to rival the gusts of wind coming up the backyard to the house. Marq could only bundle up and wait while Cerberus brought the drool-soaked knot of rope over, daring Marq to reach for it and go into a tug of war or to snatch it and throw it to the outfield. But Marq remained scrunched up, not wanting to expose more of his body to the cold as the sunlight was going grey into twilight. The yells and screams continued, and a crash occurred and Marq worried about the safety of his mother. The Monster never hurt her before, but its more consistent presences and the exhaustion of his daddy on most mornings seemed to tell him that it wasn’t going to be safe in the house much longer.

Who puts away the one who puts away the bad guys?

He thought as Cerberus nuzzled his golf ball sized wet nose into Marq’s stomach and he withdrew a numbed hand from his pocket and stroked the coarse hair of the dog that just wanted attention and fun. He hugged Cerberus’s bulging neck and the dog twisted to get laps of his tongue onto Marq’s cheeks, catching a few tastes of the salty trails coming from his eyes. The days were getting more difficult to predict or tolerate when the Monster cursed him and his mother and Cerberus with its presence.

The smothering cold was interrupted when the sliding back door jumped open, and Marq’s mother called his name. He peered around the dirt pile like a soldier scanning over no-man’s-land while Cerberus bounded up to the frizzled red dreadlocks of his mother and getting muddy paw prints on her maroon-colored scrubs.

“Marquan, let’s go. We’re going to your grandmas for a few days. Get in my car.” When she went to lead him into the house the Monster was blocking the threshold. Panting as if fire would below from its drooling mouth before it growled at his mother,

“You ain’t taking our boy from me! I won’t have you walk out on me or rob me of my family!”

“Darrell, you need to get out of my way if you want to keep your teeth from decorating my knuckles! I know you got that case riding you at the precinct, but you don’t have any right to booze up around my baby and lock him out with the dog! I’ve had it with your bottle sucking! Either get your shit together or start looking for another bed to call your own.”

The massive paws of the Monster clenched around the frame and the glass door, creaking the wood under the pink palms. Those glassy red eyes seemed to bulge as the beast rocked on its feet, struggling to decide whether to step back or step forward. Marq’s mother grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards the side gate but then the Monster’s hand engulfed the other wrist.

Now the kid was caught between two forces that would rip him in half like a wishbone, as tears came back out and a sobbing cry bubbled out of his throat. Screams were exchanged and threats of harm and havoc were promised as Marq felt his wrist pop under the Monster’s grip and his shoulder felt ready to exit the socket on his mother’s side. Cerberus barked and growled and snapped at the ankles of the Monster but was knocked back by a swift kick that turned to massive brute of a dog into a whimpering ball of fur.

The tug of Marq ended when his left radial bone twisted in the grip of the Monster, to which he emitted a scream that seemed to shatter the waring exchange of vengeance between those fighting for his body. The Monster released its grip, and a cold sweat seemed to melt off the horrifying features of the beast’s face. Marq saw his daddy’s face, afraid in a way he never saw before, looking down at his son’s twisted forearm.

His mother pulled him tight to her bosom and cursed a diatribe of insults and warnings and promises of retribution. But as she pulled Marq to the gate and the fading Monster begged for a moment of peace, red and blue lights illuminated the darkness over the fence. The chatter of radios came as doors opened and slammed shut.

Marq and his mother were now in the back of an ambulance with a female uniformed officer sitting next to his mother. The mustachioed medic had made a crude sling from disposable fabric after assessing Marq’s deformed forearm and asking his mother for the details of how it was injured. The frozen look on his mother’s face was just as novel and shocking as when his daddy’s sad face appeared in the menacing mug of the Monster.

New images were now imprinting on Marq’s either-year-old grey matter along with worlds like CPS and safe havens, and custody, and guardianship. All concepts and terms he and his mother would come to know too well and be forever tainted by. Marq wondered if the Monster that came from those cans would permanently replace his daddy. Leaving a trail of terror and malice and distaste for hope.

Marq would grow up to know the name for that Monster and what damage it caused to his daddy, his mother, and to himself overtime. He would meet others who had similar Monsters they had suffered under, some even worse than his own. But such Monsters were the worst, because they came out of cans and bottles, or form powder and pills. Like some magical curse of alchemy that was made to turn ordinary people into something that shattered the beauty and joys of family or friends. Marq would always fear that Monster, especially when the day came where he tasted such concoctions that summoned this transformation.

He often worried who in his life that he loved would face whatever Monster he became.

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Buy Me A Coffee

I will admit that this topic is off brand from what I want to write about (fiction) and more in line with my opinionated rants that some people read but most tend to ignore. Lately I have gotten into some headbutting with zealous christians about how important the bible is to western culture. It led to a standstill in the comments we exchanged and seemed that we were drifting off topic and turning into some one-ups-man-ship tactic that has plagued message boards since the dawn of public forums.

I don’t mind a thoughtful debate and the main individual I was arguing with ended the conversation with respect to me, when we both came to the conclusion that we were circling around the main topic and getting heated over our beliefs (or lack there off). One observation this person made that I didn’t want to deny nor have pride in is that I “Have an ax to grind with religion”. It gave me a moment of reflection of how I was priming myself to be contrarian and cutthroat to strangers on the internet, solely because they wear their faith as part of their identity. Something I don’t wish to do for myself as I am trying to be respectful of those that do so with humility and consideration for others.

I don’t boast about being a secular thinking, nor to I think that my way of thinking is superior to those who want to utilize faith. But when those of faith fail to have that type of humility and insist I support their narrative of how people continue after life, I have a hard time holding my tongue or turning the other cheek. But as a kind faith purveyor on my Substack subscriber list named asked, I should share my story about how I became an atheist.

I do not wish to disclose my identity on my Substack. I am a person using a pen name to develop an audience of readers for my fiction and my essays where I explain my murky and conflicting views of the world around me. I have been hesitant on kicking the hornet’s nest that is religion. Because I have been down this road many times and all it does is leave me feeling alienated or on hostile terms with other people, often for what I find to be superficial reasons that other people deem crucial. There is a imbalance that occurs in communication for most people, even in the written form, where the receiver (or reader) has a conclusion formed in their mind about how the speaker (or writer) views the world before fully digesting the content of the conversation (writing). I know this flaw in human thinking and I have been guilty of it many times. I tend to see it when I get into arguments, and notice that the opposing party isn’t working to understand what I’m explaining but rather waiting to unleash a counter argument to win some imagined victory. As if conversations were a game of tug of war.

Keep in mind of this concept of assumptive arguments that anyone can make and is often more layered when something emotionally powerful is involved (religion holds a strong emotional attachment to many people for various reasons). This isn’t me claiming to be right about my lack of belief in the existence of a life after death or some magical deity that controls the universe. Those arguments go nowhere and even the greatest debaters of secular thinking and atheism haven’t changed the minds of those with devout faith.

This is about how I came to be an atheist and why, in my mid 30s, I still am one.

A vague peak behind the curtain of S. K. Ratidox. I was raised in the 1990s in suburbia America to the middle class family. Both of my parents were raised and technically still are Roman catholics. I was baptized, went through communion, had my confirmation, never went to confession (I don’t know why, it was never imposed upon me and I never objected), went on a couple of bible retreats, attended a christian summer school program for a couple of summers, and even attended catholic high school for my freshman year after having serious conflicts with peers at my middle school.

Give all of that, you would think I would remain a catholic or some other denomination of christianity. But I gave up the faith somewhere around the age of fourteen to sixteen. Part of it was a way for me to double down on my teenage rebellion towards my parents and other authority figures. But another part that factored into my separation from faith in general was curiosity that wasn’t being satisfied by my families religion, nor any religion that I read up or talked to others about. I was the kid with a wild imagination, lots of energy, and a desire to understand the world around me. The magical elements of religion only gave me satisfaction up to a certain age.

As was once articulated by a very funny man (I’m paraphrasing for my point) “As a kid, I had some fat guy coming once a year to give me toys, a fairy that gave me money for my baby teeth, and a rabbit that gave me candy. Why wouldn’t I believe what they told me in church about a bearded man walking on water or the dead coming back to life?” That factor of my naive youth was why I didn’t object to my religion until I became capable of abstract and critical thinking after puberty started. But as I had to confront the reality that those myths were just fun stories to feed my young imagination, a different result carried where I started to develop skepticism towards what adults told me.

When you are young and come to accept that fantastic stories were just pleasant lies your adults carried to you, it can go two ways. You either carry a resentment at being lied to, which turns into a need for retribution which often takes the form of perpetuating your own set of lies to give the adults, and continuing the same mythic tales to the next children in the hopes of feeling the lost youth that was severed from you. Or you go my way where you can’t take the deception and want to strip it away.

When I had to admit that Santa Claus was a myth, I felt a bitter sting of seeing the world in a more unwelcoming manor. I was already struggling socially by the age of ten because I had dealt with bullying for about two years, would encounter more forms of it throughout my pubescent years, and would carry those scars further on into my current psyche. Letting the death of a myth seemed to be just another impact on my view of the world that skewed towards anxiety and depression. I developed more existential dread, whether it was inherent of my child brain or pushed into that realm of naive nihilism.

When I let the myths of my childhood die, I became suspicious of what adults claimed, and the tales in religion seems no different to me. I know that will strike a powerful nerve in those of faith, particularly christians who think I’m being hyperbolic for comparing Santa Claus to god or Jesus. But I can’t be given compelling evidence to make me trust the stories as truth, so I suspect them to be a fictious series of stories to just comfort adults when they have to abandon the myths of their childhood.

As I grew into my teen years and slowly stripped away my belief in the religion and went through the motions of confirmations (which I had no choice to refuse, according to every adult in my life). Being told that “This is the way” when your trust in adults has already been soured sparked another part of my personality that carries into my current life; my stubborn contrarian reflex. I don’t seek a counter argument just because I can and want to troll other people. I often fall into this reflexive oppositional stance when I feel that I’m being pushed into someone else’s decisions.

Maybe this aligns with some libertarian philosophy but I hold a strong distaste for feeling that some other person is controlling my life. Not strictly in a political sphere but more in a metaphysical and social form. I seek psychological independence most times when it comes to going through my daily life, with obvious exceptions to family, friends, jobs and laws of mankind. But that leads into the subject of morality that I often find people of faith argue that people of my lack of faith cannot possibly have. I consider morality more of combination of insight into ones place with the world and how others are affected by your actions. That isn’t a complicated process and doesn’t need scripture. The practice of empathy and compassion are digestible enough for me to understand that I don’t need the dogmas or the scriptures to dictate how I have to behave as a person.

Perhaps that’s a privilege of my mind being overanalytical and constantly craving philosophical discussions. I never had a hard time seeing the pain on another person’s face and thought, “That could be me at some point” So I seek to not contribute to such pain and find ways to stop it. This personal revelation of developing empathy came to me by college when my hostility towards liars and bullies and frauds was mellowed by soaking in more knowledge and meeting people of different circles of culture and existence. I stopped seeking opposition and getting myself into arguments or being a Christopher Hitchens type of personality that so many amateur atheists became to where they have soured the look of being a secular thinker as a condescending know-it-all. It doesn’t help that other prominent atheists have become problematic or past the prime of their brilliant contributions to the physical world without religion.

Where does this leave me when atheism seems to be a mistrusted and less desired form of thinking and when radical religious practices are on the rise in our current climate? It leaves me in a state of sadness and pity for the human race. I often consider myself as a Humanist since reading the works of Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Sam Harris, James Randi, Fred Rogers, and many others who either used the practices of principles of religion to promote better qualities in people but without preaching the dogma. Or they transcended the need of any stories of mystic faith and found a path to give humanity ways to promote wisdom and kindness and humility.

But I still see how flawed people are, hence why I call my website, Logical Contradictions. I see myself as full of contradictions and may have made some in this essay that you will catch before I do. Bravo if you do and I hope we can learn something together. But despite how people seem to fail to live up to their idealized forms, why would I bother hoping for them to be better? Well because it would be depressing and cynical to give up, and the world is oversaturated with doomer outlooks. I wish to shine a light on the contradictions and faith is always one that offers plenty of examples. But even those who shed faith fall into the same set of logical fallacies with thinking that they have the correct answers.

Perhaps my cause to maintain my lack of faith seems hopeless and isolating. But I have found the gift of solitude that other people seem to confuse with isolation. Last time I checked it is still my life to live and my decision whether or not I need to invest in faith. I don’t pretend to know what happens at the end of my mortality, and unlike other people of faith it doesn’t terrify me. I was more worried in my youth when I felt that some massive magical cosmic creator was watching me at every moment of my life and keeping score of my actions to tally up when it came time for me to shed my mortal coil. It seems absurd to me looking back but given how dependent I was on adults as a child, why wouldn’t I maintain that power dynamic of thinking something beyond my control was looking down on me. Once I came to the reality that consequences are only true when people make them so, I stopped buying into the need for a parental figure in the clouds.

Please understand that I’m not mocking or trying to severe anyone’s ties to their faith. Much as I don’t want my personal existence infringed upon, I have grown to avoid doing the same to other people. I have no daily involvement in the lives of others than my offspring, but even that will come to a finish. I am accountable for who I am and what I chose to do. That has been liberating to not feel tied down to a group that often silences too critical of questions or any thoughts that seem to stray off from the narrative of the faith. That is why I’m still an atheist, and proud to be one. If someone wants to cut ties with me for thinking differently, well that just tells me they didn’t want to encounter differing opinions in this space and would rather sit comfortably in a familiar echo-chamber.

A big thank you to , who has been a supportive subscriber of my challenge and has given me good examples of someone of faith who isn’t trying to convert me or shame me for my atheism. I doubt I would have created this essay and offered up some of my more personal reasons for why I have my outlook. Whether it grants me new subscribers or casts them away, I just hope I have given what I am truly about.

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Buy Me A Coffee

I know this is a tired concern that many have howled the encroachment of this miasma of illiteracy, but I want to give my two cents on the rather pessimistic outlook of readership, specifically in the United States of America. While I (and many others) peruse the overly opinionated landscape of what constitutes good writing or writing worth of readership or writing that last over the generations, massive cracks in the pantheon of the written word have expanded and many are marching through it into a meth den casino of screens and cons that’s dominating the attention economy.

There are reports and trends of low readership, primarily in cisgender men, which is concerning and I have seen the star pupils of such statistics. As I have written in my earlier essays, the ugliest words I can ever encounter that fill my emotional mind with tragedy are when people, mostly men and absurdly proud, declare “I don’t read”. I have talked with men who seem proud of the notion that they don’t read books and view reading as a more pathetic hobby that doesn’t fit their lifestyle. To me this is like someone saying they don’t like to eat vegetables or exercise, yes those are often low hanging fruit to give a metaphor but I think they warrant a strong representation.

My mind always recalls a professor I had in community college for a fiction course who had some similar argument with a would-be finance bro who saw no value in reading fiction when he just wanted to make money to be successful. My professor had often compared reading to exercise and said that those who don’t engage in it often will come into it facing more impossible feats of achievement. But by putting in the effort, as with our muscles adapting to workouts, our minds become more developed and stronger when we read and thus can achieve more success. But his more direct point to the cynical finance-bro was that in order to be successful in business you have to have solid communications skills with people and the best way to excel in that was to develop empathy and through reading the stories of other people and utilizing your imagination to comprehend the experience of another’s life you can develop more attunement to the presentations and needs of others. Sadly this only seemed to bounce off finance-bro’s head like flower pedals on a brick wall.

I always think back to that moment with concern when I notice more anti-readers. But while I hate to feed the narrative of “kids these days are getting worse” the data seems to trend to towards conclusion. The US ranks around 36^th in proficiency of general literacy compared to other nations of similar advancements. About 54% of adults are capable of reading read at a six grade reading level. About one third of children in the fourth grade have passable reading comprehension. That seems like a public crisis when half of adults can’t read a book more advanced that a YA novel and 64% of children are falling behind with developing reading skills.

I bring this problem up not just as an author, nor as a fan of reading, nor as an educated individual. As I mentioned in previous essays, I once struggled to get through reading novels, and short stories. I never received a diagnosis for ADHD or some kind of reading impairment like Dyslexia. I have no problems reading words nor retaining information, I just seem to have an overactive mind that drifts out of focus and sometimes a sentence on a page could set my mind into some rabbit hole of imagination and large chunks of time would pass before I returned to my book. Added to that was my challenge of comprehension of words and identifying emotional implications from what I was reading when it had more advanced prose. Now I have worked past those handicaps and while I may still have the pace of a passive reader I do try to chisel away an average of forty books or more a year.

I will concede that I utilize audiobooks for more length or older books that would be a challenge for me to set time for in my busy adult life. But I came to appreciate Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and William Shakespeare more when I have an audiobook to help get me through the dense texts. I don’t merit that to being lazy nor a cheater of taking in the classics, if I had unlimited free time and could unplug from the digital world, I would be immersed in the physical books. But I have a mortgage to pay and a family that requires my presences and support, so reading is a hobby I can only make limited time for.

There is perhaps the exhaustion of available time for the average American that his hindering their chance to read along side their limitations with reading. Majority of Americans are working more than forty hours a week, often with more than one job, balancing their careers, their home (if they can afford one), and their families (also if they can afford one). In between all of those essential responsibilities is the distractions for entertainment. Books have a limitation on what they can do to engage a reader and given how passive the action of watching a screen without having to critically think as you soak in the audio and visual stimulation, the books don’t make as deep of an impact for most people. But books give more lasting impact in terms of outlook and of skill development.

On an anecdotal level, my sleep, my attention, my focus, and my critical thinking skills have all shown improvement when I devote more time to reading than to watching videos, listening to podcasts or music, or even being around other people. I find that frequent readers tend to have more analytical and open minded conversations rather than forcefully opinionated or just constructed of media references. But that doesn’t mean that those less savory aspects of human communication don’t happen (myself included in this flaw) but its frequency and severity tend to reduce noticeably.

Which now brings me to the segment that I have already spoken once before about, but now have seen and learned more about it’s ongoing dilemma. The culture war amongst book fans. Whether it’s the genre vs literature clashing, the dissection of if a book carries toxic themes or is just entertainment. Or the overlapping opinions about whether modern writing is atrophied compared to previous eras of fiction and prose. To me it is all tragic to see such pedantic tribalism sour the landscape of reading and writing and I worry that those of us guilty of favoring certain styles or traditions or tactics of story telling create and environment that looks too chaotic or perhaps too exclusive to the average reader who wants to expand their horizons.

I’m of the mindset of “be glad that anyone is reading” before you gripe about what they are reading. I have no taste for romance novels or most fantasy stories not written by Tolkien or Alexander but I don’t wish ill of those genres. I’m not versed or impressed by some modern literary novels but I don’t claim they are a waste of time to read. I don’t even want to besmirch any tropes that are overused in genre fiction nor think myself superior if someone wants to read a graphic novel or utilize audiobooks.

WHO FUCKING CARES!

When we fixate and ruminate on petty details more often than methods to expand the evolving mutation of reading books, we are the elites in the last citadel fighting over resources that will become scarce as more generations come who can’t even get through reading ten pages of instructions. The brain rot is spreading and with the slop swamp swallowing up the landscape of entertainment after the flesh has been picked clean by grifters and influencers and celebrities who want to drain the life out of your attention span.

Authors want your attention but not in the same spectacle display that actors, podcaster, grifters and slop peddlers do. We often want you to hear our story and have some connection to it, whether a superficial form of entertainment which sits in the swallow end of the pool of performance, or to give you some insight into an unconventional way of thinking. We do want to make a living on our writing, but to hold any respectable amount of credibility as creators we can’t command constant compensation while championing compassion. The relationship of a reader and a writer is often tied to a connective tissue of emotional recognition of each person, a telepathic link of acknowledgement. But when a writer seems like they are in it for the paycheck, the reader may want to move on to the millions of options in the bookstore, so be cautious about the need to make money when already the sales of books seems to be hurting as much as readership.

When I was a child, there was a school performance that all the classrooms participated during a Scholastic Fair Week and one of the verses of the song that has imprinted into my head was:

“Reading. Reading is so fine.

If you read a lot you’ll expand your mind.

Reading is important for me and you.

It can take you places you never knew!”

While simple and rather corny, it was moving to my second grade mind and I considered reading important. Despite the many years of struggling with clearing a novel within the span of a few months, I wanted to read. I signed up for summer reading contests at my local library to win cheap prizes and even simple books. I took joy in trips to Border’s Book store and loaded up on a novel or two and some newspaper comic collections like Calvin & Hobbes or Zits or Doonesbury. Even with assigned reading, I tried to squeeze in some Stephen King or H.G. Wells or Lloyd Alexander into my reading schedule as a teenager. Then came greater books and authors and now I feel that I am catching up to classic and impactful books while discovering gems, both hidden and coveted, to be in awe of and to promote to others.

Well then, Ratidox you ranting fool, how do we get people to read more?

Dear reader. It’s not easy but it also isn’t complicated.

Just promote reading and don’t be ashamed of reading.

When you encounter those thick skulled knuckle draggers who don’t think reading is masculine and scoff that what you read is pathetic, hold your poise and reply to them as you would someone who would rather suck in another hit of crack cocaine and scoff at you for having clean skin and healthy body mass index. People who don’t like to read should be pitied because they don’t see how small their world is, and how inconsequential their opinions are to the conversations of the world. To be a reader is to find better ways of navigating conflict than the conventional knowledge of might makes right.

There is a misconception when it comes to gaining respect in this world1 . Respect in its purist form is earned and how can you earn someone’s legitimate respect if you cannot model how respect is carried out. You can respect opinions while disagreeing with them and arguing against them. You can shield what is precious to you (in this case, reading books) without sitting on a high horse against those who came to believe that they have discovered some hack in life by not reading. They haven’t discovered any advantage by ignoring a skill that has led to the development of our current iteration of civilization. We handicap ourselves when reading is kept as a chore or an assignment rather than a skill and a form of influence or entertainment.

If you are a parent, promote reading by being a reader. Don’t order your child to read while you doomscroll or watch endless hours of television. If you can’t be a reader, how can you expect your descendants to be readers. It’s an old fact but people who can read well2 tend to excel in life. While I haven’t gained fortunes in my life by reading novels or discussing stories, I have found more peace and wisdom from creative works than just taking in self-help books, or listening to some podcaster spin a wheel of “wisdom” which is just sounds like motivational sales pitchs most times.

I’m more inclined to take in the arguments of the well read crowd than someone who thinks that books are for losers. The Venn Diagram of the anti-book people and the grift-fluencers seems to have a larger overlap in the digital world. It’s why I enjoy writing reviews for books despite the reception being more minimal than my main page of essays and short stories. I know there is pessimism about the drop in book reviews in the public world and some want to say good riddance. But I consider reviews not so much as recommendations but starting fuel for discussions or discovery. I approach my reviews as my way of saying why I choose to recount this particular book as worth reading, whether positive or negative, and want to share it with other people. If they happen to gain curiosity from my review, that is great! If it sparks a discussion or their own insights into the work, that is wonderful in another way. But to just consume books and never reflect or talk about them seems wasteful. Books have the magical (*retching*) ability to grow more communication with other people and establish tighter connections to form a more involved community.

Perhaps my musings in this piece are overtly optimistic and oversimplified. But I am exhausted by the pedantic arguments in the notes sections of Substack and the practically smoothing of brains I see in the rest of social media when it comes to literacy and reading. The offline world seems to reflect the division between those that read and those that don’t, as America swan dives further into a world where anything more complex than Harry Potter is impossible to read for most teenagers and maybe half of the adults in this society.

Find your good reads, dispute the knuckle draggers with guidance and modeling. Show the next generation the joys of reading by actually enjoying it. And stop making enemies out of other readers when we are a turning into an endangered species.

I didn’t expect to arrive here on this topic as I find that writing is a personal journey and it’s up to the individual writer to be responsible for their method of creating a story to share. There is no shortage of writing advice out there, some may be helpful, some of it may be derivative, and some of it may just be lousy or a scam. There is no shortage of wisdom out there to learn how to write well.

I can’t claim to be an expert, but I have been writing fiction and my thoughts for years and while my Substack is less than two years old with barely enough subscribers to fill out a VFW hall. But I want to give my written lecture on how to be a fiction writer. Rather than bore you with the repeated guidelines that all screen writers and editors swear by or lie to you like literary snobs or grammar Nazis, I will use a simple metaphor for how I look at writing and why it works for me.

With the spring weather coming for my area of the world, I think of writing like gardening. It seems like an easy task to complete and a way to get something free (initially). But as many who have struggled in the soil to cultivate breathtaking blooms or hearty harvests of edible arrangements, it’s not as simple as plant seeds in dirt, walk away, and then profit. Gardening is a skillful and patient practice that anyone can learn, but not all can excel at. I like to think that I’m on my way from the hobbyist who can make some starter plants turn into full vegetables, to a more seasoned tiller of the ground who can make a good turnout by the end of the summer.

I mostly want to frame this metaphor around writing a fiction novel, because that is my main trade as a writer. I have made many short stories and will create more, but I find that they have a limitation of a houseplant while a novel is an ambitious attempt to have a full collection of biodiversity that may translate to food for several days and weeks. A novel is more than just a straight story because that would be something that you could eek out in just a few minutes. For most people, reading a novel takes hours or days or longer depending on the reader’s pallet.

To make the arrangement for this novel you need to have your main story; the whole overview. That synopsis that sits on the back or book jacket of the books to let the passing reader know what your story is about and entice them to turn the page. There is an art to making your story pitch enticing, and I think I’m shit at it. It’s why writers hire or work with copywriters and advertisers in or outside of traditional publishing to make their books marketable. But for this metaphor you have to consider your story as your plan of what you want to grow in your garden.

Will the arrangement make sense, can the plants thrive in harmony, or will they compete for dominance and choke out their neighbors? This is how you structure and perhaps outline you novel. I have come to utilize outlines just so that I can balance and finish my novels, rather than just write until I come to some end of the journey. This method never gave me much success because I would end up with disjointed stories with tangential sections and ignoring the process of completing the story. It’s important to know where you start and end at a novel and you can map it out ahead of time as you would lay out where you will plant your seeds or structure the support systems for your developing veggies.

With that you need the seeds (the breakdown of who, what, when, where, and why) and then the location (you plot), then comes the tools (dialogue and narrative style) and plant food (prose or expressive imagery). All of this can be affected by the season (what’s appealing to readers) and the cultivation at the end (making the story accessible to readers), while watching out for the invasion of weeds (intrusive parties co-opting your story) or insects (cliches and tropes).

Let’s get our hands dirty in this garden of our making, shall we? I’m Ratidox and welcome to my home gardening tips for the would-be writers reading along. Grab your gloves and kneepads and follow me into the fresh air.

Assuming that you have your plan for your garden (your outline or nebulous story if you are a free spirited words smith). Let’s start with our seeds (read: the story); this is a small but powerful part of making this project become a tangible thing. What are you looking to grow? Something that will bear excessive amounts of produce, such as juicy tomatoes or a single powerful cabbage? This is where the genre comes into play of why kind of story you want to write. But here’s the kicker; it can be a mixture of different veggies to give you a more mixed garden. I enjoy Brussel sprouts but if that’s all I’m growing, it will make for a limited option for mealtime and excessive amounts of gas to deal with after dinner.

Don’t let the genre limit you. Genres are often more psychological barriers fueled by the marketing department of publishers to make us self-segregate away from good stories. You can blend genres or be just outside of genres if you are daring to make it happen and avoid some of the pitfalls of cliches and tropes you can fall into (those pesky insects that can devour your story). You have control of how you want to make this story, to an extent, as your imagination and mental capacity to translate it into something coherent enough that other people will want to read. The main caution I offer is that you can use genres and cliches to lull in those readers that don’t want to take big risks on an unknown writer, much like picker eaters who don’t want to try a Poblano pepper but would rather just eat a plain Roma tomato instead, but if you grow and pair such familiar veggies, you may trick your reader into trying something they end up liking, when it is prepared and gets Trojan horsed past their rigid bias.

A quick aside on genres and cliches (those categories and insects if I wish to maintain my metaphor). With genres, I find they are often the scapegoat of writer’s who want the prestige of being considered literary geniuses and often scoff of lament the excessive existence of genre fiction. I will concede that there is an oversaturation of certain genres (YA, Romance, Thrillers, Fantasy, etc.) but that is a sad result of people chasing the profit, not that those genres are toxic, they are just formulaic recipes that people can churn out, sometimes into disgusting slop that imitates real food. Genres are comfort foods to many and are often the gateway drug to the addiction of reading more often. Even great literary classics dabbled in the genres (tell me that Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, Kurt Vonnegut, and Emily Bronte don’t merit the alcaldes of literary praise while they are most famous for their genre painted bibliographies). Genres are just your tool of how to properly grow your story, do you just plant it into the ground or are you using a fertilizer, a raised garden bed, a secluded pot, or an entire hydroponic system to support the growth. Results will vary depending on the method that is genre, but as I mentioned before, you can blend or subvert to the standards of these genres. That is risky but it can be done if you have a clever mind and creative way of structuring your garden.

Cliches I called insects which makes them seem invasive and damaging to your story, which many are, but much like ladybugs that devour the invasive aphids or bees that pollinate the flowers of your plants to grant some mixture of life into the seeds (if you wish to carry on another generation of gardening this crop, which I would equate to sequel writing). Do your cliches strip the life out of your story or do they provide a helpful barrier to grant it continued growth? It’s rather nebulous because cliches, much like insects, can be deemed a universal problem to those that aren’t familiar with their taxonomy.

Let me give a simple cliche I can across in one of my novels, that of the pair of homicide detectives solving a series of murders that was in my first novel Drop Dead Drunks (available on Barnes & Noble in e-book form). I created an old wise homicide detective and a young inexperienced homicide detective as my dynamic duo, which has been seen and played and portrayed across a multitude of books and films and television.

You would ask why I would do this? Why not change the age gap or the genres, or even diversify the races of the characters? Because these two characters were just a small part of my overall story, not the main focus but the pseudo-McGuffin of getting my story from beginning to end. I found that any alterations to my pair of white-male detectives would also come across as cliche when I had more variety in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and psychology in the dozen other characters in my book. I find that fixating on those differences of appearance and culture and personal lifestyle alienates the crucial part of reading which is to soak in the human representation of these fictional names with no real faces. I offset this cliche with some added quirks to change up the usual beats and counter any expectations of more cliches. The difference in experiences allowed for a mentorship between the two which granted me a chance to give more organic exposition and speculation of the mystery I made to the reader that didn’t feel like I was halting the pace of the story to spell out the stakes of the tale. Likewise, I made both characters flawed to where you questioned their judgment and also empathized with their daily stress of hiding their more personal parts to remain professional in their jobs while the plot of the story would shit on their attempts at progress.

But you would have to read my book to determine if I am true to those claims. Clinches, and tropes in most instances, should be something you maintain awareness of and utilize to start the structure of your story but know that you can mutate it. Just make sure that it carries on with your intention of the story. You have to cast the judgement of how you want to grow and cultivate this garden. The hardest part is diligence and patience when you want to make a fruitful harvest. You may have some characters that take off when you thought they were just a simple side mouth piece for a specific scene, or perhaps you want to give more development to the setting and the dynamics between your characters. Perhaps you want to spice up the plants by making the characters more unique or full of baggage to give them dimension. All of this you can start but much like planting a seed, you can’t fully control how they will shape when they come to full maturity. You may have to use your garden tools (narrative and dialogue) to prune and shape the plants to give more life into specific parts that will bloom into your nutritious bounty, otherwise your plant will be spread thin with a multitude of smaller buds that won’t amount to a mouthful.

There is an art to gardening, and you have to adapt quickly to it as your story grows or it may wither and die from neglect. But unlike the living plants of my metaphor your story can be paused. But it is up to you with the motivation to awaken it from stasis, otherwise it become one of those incomplete projects that just can’t find a conclusion. Stephen King once warned in his writing memoir about characters getting stale if you sit on an unfished manuscript for too long. I think that varies on the mindset of the writer, but I agree that the passion and drive a writer has can dwindle or shift to another project after a certain length of time. Whether that is over weeks, months, or years we can encounter new interests and if we let our stories sit in the closet or on the software like forgotten hobbies, they won’t fully form into any representation of our hard work.

Much like setting up a garden and then giving up on it as the plants have just started to climb out of the soil. You have to guide it to the end and know when it is time to end. Which brings me to a way to end this metaphor mess of an essay. Conclusions are challenging for some of us creative types, because we didn’t try to plot our story. So we just use our feelings to guess when it’s done. Or we rush to wrap it up because so much time and effort has been made to create this and people are starving from the wait. I find endings to stories bittersweet because well created characters will seem alive and closing the book seems to say, “no more of this person” and we set them into a limbo and whatever speculative stories carry beyond may never manifest on the page if the author doesn’t wish to write a sequel. But all stories have to finish much as human lives have a limitation. There may not be a true “end” to existence but their is a conclusion to tales and stories and the soil will need to rest before the next attempt to grow a new tale of wonder comes.

Go get your hands dirty and see what you can grow!

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Perhaps I am being careless and impatient by publishing it now in such a limited format. But I am foolishly optimistic that I may gain some readers after struggling on this website for over a year and a half with under 100 subscribers. I have other novels and short stories I want to give more focus to, so setting this one out to be read and reviewed and critiqued is just one change to grant me more freedom to focus on my other projects.

For those of you interested, here is a brief synopsis of my novel that would be considered a crime thriller, not too far off from my first novel but different in its own right.

Cedric Xikas is a car mechanic living in a small town tuck in the Adirondack mountains of New York. He wants to keep to himself and avoid trouble, but when a local teenager and some shady drug dealers start to come into his world he finds himself gaining the attention of others. With the sunlight peaking through the dense wilderness he has entombed himself with, his past comes back to him. Bringing with this past are corroded memories of the damages that lead Cedric to this small town and some of those memories may come to visit as he confronts the wicked types in his new home.

If that vague and mysterious overview of my novel hooked your curiosity than I ask that you buy my book and take a journey into the deep woods. When you come back out, feel free to message me or write a review about my book. I only aim to grow as an author and give the world what tales my imagination can grant me. If you like it, check out my other novel Drop Dead Drunks. Or read some of my short stories featured on my Substack. Thank you for your time and happy reading.

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The Vaseline view was beginning to reduce, and the clarity of his vision was trying to inform his neurotransmitters of what he was comprehending. So far, his rebooted consciousness established a series of spackle patches on a ceiling with a hanging LED track light and exposed HVAC ventilation. His head offered a series of pulsing jabs to alert him of how uncomfortable the bench holding him up was. When he elevated, he felt the drop of blood in his skull land somewhere in his pelvis, and the room seemed to whirl as though he was on a high-speed merry-go-round.

As the centrifugal rush in his head slowed down, he noticed where he was and felt confusion consuming him. He was seated on a wooden bench, the third of four rows of benches before a padded mat covering a massive area before several windows with a strange logo of a capital “J” with two lower case “j” letters sandwiching a lower case “b” with the curve of the letter looking like a blue orb and the border in a green diamond. It seemed familiar, but he couldn’t recall where he had encountered this graphic design on the window nor did the backwards title in yellow and blue letters give him any clarification.

Heading for the door on legs that felt as structurally stable as unsettled Jello, he came to push open the door but met with the response of a solid wall. Pulling seemed the next logical response but again the door refused to leave its frame and the dark parking lot with distant lights and multiple SUVs and pick up trucks and lifted Jeeps gave a still silence that seemed indifferent to his realization that he was locked in this strange place.

“It’s not time for you to go.” Remarked a tone of voice that advertised that it could crush cinderblocks. His attention shifted to the owner of the voice and he viewed a portly man with a bald head. Slouched in an office chair behind a computer screen, behind a glass display case of T-shirts and Sweatshirts with the same logo from the front door. He cleared his throat to ask the man that was acknowledging him without looking up from his computer screen,

“What does that even mean?” The bald man didn’t look away to acknowledge his reluctant guest as he remarked in his heavy tone,

“We’ve got business to settle before you can go, Buckley.” Now he felt a pit in his stomach at this man’s knowledge of his name. But his remark seemed confusing. When confusion was the fog of his environment, Charles Buckley tended to give out his foghorn of a yell to command attention and expect immediate answers,

“Who’s we and why am I here! Where the fuck am I and who the fuck are you!” The bald man closed the screen he was looking at and turned his gaze to his guest, his eyes set back in his puffy cheeks and his crooked teeth with a crooked nose giving Buckley a twinge of concern. The bald man stood and towered over Buckley who was eye level with the man’s sternum while his massive stomach protruded over the waistline of his pants. The fleshy mountain leaned forward over the corner of the glass case, making Buckley want to retreat but he was in his own sealed corner.

“We are members of this Jiu Jitsu school that I own, Justiça Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You are here to settle a major mistake you made with our head pupil. I am Professor Raino. It’s time for you to get ready.” Buckley processed these explanations while the big Professor seemed amused at the entitled attitude that was thrown at him but died when the size difference between the two men was displayed.

Buckley’s head throbbed again as it worked to translate this series of details and when he gave a light shake of his cranium he took notice that the mat covered floors beyond the rows of wooden benches were no longer empty. At least a dozen men of various shapes and sizes and ages were standing, barefoot on the mat area. All of their eyes locked on Buckley as the giant Professor Raino came around the desk and gestured with his catcher’s mitt of a hand for Buckley to go towards the leering crowd. The heels of Buckley’s Jordans remained locked to the concrete floor as he demanded further clarification,

“Who are are all of these guys and what am I doing here!” The big Professor crossed his large arms and rested them over his globe belly as he chuckled and said,

“So you haven’t put it all together? You have no clue why you would even be here?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t ask for answers, King Hippo!” A series of giggles and head shakes came from the crowd on the mat, while some gave clenched fists and grimaces over mouth guards at this indignation. Three of the larger men of the group marched up to corner Buckley against the door of the building as Professor Raino said through a cheerful mouth of crooked teeth,

“You can either walk to the cage like a grown man or we’ll drag you over there just as easily as we brought you in here. As I said, you have a big mistake to settle. What’s it gonna be, little man?” Buckley felt his familiar temper crank up at being called little, he was below the stature of the giant Professor but he was eye level with the other three large men. Buckley always carried his full six foot height around to his benefit, whether impressing the girls or intimidating the men in his life. But none among the faces that regarded him in this building seemed to fear his size, his name, or his connections. He figured he needed to remind them,

“Do any of you idiots know who I am? Who my family is? Who my father is? You let me out or you will all find yourselves fucked over in a jail or digging ditches on the road!” A cold silence seemed to extinguish the fire from Buckley’s mouth, as if a vacuum had intercepted any chance of a blaze taking over to intimidate these men.

“Spare us your nepotism, child killer!” Shouted a shorter man over on the mat.

“Quit being a bitch and get to the cage!” A thinner man called.

“Com’on Raino, let us do a gauntlet on him! Let the guy sweat out one round with every member in here!” Said one of the three heavy men surrounding Buckley.

“Nah Saban, we all agreed. He’s here to get in the cage with DeFlores.” The second on the three heavies had answered on the professor’s behalf.

DeFlores

That name stabbed Buckley’s spine like a frozen icicle jabbed into his bare back. Seeing the eyes all around him he knew that he was outnumbered and not in control, which felt alien to Buckley since he turned twelve. Now fifteen years later, here was a shift in power he didn’t expect to ever feel again. The cold chill of the name DeFlores made his leg feel weak.

“Can someone please explain what I’m here for? What mistake are you talking about?” The silence that carried from one stoic face to the next seemed to give Buckley the notion that he should have the answer right away. Finally, the third man of the three heavies spoke with his broad chest puffed out like the bust on a galleon ship,

“You really don’t remember? Nothing?” When Buckley shook his head, slow shakes from his audience came along with murmurs of insult and bloodlust as the broad chested man clarified,

“The car accident back last Easter. The kid that died from you being sauced up behind the wheel. Don’t tell us that you forgot about what you did to DeFlores and his family?” Buckley now saw the flashbacks in between the judging faces of these men. The night of him going on a bender of Champagne, Tequila, high grade blow, and driving to score some Adderall for the rest of his evening. Keeping the thrill of the night going with his girlfriend of the week; some influencer of trying on dresses and new make up brands, Jenny or Jackie or Jasmine. The reflection of his LED headlights into the side of a teal hatchback before the crunching and shattering of metal and glass into the dark intersection. The disorienting red and blue and white lights when paramedics and police took control of the scene, while firemen torn apart the hatchback to get what was left of the ten year old boy out of the backseat. The mother screaming and being restrained on the stretcher while the husband, DeFlores was bleeding from his skull and looking past the medic assessing him to imprint Buckley’s face to memory. The face of DeFlores on the opposite side of the road, his dark blue eyes seeming black in the contrast of the red and blue flashing lights. His face a frozen barren slate that couldn’t articulate any welcoming emotion, while crimson streaked around his sharp cheeks and cauliflower ears.

Buckley failed the sobriety tests and was taken to the local station only to be picked up by his parents in their evening dressing attire from the late Easter benefit at their private country club. Jenny or Jackie or Jasmine was left to be processed in the station and was stuck going to AA and giving eighty hours of community service. While Buckley was left on house arrest until his trial for the manslaughter of DeFlore’s son. Months spent consulting with lawyers, avoiding leeching paparazzi, and articulating the best narrative to get Buckley out of prison. Meanwhile his social media accounts had to be closed and his father, Charles David Buckley the Third, worked his magic through his ties with the local congressman, assemblymen, and his fellow attorneys both in and out of the district courts to make sure his only son was not raked over the coals.

The trial became a massive news story and after giving scripted statements to the press, attesting that the young Buckley was going into treatment for his substance use (which consisted of six weekly telehealth sessions with a certified addiction specialist who recommended full abstinence, a gym membership, and taking daily turmeric to “cure” his addictions). After facing the judge and jury to be granted acquittal of manslaughter, he was sentenced to six months of attending AA meetings and in person counseling sessions (both of which Buckley cruised through by getting signatures from an AA member that once worked for his father’s law firm and clearing the sessions with the same addiction counselor who showed him meditation, yoga practices, and recommended books on sobriety that Buckley claimed to read).

Now it was over a year since that vehicular collision that brought Buckley into this Jiu Jitsu school against his will. Just three months since his acquittal and the start of his treatments. Yet know here was a different sentence that had no court record or legal curveballs to get his father and his colleges to pitch for him. The expression on his face seemed to please the surrounding men as Professor Raino stated,

“You got off way too easy for what you did to our friend. You should be in prison.”

“As some mandingo’s fleshlight!” Shouted a buff dark skin man in the crowd.

“You should have a train of guys parking their jizz in your privileged ass!” Barked another man and more insults came until Raino boomed out in his school to command silence and attention.

“We all know why this scumbag is here. To give DeFlores five rounds.”

Five rounds? Buckley thought, with panic starting to vibrate his frozen form. The three big men had circled around him and gestured for him to walk to the mat. The eyes of all the men on the mat followed Buckley as he shuffled in the tight circle that stopped just before the padding. The man with the broad bust chest turned around and ordered,

“Shoes and socks off! Then you get into some shorts, and we’ll give you a set of gloves!” Buckley looked down at his Jordans and corduroy pants and wrinkled white polo shirt and felt nervous about stripping.

“Is there a locker room I could —” Moans of aggravation and venomous comments to tear off his clothes came from the crowd, and Buckley knew that no kindness was to the given from this audience. He kicked off his sneakers which were snatched up by one man of the crowd while Buckley tried to balance on the arm of the bulky man next to him, but the frame of the guard vanished and he tumbled to the concrete. His hip took the brunt of the impact, and several strong hands seized him by the collar of his shirt and his arms and yanked him back to his feet. When his socks were off, the head heavy barked the next order,

“On the mat and off with the shirt and pants!” Buckley looked around at the cold and angry faces that gave no reassurance or contradiction as he stepped on the soft foam before unbuckling his belt, letting the waist of the corduroy pants drop to his ankles and then shedding the polo shirt that revealed a sagging frame of too much late-night friend food and craft beers.

“I’ve seen chicks with flatter chests.” Remarked the dark skin man in the back as his neighbors laughed and another commented,

“Think this’ll violate Title IX on the athletic commission?” Which triggered more cruel laughter as Professor Raino pointed for Buckley to follow into the corner of the matted area where a large octagon of chain-link fence and padded frames was tucked in. Originally out of sight from where Buckley had seen when he assessed his surrounding. As Buckley’s toes began to go cold on the foam mat and his hands and armpits perspired with anxiety, he saw DeFlores pacing inside the cage like a tiger waiting for his feeding time at the zoo.

The three guards then brought forth a pair of oversized Hayabusa brand athletic shorts that looked saturated and reeked of urine. The man holding it had nitrile gloves on as he handed them to Buckley, who kept his hands at his love handles while looking nauseous. He scanned the room and said to everyone but mostly to the Professor,

“You can’t expect to get away with this! I don’t consent to this fight. You’ll all be arrested for this shit! The second I get out of here; I’m calling my lawyer and getting the police to tear through this place with a fine-tooth comb and track down every last one of you fucks!” Eyes of bloodlust sat over a dozen snarls or smirks as Professor Raino said,

“Just because you got a rich lawyer daddy, doesn’t mean you have any real power. Let me give you an idea of how this goes. I have control of the cameras in and out of this building; they are shut off. My brown belt, Bobby, over there” He hitched his pickle sized thumb at a tall slender man with glasses, “Runs an IT company that does security software for private and government contracts. He can feed our security cameras a loop of no one being here for over four hours. Even the best cybersecurity tech wouldn’t suspect a cover up. As for your threat to go to the law, take a look at my class of students. BOUSSE!”

Five of the dozen men step forward to join with the three heavy guards and every man produced a badge. Ranging from the local Police Precinct to the Sherriff’s Department, to a Correctional Officer, to a State Trooper, and one man of the three heavies had an FBI badge. Buckley felt his knees buckle, and several powerful hands propped him up and shoved him to the cage door where DeFlores paced with more speed. Again, the piss-soaked shorts were given to Buckley, and he reluctantly donned them. Feeling the cold wet fabric against his knees and thighs. A sharp irritation his skin came from where the wet spots contacted his flesh. The heavy mix of ammonia wafted up into his nasal cavity, making his eyes water.

“Save your tears for when the blows come.” One of the spectators ordered while a set of cheap MMA gloves were tossed at Buckley’s feet. Thankfully they did not emit the smell of piss but were much too large for his hands. After securing the Velcro straps about the wrists he could feel the loose space inside the padded fabric. Despite the humid heat from the accumulation of men in the gym and the silent ventilation that allowed for the temperature to feel thick with heat, Buckley felt cold from his toes to his eyebrows. As the broad chested man opened the cage and a second of the guards stepped in to make sure that DeFlores stayed at his side of the cage.

Buckley didn’t recall walking onto the thin canvas floor of this octagon enclosure as he remained focused on the physically chiseled man restlessly pacing on the other side. Those dark blue eyes seeming to draw in his focus like a deep lake hiding some vicious nightmare as they waited for the start of this fight.

The broad chested man stood in the center and motioned for the two men to approach. DeFlores bounced on the balls of his feet with his fists resting at his waist, occasionally bearing out his blood red mouth guard at Buckley as if to mock him. Buckley shuffled forward, wishing that some sanity would strike anyone in this ground of fighters to put a stop to this. Hoping that someone would say,

This is madness!

We can’t get away with this!

It’s going to be a bloodbath!

But all of those epiphanies were lost on this group that had set up this underground exhibition, to serve what justice they felt that Cody DeFlores was robbed of with the death of his son and the catatonic shutdown of his wife. All because Charles David Buckley, the Fourth wanted an extra score of uppers in the night. Drove under the influence from a disgusting combination of illicit substances to make a severance of a happy family. To these men, this was the only moral solution. Buckley just worried if this was going to become an execution, whether intended or not.

At the center of the octagon the broad chested man gave a quick speech to which all were silent. His voice boomed over the unpainted walls and ceiling of this school,

“We are all here to see this fight. In the back corner wearing his Blue and Silver Trunks, weighing in at a lean one sixty-five. Our dear champion of the Local Cage Conflict circuit, 5 and 2 in his career. Three wins by knockout, one by submission, and one by TKO. ‘Cobra’ Cody DeFlores!” The men cheered and clapped and whistled as they rattled the chain-link. “Will now face against this troglodyte.” The supporting cheers jolted to harsh yelling and hissing and booing as Buckley felt the spotlight on his exposed, chubby frame. “This neopo-baby-huey-Richie-Rich-coke-head by the name of-.” His eloquent and booming tone became a nasally exaggeration now “Charlie Davey B-B-B-Buckley. Number Four.” His regular cadence resumed as the taunting and booing died down.

“These men will fight for five —count ‘em — five founds at five minutes each with a one-minute rest. There is no exiting the cage, there is no biting or scratching or fish hooking or eye gouging allowed. The match ends when Mr. Buckley has had enough. Or when Cody DeFlores decides he has avenged his son. The son that this walking pond scum has taken from the world and tried to avoid atonement for!” More boos came as Buckley tried to find his voice to claim that he had served his time and wished he could make it up to DeFlores. But hardly a breath could move out of his mouth as his pallet seemed to dehydrate in seconds. The heavy man demanded to know if both fighters were ready, DeFlores gave a brief nod without breaking his frozen stare at Buckley who shook his head in objection to being ready. The big announcer just said with hardly a glance at Buckley,

“Doesn’t matter. Ready or not, let’s fight!” The big man backed up and the other guard stood aside as DeFlores marched forward with a prancing wide stance. One hand straight out while keeping his frame perpendicular to his opponent. Buckley backed up only to feel the cold resistance of the chain-link cage as men shouted insults and taunts for him to go forward and not act like a pathetic coward. Buckley tried to rush to the right of DeFlores, where his back would be but the fight adjusted his stance and was in front before Buckley could blink. Then the first shot came, when DeFlore’s outstretched hand gave a jabbing palm thrust into Buckley’s forehead, causing him to stumble back before resetting his feet and launching a wild left hand in retaliation. But the fist spun past the outstretched arm but too far from the face of his opponent.

Buckley stumbled from the momentum of his reckless attempt at a punch. Taunts and laughter came in waves from the spectators, and Buckley tried to look around to see where the digital time clock was to track the round. But as he look to his left and right another slapping jab caught him in cheek and when he threw another punch he felt the wind evacuate out of him due to the right shin to his abdomen that sent him straight onto his tailbone. A blasting jolt of pain shot up Buckley’s hip and spin as DeFlores launched himself into him.

Now mounting him and dropping heavy fists onto Buckley’s upright face. The amount of strikes was lost on him as he tried with desperation to cover his head, yet the fists found openings to damage his cheek, his jaw, his ears, the top of his skull and even the back of his neck. He threw up a hand to push DeFlores back but only found his wrist caught in a trap when DeFlores seize it and spun off his knees and landed to Buckley’s side with his arm locked into a compromising submission known as a straight armbar. Within realizing the danger, he was in Buckley felt as though his elbow joint was getting snapped like a sapping by his opponent and he tried to sit up but DeFlore’s leg dropped over his jaw and pinned him to the ground.

The crowd cheered and called for the arm to be broken, but DeFlores stopped just short of permanently damaging the body part. He held it just in a spot where the pain was constant, yet Buckley couldn’t free his arm. He recalled that tapping on his opponent was a sign of surrender and ended these kinds of MMA and Jiu Jitsu fights. So he slapped constantly on DeFlore’s shin that felt like jagged slate. The attacker softened the tension of his submission but didn’t release him as the broad chested man refereeing the match yelled,

“Taps won’t end this fight. Get out of that position Buckley or lose your arm.”

“It’s probably his fapping arm. Cody, give him a wristlock!” Someone shouted through the cage and Buckley felt his hand being bent forward beyond the limitation of his wrists and electric pain caused the rest of him to squirm like a snake caught in a snare. But despite his tapping, DeFlores didn’t let up so Buckley had to escape. Once again, he tried to sit up but the powerful legs of his opponent sent him back to the mat. He thrashed and tried to push off the feet over his side but couldn’t budge the solid frame.

Then he noticed his legs had reaching distance to DeFlores’ face, he launched them over and felt his big toe clash with something that caused DeFlores to abandon his grip. Gasps and boos came from the spectators and Buckley scrambled to his feet, feeling his arm throb in pain at the elbow and wrist, while the referee helped DeFlores to his feet while the fighter was holding the side of his face. A screeching alarm chimed in and Professor Raino declared that the first round was over. The referee called for the medic of the group who came and assessed DeFlores face. When he stepped aside the eyebrow above DeFlore’s right eye was bleeding and a stream of crimson was flowing down his cheekbone, while his ocean blue eyes locked onto Buckley with a desire for blood from this man.

The same face that once gazed a hole into Buckley the night of the car crash.

Insults and outrage echoed in the gym at Buckley for being cheap. Calling him a disgusting pig for not having trimmed his toenails. But Professor Raino spoke with DeFlores for a few seconds, to see if the man wanted to continue. The next round was declared upcoming in ten seconds and the crowd cheered at DeFlore’s rise to his feet. The cut on his eyebrow had been glued shut.

As the medic walked by Buckley he asked,

“Can you check my arm and wrist before you go?” But the medic only spat on Buckley’s bare foot before walking out of the cage while the referee demanded both fighters resume the match. This time DeFlore’s changed his stance to one that appeared more casual. Standing upright and just at an angle to Buckley, with his left-hand half raised while his right was pulled in and close to his chest; it didn’t look defensive or hostile to Buckley. Then a front kick rammed into Buckley’s thigh and he dropped to one knee as a shower of strikes rained onto his face from both sides but in a rhythm that Buckley couldn’t follow or pay attention to as he tried to cradle his head.

The punches stopped when the back of his head of was seized and DeFlores’ knees started to spring up into Buckley’s nose and jaw. Before he counted the third one he was knocked back and on his ass, looking up at DeFlores who had resumed his rather tame looking stance as though nothing violent had happened. Buckley held out his hand and called for mercy and surrender. DeFlores didn’t change his stature and his face was frozen like a marble statue, in a cold and emotionless mask with eyes that wanted to keep attacking Buckley.

The crowd booed and insulted and demanded Buckley to get up and fight like a man. A phrase that so many young boys have taunted or ordered into their heads that it rekindles some old agony in their psyche, that either buries them with fear or incinerates them with rage. Buckley felt the heat of the rage take over. That these men would treat him like some weakling and make him fight someone far more skilled that he was. But skill could only get a man so far, he had to want to destroy and Buckley always believed that if thrown in a life or death situation he would destroy anyone in his way.

He scrambled back to his feet and charged into his opponent who side stepped him and when Buckley adjusted to circle around another ramming front kick caught him, this time in his liver. He fell to one knee again and this time DeFlores’ slate sharp shin launched into Buckley, the top of the foot and the bone of the shin making contact with Buckley’s jaw and his chest.

It must have been four or five hits from what Buckley could recall before realizing he was staring up at the overhead LED lights. A muffled din started to regain detail as the referee came in to eclipse the light and look at Buckley, he held up three fingers and his voice sounded like static feedback on a radio. But Buckley guess that he was asking for a number, he muffled out,

“Three”

Tasting a heavy amount of copper and something like a pebble in his mouth as he let blood infused with saliva flow out of his mouth. On the curve of his stomach as he sat up was an incisor tooth; his tongue immediately pressed against his teeth and found an empty spot. He looked up at the referee who was barking orders that didn’t translate into comprehensible words to Buckley, while DeFlores was bouncing on the balls of his feet again, waiting.

“I’m finished. I surrender. End the fight.” Buckley pleaded as hot tears traced his cheeks and mixed into the saliva and blood flowing out of his mouth. The referee just barked back with a steady statement,

“It’s not up to you when the fight ends. You’ve got three more rounds to get through. Be a man and face your mistakes.” Buckley spat a mouthful of gore to the side of him and tried to stand up. His joints ached and his muscles burned, and his face and torso were expanding with throbbing pulses. Despite the surging adrenaline and anger he still carried for this whole situation, he suspected it was hopeless to come out of this without needing a hospital bed.

Once he was erect DeFlores was on him again, but Buckley assumed that the round would be over soon. He just had to survive a beating. This time he backed up and connected into the cage and DeFlores lauched himself off the ground with a flying knee that Buckley happened to graze off as he darted around the man and ran around the cage, but there was no escape. Laughter and boos came from the men on the outside as DeFlores followed along at a steady walk while Buckley tried to keep enough distance to make sure that he couldn’t be kicked or punched anymore. Then an alarm came and Buckley felt relief as he sat back against the cage and slid to the ground.

Professor Raino and the medic came in to assess DeFlores again. This time the medic just blew his nose into a cluster of paper towels and tossed them a Buckley for him to mopped up the blood and spit on his body. Before the rest time was over Professor Raino ordered a timeout and declared,

“New rule, if Buckley here tries that cowardly shit again and runs from Cody, he will have five other students come in after DeFlores and all fight him at once.” The big man looked over at Buckley with his dark eyes and said through his crooked teeth, “You got that, pussy?”

Buckley gave a slow nod and realized that if he didn’t just go straight at DeFlores, it would get worse for him. When the third round began, the only option that Buckley thought would save him is if DeFlore’s caused a knockout. It seemed terrifying back when he realized what he was being subjected to strikes. But now it seemed like the only way to put an end to this madness. Let him go out cold just as however he went unconscious when he was kidnapped and brought here. Perhaps they would have him taken to a hospital, or maybe dumped in a ditch, or shot and sunk into the river, or anything that wasn’t this torture. Having to fight this man who wanted to tear him to pieces.

DeFlores was now in traditional Muay Thai boxing stance with his fists level with his temples and his left knee light inching forward. Buckley brought his fists up to cover over his mouth and nose in the best position he could conceive as beneficial to his safety. But the hooks and haymakers and jabs and uppercuts danced around his hands and collided into his head and face like small wrecking balls. When his head became cradled in his arms, more kicks of various angles and styles struck his thighs, his calves, his abdomen and his ribs.

But as painful as the blows were, they didn’t seem complete, almost as if they were meant to hurt without destroying Buckley’s body. It now seemed clear that DeFlores wanted to break him down, methodically and to the very end of the five rounds. Now they were in the halfway mark and Buckley felt he was running on fumes. Between the pain of his body and the lack of cardiovascular conditioning to fight like this, he was beyond exhausted. His arms became like bags of gravel that weighed him down and his knees and leg muscles begged for him to stop standing.

If there was any chance of surviving this, he had to get DeFlores to feel worn out, but was that even a possibility? For the past five years, Cody DeFlores had trained and fought in MMA matches and was at the peak of his physical health, just by appearance alone.

What chance do I have to beat him?

Just the one chance if I want to get out this in one piece!

Buckley dropped to one knee and then charged his torso into DeFlores, grabbing his legs and clasping his own hands together. He felt it, the shift in the control of the match and as he squeezed DeFlore’s legs together he pressed forward and felt the man tumbler back. But the glory of his victory went flying away with him as he felt himself flipped over by the catching feet of DeFlores. The tackle into a counter throw caused both men to tumble and left Buckley on his back. In the momentum of the counter, DeFlores, was again in a mounted position with his legs wrapped around Buckley’s. A crooked grin came from DeFlore’s mouth as he towered over Buckley and drove his pelvis into the abdomen of his opponent.

“Good effort, bad result.” DeFlores remarked as he dropped fists into his opponent’s head, just like in the first round. Buckley tried to defend by cradling his head and squirming out from under DeFlores’ legs but it made no difference on the attack. Somewhere in the rain of punches that were just powerful enough to hurt but just restrained enough to prevent complete damage Buckley launched his own punches which missed the first three times but then the fourth caught DeFlores right across the jaw. The attack from the mounted man stopped and a hush came over the crowd at this first legitimate blown that Buckley had landed on his opponent. DeFlores chuckled as he leaned closer and locked his eyes on Buckley’s panting face,

“Do that again.” DeFlores ordered in a steady but controlled voice. Buckley felt confused and wondered if the round would end. Instead DeFlores raised his voice as he ordered,

“Again! Hit me again!” Buckley cocked his arm back as far as he could with his torso pinned to the mat and launched up another hook that smacked DeFlore’s jaw, the grin on his opponent widened as he commented out loud,

“Child’s play! Again!” Buckley launched another desperate hook that collided with the opposite side. DeFlores barked another request of,

“Again” This time Buckley stretched out his arm and then curled it into a hook punch that seemed to deliver more power but DeFlores snapped is face back to center and let out a howling cheer, before ordering another. When Buckley repeated his method to give more force, DeFlores just belted out more howling cheers that sounded like a Little Richard song. After the sixth punch he took the to the face DeFlores dodge the next blow blow and pinned Buckley’ arm across his neck before leaning in to hiss with delight,

“My turn. This is for Josh” In the piercing overhead light Buckley could make out the silhouette of a fist that seemed twice the size of his own head as it came down and eclipsed his vision of the ceiling. He was told later when he came to that there had been three punches before his complete knockout, but he only remembered the first eclipsing fist.

Buckley awoke in a hospital bed. How long he had been in there, he couldn’t tell. Every cell on his body felt like it was mangled. His jaw had been wired shut and his nose was crooked in two different places. His right wrist had been broken, and his liver was swollen from excessive trauma. But he was alive and in recovery.

His father asked questions that couldn’t be answered, both due to his wired jaw and his knowledge that he couldn’t do anything to retaliate against those men. Whether they really could skit past this kidnapping and orchestrated an assault, he couldn’t determine. But while he was in the hospital, two uniformed officers came to take a statement and one of them looked familiar. He recognized the man from the crowd; from the series of students who presented badges when Buckley threated recourse. His partner asked if Buckley had any knowledge of how he was assaulted and by who. He just scribbled that he couldn’t remember who attacked him. Writing some narrative about being mugged and beaten yet couldn’t remember being brought to the hospital. As the leading officer thanked him and left the officer he recognized from Justiça Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gave a nod and a thumbs up before pointing his fingers at his eyes and then at Buckley before following his partner.

In the months that followed, when his jaw healed and he was able to walk straight again, Charles David Buckley drove by the Justiça Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school to see what it looked like from the outside. He thought of revenge, of burning down the school or following some of those men and taking them out with his Glock or just a hammer.

Every time he thought about such methods of getting even, he felt nauseous, like the idea of revenge was a poison that his stomach could not tolerate. One evening as he was in his car in the parking lot, looking at the taunting decaled logo on the main window a knock came on his window and caused him to jump. When he looked up, his heart forgot how to beat as the cold dark blue eyes of DeFlores was peering down at him with his duffle bag slung over his shoulder. Buckley sunk into his seat as far as he could while lowering his window a crack, and DeFlores cracked a smiled,

“Ready for a rematch? Tough guy.”

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Buy Me A Coffee

There is no way that this will not gain some degree of vitriol, as I make this letter of disclosure to you Christians out there. But I have long tolerated what I don’t like about your religion and how you people use it to torment folks like me or others. I write this specifically to Christians because I have never had this problem with the other of the big three of monotheistic religions superPACs (Judaism and Islam). So, buckle up because I need to air out my grievances to any and all Christians who have troubled me with their identity doctrine.

Dear Christians,

I am tired of tolerating your lousy behaviors. But I won’t abandoned my morals of seeking to be more patient with you and your need to impose your faith on others. I am a former Roman Catholic, I just am. I consider myself an atheist and a humanist and no longer a Catholic. It doesn’t matter what mental loopholes you think can be made to argue that I am still a Catholic or in need of your form of religion in order to be a better person, I do not. It doesn’t matter to me if I was raised in the faith, went to church, listened to the sermons at mass, performed the sacraments of baptism and communion and conformation. I had no say in going through those rituals, so my self-exile from the faith is my way of taking control of my own life.

Long have I abandoned the belief in a Christian god, which is why I never capitalize the term in any of my writing. Because I don’t believe in such a deity. Please hear me out and know that this isn’t my attempt to tell you to abandon your faith. I just wish to explain why I have no need for it,, and I don’t think you have all the answers you keep insisting on.

I never had this problem with Jews or Muslims, because I never see them impose1 their faith on others in America. Perhaps I am ignorant of some specific sect of those faiths that go door to door to invite a sales pitch of their faith. But I have not heard of nor read anything about the Jewish equivalent of Jehovah’s Witnesses nor have I ever learned of a Muslim type of Mormons going door to door to bother random people with their dogma. To me, both of the competitors of your monotheistic faith don’t seem to need to impose their faith in such a way because people flock to their circle of beliefs or stay in the ones they grew up with. I do acknowledge that Muslim nation states do enforce the belief of such a faith as law and punish those that deviate from it. That’s terrible in another matter but Christians seem to want that but with their brand of faith.

Christianity has become a funhouse of mirrors with no clear indication of what form of it’s belief is the correct one. There are all these sects and subgroups that take on some of the basics about the Bible (which is just the Jewish Torah with a second addition stamped onto it) but with their interpretations smeared all over it. Now we are in a time when the separation of church and state in most countries is seen as unnecessary. It was never much of a strongly enforced law because despite the professionalism of political figures (I will concede that is a rarer concept of the last twenty years or so) the insidious nature of faith influences the decisions of the people in those positions, so being objective is often difficult. The faces for Christianity today are mutations of what long existed before and now with the rise of Christian Nationalism, the fan club of Jesus seems like a hollowed-out corpse claiming morality while preaching a bunch of hypocrisy and aggressively insisting to be the only answer.

I anticipate the arguments of “not all Christians are like the nationalists, or the Mormons, or the Baptists, or the Born Agains, or the Christian Scientists...etc.” But that is lost on me and others in my position, because even the most open minded and non-authoritarian of the Christians seem to have some visceral disgust for me to dare to identify as someone who doesn’t believe in any god nor an afterlife. Even though I respect the Methodists for showing their kindness with the virtue signaling of Pride flags on their church’s, I admire the welcoming open doors of the Unitarian Christians. Or when the late Pope Francis showed true humility be declining to wear the gold and glitter of the Vatican, and welcomed all that the Catholic church historically excluded, exploited, and demonized [the poor, the minorities, the LGBQA+ communities] and pushed Christianity to address real world issues like abuse, scandal, and the climate crisis. Even with those wonderful examples I still hesitate to trust the basis of this faith because of its limitation on the perspective of the rest of the world. There are hundreds to thousands of differences in how human beings live their lives, and to claim that this one style of life is how everyone should exists comes across as entitled and narcissistic.

So many other faiths have come and gone, and I see none of them as inferior nor superior to the claims of Christians. To my mind it is all faith, which I define as the insistence on believing in an unproven concept. That flaw of denying any evidence because you don’t want to believe it to be real or true is a problem. If it didn’t have the shield of shared culture that most established religions have it would be considered mental illness to a newcomer. But this pseudo-delusion is often encouraged and other times demanded to those who are in the vicinity of the Christian, which is why I can’t trust their judgment or intentions most of the time.

I can’t trust the good intentions of Christians because I know that they just want more people to be absorbed into their form of faith. They are like the Borg from Star Trek, looking to assimilate anyone who has a different outlook on how the world works. This absorbing nature, akin to a fugus consuming an organic being, doesn’t look helpful to me. It is a shame, because you do hold a bunch of helpful tales of morality, but you have to shoehorn in your deity and his hippie kid, appropriating anything in life as tied to your big magic man in the sky.

That was rather mean of me in that last paragraph, please forgive me. That is what Christians preach isn’t it? Asking for forgiveness, turning the other cheek, helping others, and many other morality maxims that no Christian can fail to recite but often fail to live up to. The hypocrisy of Christians is nothing surprising for anyone paying attention and given the long colonization through faith, of course there would be contradictions to be found all through this religion. But that is due to the failure of human beings who are often self-serving and full of hypocrisy with anything2. Faith is just the decoration and speculative value of the house that is not built to code but has been traditionally made in a way that isn’t very safe in the long run.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if Christians could have it their way they would enforce a Jesus style of Siria Law. That was the premise of The Handmaid’s Tale, and many parts of America are trying to make that dystopia a reality. Swap out the hijabs for bonnets, trade in Mohammad for Jesus, and you have the same dream of what we of the western world condemn being done in Middle Eastern countries. Yet many of the Christian world seems to fantasize their own form of these totalitarian regimes. It may be more of the fantasy of the Christian Nationalists, but many of the Christian faith seem to not exclude themselves from that group when the question of devotion to faith comes up.

I wish to wrap this up before I dig myself any further into the subterranean regions of this earth. I don’t wish any ill will of the Christians. I do not wish to make enemies of people who think that they have all the answers because of some old book written hundreds of years before their time. I am not looking to make some mass awakening or expecting some epiphany to clarify the minds of those who designed their lives around this standard of dogmatic practice. I am just here to tell you, I am not one of you and I feel bad that I cannot connect with you when you decide that your faith gives you some moral high ground over me.

In my personal experience, I have had strong devotees of Jesus express shock and doubt when I disclose my absence of religion in my life, yet I seem to present as a caring and helpful and wise person to them. What they seem to not consider is that anyone can be a moral and kind person if they set their mind towards it. For some people it can be a natural reflex to show tolerance or empathy or patience or modesty, all of which religion likes to pretend they created. It’s false to claim that you need faith of any kind to do what is right. I have met plenty of secular people who volunteer, show honesty, and work in fields of service to others. I have also seen plenty of Christians wishing the torture and death of others and dismissing groups of people as lesser beings, often for trivial differences that have nothing to do with religion. I look at Christians the same way centrists and conservatives look at far left individuals, you are annoying at best and infuriating at worst.

If your faith gives your life satisfaction and not at the direct expense of other people, I have no qualms with what you believe. Whatever helps you to sleep at night and keeps you from harming others is your business, just as my methods are my business. Don’t try to justify to me that the purpose of your faith as anything more that giving you some comfort in how to make sense of this world and the optimism that you are gambling at some eternal reward when you shed your mortal coil. I don’t know what lies at the end of my mortality, and I DON’T CARE because I’m more concerned about what goes on in my current world and couldn’t care less about what anyone speculates about a possible afterlife. I don’t take comfort in my actions being judged by some invisible magic man in the sky, watching my every move and thought like an Orwellian supervillain who supposedly created me and gave me the ability to think for myself, unless it is deemed sinful and thus I need to be punished? This is the absurdity that I can’t make peace with, which is why I walked away from this belief long ago and found much more satisfaction in taking personal responsiblity and knowing that my actions on earth are consequential to others and myself.

The options to close out on this essay seem pointless to me because despite any attempt to cover my bases, there are some who will read this and seek to come at me with pitchforks and doctrine to call out my blasphemy. Those are the very types that have worn down my tolerance for Christianity, one of the biggest offenders of exploitative practices through the guise of salvation. I doubt that Christianity, or any major religion, will go away because people are flawed and fearful of the unknown. I understand the need to have digestible answers and the need to be reminded to maintain healthy practices. But on the other end of that journey to enlightenment is the belief that your path is the only one on the landscape. I’m one of over 7 billion people on this spinning sphere in space, what makes you think that only one third of that population has it all figured out? I still have my doubts and I’m not attending your services, thank you and I’m sorry.

Sincerely,

S. K. Ratidox

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Buy Me A Coffee

Dreams are overrated most times. That’s a sharp and scathing take if you have been fed the narrative to always follow your dreams. Dreams are free to form but impossible to manifest because even when we get to a goal that resembles our dreams, we find discrepancies, or we find ourselves lost without a dream to chase after.

I’m not against having dreams, but I want to deflate the excessive hype that dreams are given. It’s been a long time coming to evolve past the romanticism of following your dreams and climbing that mountain, and forming the universe to your will, or following the universes plan, or some other hyperbolic bullshit. Dreams are for people who are sleeping and when we give those moments of rest too much credit, we start to drift away from seeing the world as it is.

There is a skill and talent to balancing imagination without being lost in the clouds. I am all for the idea of living in a cozy secluded cabin away from people with no stimulation and maybe even...no WiFi! Just to detract from the brain rot of the online world or the overstimulated and unfocused habits of the masses I would have to interact with. But that isolated cabin could be its own hell in a different way, imagine having a critical to fatal accident or health crisis (broken leg, heart attack, embolism, etc.) with the nearest neighbor more than a mile away, well that would be a straight death sentence.

I give that example as how reality and dreams are opposite worlds and while we love to adore dreams, we have to be a part of reality. I believe in the values of humility and modesty which seem to be dwindling in this attention rat race of the modern world. We are over saturated with content that drowns our brains to the point where we can’t retain information as well, and now we need the assistance of technology (that no one asked for) just to act like we still have strong mental fortitude. We don’t know much of what we want and when we get what we want, we aren’t satisfied because we have to want something. This viral form of consumption is getting us nowhere.

How many of us have chased countless dreams only to collect a micro museum of lost journeys. I have instruments that collect dust in the corners of my dining room, tools that were used once or twice for home or automotive repairs but no live hidden in a drawer or hanging on a wall to wait out time, or the games and movies and books that I have stacked only to be distracted by some other cloud in the sky. These dreams keep up the lie that says, “acquire this and your life will be full of happiness”. Yet every time such a promise is followed through there is a hollowed feeling in my heart that askes, “Was that it?”

Perhaps it’s the psychological fallacy of letting aspirations evoke some ethereal and cosmic magic to take place. Or that by getting this tool or taking these steps, you will be a new person. A better person! One without all those flaws that haunt you every day of your life. But that is a lie, one that we tell ourselves and each other just to hide from the reality that waits patiently for us to come back to it. We are flawed, we will always have flaws, but that isn’t an inherently terrible thing. Our failures and mistakes grant us knowledge of what can work and what suits our lifestyle preferences.

The goal of life isn’t to be perpetually happy, but to be satisfied and content with the circumstances we have chosen to exist in. All the while accepting the traits or behaviors, the ones that we may never change because they are what makes us the owners of our identities. If you achieved all the change that you made every New Years or your trends of “new me” you would cease to be who you were throughout your history. Some people can change and should when their behaviors create destructive consequences for themselves and their peers. But aside from those in need of interventions or counseling to make improvements, we should learn more acceptance and gratitude to avoid this series of circular sprints to be something we don’t really want.

It’s not easy to be modest or levelheaded or boring in a world that demands novelty, entertainment, and drama. It comes with being a solitary voice in a crowd of noise where everyone is talking, but no one is listening. Which would you rather be? The rat in the race fighting for some trophy that only means victory for the moment until the next disposable token of victory come along? Or to be a human, finding peace through seeing the world in direct ways and finding satisfaction of the benefits that still remain abundant to us? While it’s romantic to dream the impossible dream like Don Quixote, it’s sad when you see the reality of an old fool fighting windmills and speaking poetry to prostitutes, totally oblivious to their own absurdity. With that said, try less to be the best and work more towards just being what makes you unique to yourself.

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Buy Me A Coffee

By S. K. Ratidox

Did you know that I’m a writer? At least that’s what I claim and the amount of creative works and articulated musings I have filled my files with and uploaded to places like this would seem to constitute an accuracy to that tile. It is alluring to claim the prestige of being a writer because it carries some clout of artistic merit and status of intelligence when the lay public hears it. But I realize in my journey to be taken seriously as a writer, I can’t just shield myself with that title when I cannot repost with what I have created to impact my readers and convince them that. Yes indeed, this ambiguous oddball on the internet can craft a sentences that is both impactful and entertaining.

There is a fine line between quality writing and junk writing. I don’t want to use the polarizing terms of good or bad because there’s a lot of nuances when it comes to personal preference in the land of the written form of art. The line I speak of is subtle and to toe it takes mindful balance, especially on a rocky path ahead to get from ideas to completed works of writing that people can read and form opinions on. Am I being too meta while using this metaphor? Perhaps, but in the swamp of slop that permeates on the internet when it comes to the production of fiction or essays, it bears some consideration.

Let me address that new problematic stain in the online world that persists and spreads like mold. Artificial Intelligence. Good old large language models that we are all plagued with whether the public approves of them or not. With the advent of this software technology that can now spew out massive amounts of content with the press of an enter key following a simple prompt, it would seem that human writers are the John Henry of this modern railroad company.

But I have many doubts about the practicalities of this technology, and many share my skepticisms. It sucks to say that AI isn’t elevating humanity so much as rising the water level on our creative landscapes, turning lush wildernesses of meticulous wonder into a swamp of slop. I know that I may receive arguments from the cult of AI evangelists who will accuse me of ignorance about this technology, or that I’m not using AI the right way, or overlooking the beneficial utility of this technology. To which I say to these cultist:

These chattering apes just took over where the cyrpo-grifters left off when their NFTs and Meme coins nosedived into the scam pit. I’m not one to buy into most sales pitches because when the calculator is on the desk and a contract appears, I smell a hustle and can’t believe that the shining veneer of the salesman really cares about me as a human being. Added to that is the economic displacement of AI in the workforce, choking out entry level workers or career employees that can’t keep up with technology or have too basic of job skills, so they are deemed expendable. While I may not lose sleep over technology finally riding people of bullshit jobs, I can’t enjoy seeing this new white-collar version of automation outpacing the factory workers. It’s just a sleeker and more fast paced exploitation of consumers at the expense of people who need to make a living.

I’ll put my deeper displeasures of AI to rest, but it has brought up a rather important, but daunting discussion in the world of artists and writers. You can no longer coast on mediocre content anymore. It’s a worry of mine that my writing is just mid-tier and will be given the rubber stamp of “good enough”, meaning not worth the time of the gatekeepers in the publishing industry. But with the advent of the self-publishing world, writers are free to churn out their content with full creative control. Huzzah! However, the drawback of that freedom came the influx of junk.

Allow me to strike up another metaphor for the state of writing as I see it. The truly creative works of writing are well crafted home meals, with the literary works considered akin to some expensive type of fine dining. Classics are old essential recipes that broke new ground in their day and gave inspiration for generations of new creations (some are bland, but others still carry that satisfaction of a well-made meal, or bank on nostalgia or romanticisms to overshadow their flaws).

Then the genre fictions are like ethnic food, where your tastes may vary and it’s okay if a dish is not enjoyable to you, but it still earns a following within its fan base (have you ever eaten Kimchi? Millions have and still enjoy it). The lazy writing that either gets published through some nepotistic tactics or dumped in some self-publishing feed is like hastily cooked meals, often made from a box or microwaved, yes it is a meal but you can tell there wasn’t much effort put into it, and it doesn’t stand out. Within the genre fiction is a different type of botched meal, akin to the culinary war crimes of Jamie Oliver attempting to make Asian cuisines with schizophrenic methods. Think of lazy genre writers as those ethnic fusion restaurants where there is a surface level representation of the culture and no one making the food has real ties to it.

Then the AI comes into play and instead of being a cooked meal, it’s processed junk food (think candy bars and bags of chips). Delicious and convenient, but everyone knows it has poor nutritional value. But much like many abundant comforts of our present world, whatever gives a short-term solution to an inconvenience is often adapted to before the long-term consequences are considered. Much like the spike in obesity since the advent of junk food, we are seeing a growing fungus of little to no creativity plague our resource of emotional and intellectual nutrition.

Putting aside the junk food of AI, I want to address the self-publishing people out there. Because you need to be better, especially now that the junk food/mold is spreading and won’t stop at the low hanging fruit of the world of fiction. Please let me come forward so you don’t consider this as a smug attack on your tactics of spreading your creations. You have ideas and ambition and are working to get your content out there. I respect you for that because I am one of you!

Hello, my name is S. K. Ratidox and I am a self-published author. I’ve been one for two years now and have no real success from my debut novel and don’t anticipate much more reception on my upcoming one. Given how limited my reading base is, you would think I am discouraged into rage-quitting this creative writing or in need of being on suicide watch. But I persist with writing my novels, my essays, and my short stories.

I may not be the work horse that Stephen King or Ray Bradbury described needing to be when gaining ground as a writer but they are dinosaurs immortalized in our museum of great writers, while the rest of us struggle to make a name for ourselves while the slop is rising around us. In this new swamp, we can’t be lazy with our writing. We cannot avoid criticisms or rely on the loyalty of fans that favor boxed Kraft Mac N Cheese over a classic Lasagna or an experimental meal made by a Michelin stared chef.

The challenging part of being a writer is that you have to develop that title through a body of work for people to read. You may be a talented individual when it comes to pitching a brilliant idea for a story, or configuring stunning prose, or creating characters that seem human so that any reader can empathize with them. But if you are keeping those talents locked away because you cannot face the possibility of someone not liking your work despite those skills, or encountering pushback from the editors and agents and publishing companies that want to negotiate the structure or themes of your book to give it more marketability, or you just don’t want to promote your work for the public to find it, then you aren’t an author but someone who writes. The difference is that you need some recognition from readers to call yourself an author. It’s a title that won’t mean anything if there is no proof, such as claiming to be a chef and yet you cannot cook a basic cheese omelet.

I never considered myself as an author until I finally took my final revision of my first novel and published it, perhaps I may not be worthy of that title as I have no readers of that novel nor any prospect that others will, but I made something and sent it out into the world. By most metrics of sales and readership, my novel Drop Dead Drunks is a failure, as of this writing. But that reality, despite being discouraging, hasn’t stopped me from writing. I have more stories I am working on and outside of the long form tales, I am drafting essays and short stories and reviews. Keeping the blade sharpened and my hands exercised in the skills I have developed. To consider myself a good writer is not my responsibility; that is for any readers of my work to deem, and I welcome it. Developing a skill becomes a more steady and refined process when feedback is given; especially from established, skilled peers.

Circling back to the main theme of this essay (I apologize for my tangents, but they bear some utility to my rants) about looking at the quality of fiction. I’ve been reading a fair amount of critiques and opinion pieces on the state of literary writing and the threat of LLMs becoming the assembly line to outpace the craftsmen. From what I’ve read and seen for myself, the AI tool will replace many...of the mediocre and lazy writers. Perhaps they may overshadow the good and great writers, the people who make significant works of art that deserve to be recognized and recorded into history. But when has a McDonalds or a Walmart been the nostalgic place of one’s childhood? Yes, people cling to the joys of their youth and if the fast food and big box stores were the only games in town, then they would hold an emotional memory to the giants of capitalism. Emotional connection is the root of power for brand loyalty that makes people irrationally faithful to a product or service that is just serviceable or convenient enough to claim superiority to the better-quality products.

AI is just the new smart phone or internet trend. There are useful aspects to it, but it will be cluttered with slop, on a different scale, and in a more problematic form. To combat AI in the world of art, I ask that you hold a few tactics that I maintain when it comes to navigating the swamp. Don’t go for the AI made posts/books, just don’t, because you might as well be eating candy and drinking soda for every meal when you read through something that was churned out through a few prompts and a massive waste of electrical and water-cooling resources. Call out people who use AI, not as a grand inquisitor calling for the offender to be burned at the stake, but to start an important dialogue about how AI would be better used in other aspects of life such as research or proofreading or coding software. Inform without lecturing, which is hypocritical of this essay, but I’m not coming into this claiming to have the answers. I’m promoting suggestions that people can refute if they have useful information I can learn from. Finally, give support beyond just a superficial “like” or a “restack” of someone’s work; comment on why you enjoyed it, or why you didn’t, ask questions, and spread the word if you think more people should read this. The more we engage with good writing from human authors, the more we will cultivate a community of quality.

We cannot get rid of AI; the genie is out of the bottle and it’s going full Robin Williams on our cultural and emotional landscape. It doesn’t have as much use to the art word as its creators will boast, because when all of us grew up under the science fiction of thinking machines it went either into the SKYNET, HAL 9000, or AM type of malevolent terror to mankind or it became more akin to a utopian tool that would elevate the quality of life for people. But instead of such ominous potential, we have a technology that can draft pages of content, edit it to be grammatically acceptable (in theory), and even design the artwork while the “creator” doesn’t have to do much more that promote it and take in the benefits (if they really get them).

The problem is that AI promotes the slovenly behaviors that won’t go away because people enjoy the path of least resistance, especially when our minds and bodies tend to feel overwhelmed in the influx of emotionally charged information in the real world. When people claim that everyone will just collectively get sick of AI, they seem to forget how insanely profitable McDonalds, Walmart, and Amazon are despite all of the horrific realities we learn about these companies at the cost of convenience. AI will just be a supercharged monstrosity much like the cordyceps of The Last of Us. AI is a contagion that can’t be thwarted, but if we intercept it with promoting a healthier community of human creation, we can endure the havoc of this living slop swamp.

Let me close this with a summation of my thoughts on writing. It is a skill and how you want that skill to develop and be utilized is your responsibility. We are all freelancers when it comes to being creative people; some of us rely on what we make to feed ourselves and live indoors, while others are on a side quest with our writing adventures. I’m not your parent and can’t stop you from using AI to modify or take over your writing, but I certainly can’t condone it nor support it. I will never pay for something that an AI made, but that may be a Sisyphean task as the gamblers of our economy keep dumping society’s dollars into the Church of AI. While that bubble keeps reaching the limits and will burst at some point in our world, don’t let your writing sink in quality, don’t get consumed or corrupted by the swamp of slop. You can’t compete or beat McDonalds, but you can craft a hamburger that makes everyone who eats it smile and appreciates your attention to detail, and that recipe will be more coveted than whatever is made in the filthy kitchen of the golden arches.

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Buy Me A Coffee

“A Lonely Mess”

“Hell of thing, when they wind up like that. It’s gonna take about six or more men to get him out of here.” Stanley barked with a glance over his shoulder before returning to his sweeping view of the parking lot around him and his partner. They stood in front of the trunk of the Toyota Camry. A set of curtains and a tent with white panels were covering around the rest of the vehicle while people disguised in matching white Tyvek suits with powder blue booties on their feet and yellow N-95 masks and disposable glasses were taking photos and dusting the vehicle for prints while they awaited the arrival of the gold shields.

“It must be hot in those suits” McKay said as he shielded his eyes from the sun as he scanned the sky for any cloud coverage.

“I can only imagine how much our boy in their will stink when the gold shields get here and pop open the back seat. I don’t know how they can eat with the bodies they have to look over”.

“It’s a job. Like us standing here to keep the rubberneckers away from the scene. Just hope the vultures stay where they are.” Two hundred feet from the parking lot was entrance where a crowd of reporters were ducking and peering around the three more uniformed officers that were keeping the crowd on the opposing side of the yellow tape. Even in the sweltering sizzle of the July sun the officers were in their full uniforms and reporters were dressed like professionals, their camera men —always men— held their equipment which countered the casual T-shirts and shorts they wore to deal with the hot day. McKay whipped the sweat from his brow while Stanley remained planted on his feet, and his hands clamped over his belt. The sweat was crawling down his pointed nose and pink face, and his thin hair wouldn’t help him from the heavy rays of the sun.

“You ain’t bothered by this heat Stew?” McKay asked.

“I gave the Corp eight years of my life and did two tours in Afghanistan, that was a hot motherfucker. You’d think that some god was trying to cook everything that moves over there into ash. At least out here, we get a sea breeze and rainy days during the summer, before I freeze my nuts off come November.”

Officer McKay nodded at Officer Stanley’s indifference of the heat. McKay didn’t want to be cooking in this parking lot on guard duty. But at least they were away from the vultures, and the car was parked against a high wall where no one could sneak around. McKay needed something to take his mind off the heat. He glanced at the back of the Toyota, a grey little sedan with patches of eroded clear coat and faded surface layer of paint. The trunk had a few stickers plastered on them. One was an old political presidential campaign sticker of Harris/Waltz 2024, one was an outline of some lake, and the third said My Cat is Cooler than Your Honor Student.

McKay looked at his watch and declared,

“Figures we get a stiff to sit on at the last hour of our tour.” Stanley nodded while keeping his thousand-yard stare across the parking lot, as if trying to manifest the unmarked sedan or the squad car that would relieve them. He almost spat but McKay said,

“Don’t leave evidence. It’s a crime scene.” Stanley fired his thick loogie on the ground next to him and replied with irritation,

“Evidence my left nut. It’s a suicide case. No doubt about it.”

“We can’t make that call, Stew. We came up on him and found him and it’s up to the golden shields to give their determination.”

“What a gig they got. Looking at stiffs and playing Sherlock. Never have to run after a some tweaker or pull up on a car with tinted windows. No patrolling from end to end of this district, looking for something to write about for the tour reports. Dollars to doughnuts this kid offed himself.” McKay looked at the back window where the technician was finished with getting photos, and the other had written and recorded the layout of the car and its information. In a few minutes they would be opening the interior, but only when the detectives came to instruct them. At least the technicians were shaded from the sun while McKay and Stanley were left out of the direct crime scene. McKay whipped another pull of sweat from his forehead and couldn’t let go of his partner’s remark.

“How can you make that call that it’s self-inflicted death?”

“Given that he’s lying in the back seat, looking bloated from being ignored for more than a day, and no signs of trauma or damage to the car.”

“He could have been dumped over here.”

“Who in their sane mind would murder someone and leave them in the parking lot behind a theatre?”

“What sane person commits murder?” Stanley shook his head and chuckled, no sign yet of the detectives or their relief. He had the urge to radio into dispatch for a status update of either but figured such a move would come back to haunt him on his next shift.

“What’s it matter to you, Jo? It’s not like we’re on the case. When it’s a stiff we call for the golden boys. If it was drugs or guns we’d get the leather jackets over here. I beat if it was a stash of pills and some stolen Glocks our superior detectives would be sprinting across town.”

“You’re so negative, Stew. Homicide has a lot of their own problems in their department.”

“We don’t have a high murder rate in this town. Not that the stats tell us. Just more break ins, stick up, and drunk brawls. I’m telling you. They’ll find a load of sleeping pills in that bloated stiff and get to go home.”

“They have their time schedule too, Stew. They’re not like doctors on call from the golf course.” McKay checked his watch and wondered what was delaying the detectives. The precinct wasn’t more than ten minutes from the scene, and they didn’t hear of any other signal 50 on the radio calling for their assessment. With the hot sun still remaining lonely in the sky, letting the surface of the planet know that it was working today, McKay felt the boredom creep back up, and it made his sweat more unpleasant under his undershirt, his uniform shirt, and his Kevlar vest.

“Say it is suicide, Stew. Why do you think this kid would off himself?”

“Why does anyone call it quits. They can’t handle life. Saw plenty of it in the Corp when guys cracked under basic training or on deployment. Hell, we have those debriefings that the major wants us to take every time there’s an assault, shooting, or something to do with kids. All that therapy crap to make you relive the horror of people, and they wonder why some turn in their badge or hit the bottle.”

“The worlds a tough place, but people killing themselves isn’t some weakness.” Stanley shook his head as he taped his foot and glared through the crowd at the base of the parking lot as if he didn’t see anything. He then cut his measured thought,

“The way I see it, you can either handle life or you can’t. I can’t figure out the ‘why’ of it. But when you’ve been in war and patrolling the beat to stop crimes, you see the lowest levels of people. There are some that I wish would take a hike from this world, but they’re the ones that tend to stick around way past anyone’s tolerance. You get me?”

“Sounds rather heartless, Stew. From where I’ve been, people are often swarmed by so much stress that they can’t see the forest for the trees. They think some loss of a job or bad relationship or failing out of med school is grounds to give up. Some people just have a bad set up in their brains and tend to not find any satisfaction or purpose by default.”

“Sounds like their personal problem. If I were running things, I’d legalize suicide for anyone fifty-five and older but only with some pills to take. No guns, no nooses, no jumping in front of trains or cars to ruin a commuter’s day. Just sit down, take a swig, and go to sleep for good.”

“Holy Fuck, Stew!” McKay felt a sense of worry. Hearing how lackadaisical Officer Stanley was about one of the most grisly outcomes for a human life. He switched from his police protocol mindset to the one he had previously and still utilized, “It sounds like you feel bitter about the way people look at suicide. Have you given this a lot of thought?” Now Officer Stanley’s grey blue eyes broke away from his thousand-yard stare, and he looked at his partner. His expression gave off more heat than the summer sun had been as he asked,

“What business is it of yours if I talk or think about people snuffing themselves out?”

“Well, we’re partners. I have your back, and you have mine. Hell, you showed me the ropes for the past four years, remember. I just want to make sure that...”

“Make sure of what! That I don’t want to eat a bullet? Don’t sweat about me, Jo. Don’t give me none of that therapeutic prying just because you joined the bum rushers with HUD.” Now McKay felt a heat growing inside of him that had little to do with the oppressive heat blaring down on the pair of them.

“Don’t knock HUD, Stew! To you, I may be wasting my time talking to case workers and shelters to go out once a month and track down some frequent flyers. But that’s so we can connect them to services and get them off our radar. I’m just making sure you’re not letting the job get to you.”

“Oh please! This job isn’t shit compared to Nangahar when bombs were used to turn me and my battalion into mulch! I lived through that with all my limbs and wits to take home. Now you think some suicide case is sending me into wanting to eat a bullet.” McKay noticed out the corner of his eye that a camera man had backed up but had the lens of his camera aimed this way.

“Stew, calm down! We’re on the sce—”

“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down! You think I’m a basket case? You think that I’m weak in the head! Is that it, college boy! You think that Psych degree and your training in the group homes makes you a better cop! It doesn’t! Take that gay psycho-shit and—”

“Hey detectives!” McKay called and Officer Stanley broke from his rant to jolt his attention at the parking lot. Seeing a pair of formally dressed detectives, one older Hispanic man and one younger white female ducking under the line. Officer Stanley did a double take before commenting to his partner,

“Jo, there’re barley in shouting distance. Why’d you act like they were right behind me.” Stanley gave a lazy salute at the pair, and McKay gave a quick wave of his hand at the wrist.

“Because you were blowin’ up at a crime scene and the gold shields talk to every department on the regular. You can thank me later.” Detectives Vargas and Raphaelle greeted the officers and asked for a quick report of their findings, McKay gave the rundown

“Single male with swelling and discoloration and dependent lividity indicating death on arrival. Call came in of an unconscious person in the back of a sedan for unknown down time. When the medics came to the scene they called the signal-50.”

“Did anyone check a pulse?” Detective Raphaelle demanded while her partner scribbled shorthand on his note pad. Now Stanley and McKay looked at each other, feeling sweat forming more from a wave of embarrassment. Their exchange was enough of an answer as Detective Raphaelle sighed and donned a pair of latex gloves and rubbed a tube of cherry Vic’s vapor rub on her nostrils before she opened the door to the back of the car. A wave of decomposition replaced the humid air with its uncompromising aroma. McKay coughed and Stanley clenched his jaw while Detective Vargas nodded and said,

“I’d tell you boys that you’d get used to the smell of dem bodies. But I don’t like being called a liar. We’ll take it from here.” As Stanley thanked the detective McKay blurted out,

“Thinking suicide, detective?” The group stopped and refocused their attention on the questioning officer as though he had admitted to enjoying the smell of shit.

“You let us worry about what we’re thinking. But if it’s closed quickly, Nick can give you a call about the cause of death.” Detective Raphaelle smirked after her comment and looked over her sunglasses at McKay, teasing him with the natural sparkle of her green eyes. Stanley clapped a hand on his partner’s shoulder and led him to their cruiser. Once inside the squad car, Stanley cranked up the air conditioning and aimed the small vents at his neck.

“I thought the heat didn’t bother you.”

“Of course it bothers me, Jo. I just don’t let it show.” McKay took a moment to process this with curiosity. Wondering if he meant more than just the tolerance of the heat.

“How do you do that?” Stanley took a sip of his hydro flask and said before shifting the cruiser into gear and driving to the parking lot entrance,

“I just place it somewhere to come back to later. It’s what all real men do.” McKay figured that any further investigation would only drive up the defensive hostilities of his partner. When they go back to the precent and were finalizing their documentation McKay received a call from Detective Vargas,

“M.E.’s impression is poisoning, so your wager of suicide is looking favorable.”

“It’s not a wager on a life, Vargas.”

“Anything can be wagered these days. They have bets on elections now. Don’t be so soft McKay, or the job will get you.” McKay hung up after a blunt cough in his throat. Stanley remained on his documentation and said,

“I was right about the stiff?”

“Nothing confirmed yet, but the M.E. has the same hunch.”

“After seeing enough death, you get good at spotting the cause.”

“That’s above our paygrade, Stew. Maybe you should apply for the gold shield?”

“Nah, as much as I would like the raise, I’d rather keep my boots on the street for another couple of years. Maybe when I make Sargant, I can ease up and consider other avenues. You still want to stick with that HUD junk?”

“It breaks up the tragedy. Plus, I’ve got a lot of connections for when we get the street sleepers or the users or the guys howling at the cars. It helps to know your community resources.” Stanley logged off his computer and checked his watch,

“If you say so. I’ll stick to my training to keep the streets safe. Let those bleeding hearts in the shelters and the clinics deal with the loonies and the junkies. I’ve got a normal life without having to think about all that.” Both officers headed to their lockers to change into their civilian clothes.

“Doing anything tonight with Mary and the boys?”

“Nah, they’re still at her mothers.”

“I thought you said they were coming home on Monday.”

“Mary had to take an extra week.”

“Don’t the boys have school?” Stanley stopped at the timeclock and locked eyes with his partner.

“Jo, what are you getting at?” McKay measured his words. He recalled many times Stanley ranting about his wife getting on his case for being too angry, yelling at him for staying out for drinks with some of the department after a rough week, and for how aggressively he talked to their two grade-school sons when they were struggling. It started to raise a few red flags to McKay from his training to look for signs and intervene.

“I just want to make sure that you’re holding up alright, Stew. Maybe you should hit the range or come to Jiu-Jitsu class with me sometime.”

“I don’t need to roll around on the ground with some grown men in pajamas and not get paid for it. You stick to that gay shit. Don’t think that I’m anywhere near eating a bullet. I’m fine.” McKay nodded and let Stanley clock out before clocking out himself. As his partner shoved open the door McKay yelled out,

“Stanley, I know it’s your life, but that doesn’t mean you have to face it on your own all the time. That’s why we’re partners.” Officer Stewart Stanley yelled over his shoulder as he left for the night,

“Go get laid.”

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This will be tricky as there is a lot of constant talk and debate and argument and circular logic about whether or not Americans are living in a Dystopian society. But I’m not here to dissect current events and speculate if they warrant the declaration that our government is allowing economic and social segregation to expand while utilizing tyrannical tactics to promote a power structure of bullying and dominance. There’s plenty of content out in the maelstrom of social media and splattered through the archaic and oblivious Mobius strip of spin that is main stream media to cover such speculation. I am not a media persona in terms of current events; I am not a journalist nor some armchair analyst here to plague the bandwidth of this online world and devour your time with hyperbolic opinions nor regurgitated research with some kangaroo leaps to conclusions. I am a fiction writer with some philosophical opinions who wants to make sense of these chaotic times.

With that clarification disclaimed, I am going to breakdown my views and understandings of dystopian societies as portrayed through literature and how they compare to history. Because the present is hard to keep up with and current events can become stale in the public conscious and, as I clarified about, I AM NOT A JOURNALIST! This is just my critical opinions about what makes a dystopian world and how fiction portrays it in this essay. From this elaborate and exhausting musing on living in a society of injustice that only makes for great science fiction but shitty reality. I will then have following posts to look into three books that are considered great staples of the dystopian world. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.

But Ratidox, you are quick to argue before pushing up your glasses, hasn’t there been a multitude of speculation, review, analysis, and comparisons for those three novels to the trends of the modern world? Of course, and I don’t have any delusions that this essay, nor will my upcoming reviews on those books stand out greater than others. But this is my Substack, and I feel the need to comment on this topic and those books. It compels me to weigh in on this subject. If you want to see what this contradictory commentator has to contribute to this collection of content with the hopes of some collaborative commentary from their constituents, then please read on.

Starting with the priming term of dystopia, defined by the oxford dictionary as an imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible. Or the inverse of utopian where everything is as good as possible. When these fictional terms are applied to reality there is imperfections in the translations because humans are flawed and contradictory creatures, take it from me; one who wants to write about it. I always found anyone who unironically strives for a utopian form of society is foolish and naïve, because even if it were possible to achieve perfection, which is a myth, it would be a plateau of existence that would turn into a nightmare.

Religious zealots always claim to be working towards an afterlife of some kind that is considered paradise for those loyal to their faith (with the exception of those that deem reincarnation or some amorphous state of enlightenment as a potential afterlife process). But that goal seems more unpleasant when you think about it for more than two minutes. If you or anyone else were promised to be given your favorite food, say a cheeseburger, it would sound wonderful. Should delivery of that cheeseburger come, bliss would follow and your faith for obeying the rules to achieve that juicy Jimmy Buffet muse would be validated. But by day three or four most people would be sick of eating the same cheeseburger again and again. There are some who may hold out longer or lack and insightful skills to recall that they are tasting the same food every meal for every day. Disregard the health risks for this thought experiment and realize that when we are given perpetual comforts, we will lose appreciation for them and become bored which leads to more insidious emotional outlooks. But I will set aside my views on the utopian fallacy for another essay. I want to get back to its mirror which appears horrific, because it is. Made all the worse when it goes from being imaginary to real in some manifestation.

Since our definition is clarified, what constitutes bad circumstances in existence? Would that be solely subjective? No, because we all have base needs that are universal, which must be met as anyone familiar with the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs. Basics such as food, shelter, and safety take up the first step(s) of ensuring quality of life, then comes external and internal satisfaction where we have to find satisfaction wit those who we share our life with and then ourselves. When these basic needs are not being met or are being removed or blocked, then we are in dire conditions. When all of them are hindered in some way, then we are in dystopian situations. This is often done by lack of consideration or (worse) intentionally when we find ourselves in a tyrannical dystopian setting.

Allow me to fine tune my explanation from the abstract to the specific. When it comes to a universal basic of food, we can all agree that we need to eat to live. Food is a precious resource that was once the driving factor of civilization and is still a crucial pillar because if any person was cut off from any form of nutrition they would be in lethal jeopardy within a week. Fortunately, our modern world has solved food scarcity to the point where we have a different problem, food waste.

It’s wild but we have the ability to feed people throughout the world at adequate levels, but the problem arises when we don’t allow accessibility or quality to factor into the equation of ensuring people can eat. Yes we have the ability to give anyone in the developed civilizations of the world food, and modern farming has given us more resistant crops and better forms of storage has reduced the risk of spoiling food. Yet people in parts of the world have access to food with low nutritional value, often due to the phenomenon of food deserts where either a single store dominates the area and keeps out the competition or the area is not lucrative enough to allow for more options of food to be sold. There is also the challenge of food being priced in the majority of the world, which is a fair argument when cultivation and harvesting and transporting food involves labor that will require compensation to keep it sustainable.

But when there is abundance to the level where landfills have almost a third of the waste be of food that could have been eaten, is it really a logical argument to put a paywall on a meal that a person needs to survive? Most sensible people would say no but the trick of control can come when hunger takes priority over any other concern. Hence, why many dystopian worlds throughout literature utilize the strict of access to food to compel the plausibility of an imaginary world (e.g. 1984, The Hunger Games, Make Room! Make Room!, etc. ).

After food comes safety and security, often going hand in hand where you need to have the means to survive in your environment. Humans have evolved in a way where our physical means of tempering the elements is not inherent, so we developed clothes, mastered forging fire, and sought or built shelters to protect us from harsh weather and hungry predators. Over the millenniums of our existence as home sapiens we have extended the threshold of safety and security into the home. Our essentials are now a given that we take for granted, so long as we have the means to hold onto it. In dystopian fiction, either the conditions are drastically reduced to where living in slums is the norm for the majority or resources have reached a scarcity to where the having a mechanized form of producing heat or light is not sustainable. When this happens we have to resort to the archaic fire methods of warmth and keeping the darkness at bay.

When a society intentionally makes resources of safety and security scarce or unobtainable, you see a more authoritarian form of dystopia. This type will be looked at in my upcoming literary reviews. But I want to put a pin in that form of fiction writing that is starting to be imitated by our real life, for some insane set of reasons that I struggle to accept. Up the shrink hierarchy of needs is the self-esteem or self-worth aspect where our identity needs to be in a healthy status to carry on with benefiting from our existence, after that comes social relationships. Those aspects of needs are often addressed when the first three needs I mentioned (food, safety, and security) are already met, so when the first three are hindered, your focus on identity and social connections get set aside because you are in a survival mode that needs to be catered to. There are dystopian works that go more into the identity and social needs, which I intend to cover in later examples, but there is another part of dystopian writing to go over.

There are other types of dystopias, but two specific variations I want to go over are wasteland dystopias or regressive dystopias. Wasteland dystopias are really easy to explain and comprehend; they are the result of some cataclysmic disaster or set of disasters that has left the comforts of our modern society in ruins. Where the modern world is destroyed in some way such as nuclear fallout, a global pandemic decimating the world population, a sudden lost of essential resources, or some other imaginative speculation that makes the money in your bank account worthless and the power grid to shutdown. From there it becomes a matter of who can maintain resources of survival (e.g. food, shelter, medicine, transportation, etc.) and how people interact in each other when the primary drive is to stay alive and the intellectual nuances of modern society are not deems top priority.

We see variations of this wasteland dystopia in books like The Road, I Am Legend, “A Boy and His Dog”, Cat’s Cradle, The Girl with All the Gifts, and The Day of the Triffids. These examples look into a world past the comforts and show the reduction of values in people. The Road is my favorite example because it follows a father and son who are trying to survive and maintain their humanity in a dead society where you can’t trust strangers now that cannibalism has become a viable option. I Am Legend shows how the shift from humans dominating the planet to vampire like beings that first seem ghoulish but then a more advance version of them forms to take over and our protagonist becomes the monster through his methods of trying to combat this relenting hoard at his door. The other examples I can get into, but you get my point. Either a lone character or small group of survivors have to carry on through a harsh environment. This has become a tiring trope in film and television with the zombie apocalypse subgenre. I may visit some of those titles in my review newsletter (oops, shameless plug).

The other type of dystopia I mentioned is the regressive form. This one sits in between the wasteland and the authoritarian forms, where society has shifted backwards from the progressive laws and values we see in the modern world. Often under the rule of a new form of government or cultural norm that can certainly be oppressive but, focused around a specific theme that gets explored more than the social power dynamics. Examples that I would point to are The Hunger Games series, The Handmaid’s Tale, The World Made by Hand, and *retching* Ready Player One. These novels and series have their place in the discussion of dystopian fiction, but they are what I would consider mid-tier when it comes to exploring the impact of such a world existing and the mechanics of the world tend to seem very flawed when explored. I find that happens because the spectacle is in the pitch rather than in the characters or the central application of the books, with the exception of The Handmaid’s Tale since modern America is promoting shades of such a dystopia in the current social/political discourse. But I find that the other examples get lost in their world building or in something more superficial (e.g. nostalgia, economics, entertainment, etc.), rather than develop the core message that the book puts out. Along with having derivative aspects1 that one can’t help but compare it to the authoritarian or wasteland dystopia, which seem to hold a lasting impression.

With those specific branches of the subgenre of dystopia fiction, let me go back to what I want to explore with the authoritarian style. I think it gives the strongest emphasis and has the most lasting examples because art imitates the real world and now, generations later, the inverse is happening. We are seeing methods of totalitarianism, censorship, misinformation, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, and displacement of quality social interactions. If some of these themes have struck a resemblance to our modern world, well that’s because we don’t like to take enough critical lessons from our speculative fiction that warns us of the ills of our hubris and often takes inspiration from real events. I could go into detail, but that is not my interest nor job to be the literary journalist who compares a specific government practice to 1984 or Brave New World, or Fahrenheit 451.

But I will go into those three novels in the coming weeks on my review newsletter to share my analysis and thoughts on those works of dystopian fiction. I plan to give my tangential and contradictory opinions to help elaborate why I regard them as important works in this subgenre and if you haven’t read them recently or at all, I hope that changes. Nothing helped me gain awareness and look critically into the real world practices that march towards a terrible future for the majority of humanity than reading works of fiction that show what can happen, especially when current powerful practitioners seem to have taken away the practices that make those stories so horrifying.

Happy reading, everyone!

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“Solitude is a gift” - Charles Bukowski

What defines loneliness? You would assume it’s simply the absence of other human beings in your immediate vicinity, correct? But people aren’t often prone to experiencing that isolation from others simply by not seeing or talking to another evolved simian. Loneliness is sneaky and insidious and rather undesirable to the majority of mankind. We seek all means to avoid loneliness because we are deemed social creatures by our evolution and need to rely on others to survive, even in our modern world of rising automation that seems to usurp any human presence.

Given that our inherent default is to avoid loneliness, we should never favor the physical absence of others, but people seem to want to avoid dehydration by drowning themselves. The opposition of loneliness is the crowd, which has a paradoxical effect of rekindling that sensation of social isolation in a completely different way. By the design of our brains and ability to communicate with others, we are not designed for multiple channels of conversation or attention with ensured quality; we tend to overwhelm our ability to focus and can’t conduct effective interactions. Many can attest, myself included, of being surrounded by people and yet feeling completely alone.

My theory, for whatever that amounts to, is that people hold differing thresholds of tolerating themselves minus people. That isn’t loneliness; it involves being alone, but there is a comfort level people can take in from being a party of one. The status of finding comfort without the presence of others is solitude. There is a set of benefits from utilizing solitude from time to time.

People who fear solitude or loneliness cannot decern the difference and often it is attributed to a poor self-image. Where they want to distance themselves from themselves, which is impossible in any healthy way. These people are the ones who seek the distractions, constantly contribute their thoughts to the world in a rapid-fire expulsion of half baked consciousness. Then lament when faced with those quiet moments where they are left with no buffer of another person and must confront their own mind.

The true tragedy of our modern world is that these extroverted people are the loudest and most insistent of human beings who think they can vision board a solution to eliminating loneliness, as if it were a disease or a foreign country to decimate in a war. Loneliness is a state of emotional existence — that could be conscious or unconscious — which can’t be seized and eliminated. To offset loneliness you need two approaches, sometimes combined to feel comfort. To dethrone the lonely curse, you have to identify and solve the root of loneliness, whether it is caused by lack of connection or displeasure in yourself. Once you’ve put a name to your source of this disconnect, you must decide if more or less people are needed to resolve this.

Ask yourself, is the source of my loneliness due to my lack of meaningful connections in people or is it due to a lack of confidence in my ability to express myself in a meaningful way? The distinction is separated by the source being you or your social environment. Do you have any friends? Are they friends that care about your well-being for more than just their personal benefit? Do they seek to be in communication or present to you? Will they make an effort to be available when you need support? When these questions add up a tally of negatives, then the sad truth is that your friends suck or can’t really hold that label in good faith.

The title of a friend is often exaugurated by people who can’t seem to recognize their lack of communal interactions and look at this concept in terms of numerical metrics rather than quality connections. These are people that are challenged by being alone and often seek to insulate this pending fear of loneliness by having an entourage rather than a support group of companions. The notion of friendship varies on its own spectrum from relatives that you share a history with but have little in common when it comes to interests and beliefs, to people you discover at some point in your formative adolescent years that become your go-to persons that grant you grace when times are tough.

Family and friendship are often overlapping because meaningful social connections don’t have to exist with people you are biologically tied to. The best definition of a family I ever encountered was from the 1970s sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show where in the finale when Mary says with tears in her eyes,

“I tell myself that the people I work with are just the people I work with. But last night I thought, ‘what is family anyway? It’s the people who make you feel less alone and really loved.’ Thank you for being my family”

That quote always echoed in my consciousness when I found myself struggling to connect with my parents or relatives and yet found myself able to be comforted by friends from high school and college. But that is my experience, which differs from many others in this world, even if there are strong similarities; each person’s existence is uniquely their own but can be shared and understood through real empathetic interactions.

That brings me to the concept of solitude, which I have recently struggled to obtain on a regular basis. I was once a young person fearful of my own presences and desperate for distractions or insulation from my self-analyzing thoughts. I utilized television, superficial companions, the internet, drugs, and alcohol to avoid myself. But now I’m at an age and place in my life where I can find peace with myself. There are some days when the intrusive thoughts of self-loathing come up and put me on trial with cursed memories of embarrassments or mistakes. But I have found healthy methods to devalue such echoes that demand guilt or self-destruction from me.

When you are no longer afraid of being with yourself, you have discovered solitude. It isn’t a state of mind that lasts for long periods of time, although some people can go days or weeks without the interaction of other people. But social skills are like muscles, they atrophy when not used regularly. As with anything about this human existence, there needs to be a balance. For the writers out there — such as myself — solitude is sought after when we are driven to create. But don’t confuse isolation and comfort with the concept of being tuned in with your own mind that allows for creative endeavors. I think this poetic drunk had the best take on it.

Don’t let the loneliness consume you and don’t mistake the noise of company for true companionship. Don’t fear the person you are because at the end of every day, you are all that’s left in your life. Make the most of it.

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If you don’t like curse words, don’t read my essay.

What a bunch of bullshit, writing some fucking essay about the excessive fucking use of fucking cursing in writing. Who does this bullshit artist, Ratidox, think they are for choosing to trouble the good people of the internet with a bunch of filth?

What a cunt. That Ratidox

If you didn’t like those sentence, then head out because I’m going to take a look into what many people of the modern world seem to argue about still to this day. One camp seems oblivious to the emotional impact of cursing and utilizes it in excess to the result of watered down vocabulary. Opposite the potty mouths sits the prudes who think that curse words are inappropriate, low minded, and disgusting. Both sides have their merits when it comes to using explicit terminology to express high stress in writing.

Before I referee this fight between the cursers and the prudes, let me give my two cents on this concept. Or to translate for the shit talkers: let me weigh in on my fucking opinion about this bullshit, bitches. When it comes to language, no one word is too taboo outside of the context of its use. There are layers of situations and structure when it comes to choosing curse words when some other form of emotional expression would suffice. To list a bunch of curse words wouldn’t mean much unless the reader or speaker had some emotional connection to that word. An example is the divisive word cunt which is used more fluidly in British nations throughout the world rather than in America where it holds a more potent effect, especially around women it tends to be a killer of constructive conversation, to say the least.

There are some words like fuck and shit that were once hidden from the general public through media up until the 2000s when television and media exposure promoted out those once powerful words of irritation to where they seem more common and thus weaker to use. My concern with this shift of culture across the landscape of media is that while it is honest to utilize cursing, it tends to commit two consequences: lowering creativity and weakening emotions. By lowering creativity, I am claiming that when people rely on explicit terms, they tend to hold onto them and lose sight of alternative options in expressing displeasure. When you have a character yelling fuck and shit and bitch and cunt so frequently that they become adjectives more than verbs or nouns, it seems to delegitimize their frustrations as more hyperbolic and exaggerated.

Opposite of the gutter mouth conventioneers is the prude, who want to police language and hold to some romanticized standard that they believe existed in history. As if people in older times never told another to fuck off or called them a cunt before the dawn of television. These pearl clutching fools seem to forget that people haven’t changed as much as our exposure to all avenues of people has changed. Prior to the internet media, publishing companies set their standards of language and always wanted to save themselves from the hate mail that these self-righteous word police always want to throw out there when they are exposed to “bad words”. Like a child running up to their teacher demanding punishment on a classmate that made a teasing joke at their expense. It’s really a let-the-buyer-beware situation when it comes to the availability of vulgarities in creative works, but there is a responsibility to the writer if they wish to communicate a set of emotions through hostile words.

Lets come back to the words themselves and clear up some basic facts about curse words. First is that many of these words are old, some as old as written language with the first use of Fuck dating back to before the days of Shakespeare. Second is that these words have one intention, which is shock value because they are designed to be hostile by expressing some of the highest levels of displeasure and agitation. Although many use the words so casually that they sound benign to frequent listeners, their original purpose was to be the exclamation point. Third and last point of curse words is, as I mentioned above, they don’t impact everyone the same way.

So, why do I bring this up when it seems that the groups for and against curse words sit as divided as American Congress? Because I use curse words in my fiction, and I find both sides of the aisle insufferable with their bubbled arguments. One side says there’s no artistic merit to be found in using curse words through your characters, and the others want you to talk like a high school burnout in order to demonstrate some form of legitimacy when portraying believable characters. Both have their points, and both are whiney cunts and bullshit artists.

All adults are capable and allowed to use this language, as long as they have proper civil rights like freedom of speech. To police language in any authoritarian way will be met with opposition and rebellion in more escalated ways. To not have some criticism or argument to excessive or inappropriate use of curse words in specific situations is idiotic. You wouldn’t want to see a group of female friends to be called bitches, or cunts when their behavior doesn’t warrant any hostilities. Nor would you want to see some people scolded like children for saying the events of their day were bullshit.

It’s important to read the context and intention of curse words when looking at language and writing. In creative writing, there are groups who think that curses and even graphic sexual exploits negate any artistic takeaway from what is written. I can’t agree with this on a universal realm because I have read wonderful novels that were full of ugly and graphic scenes of cursing or sex but still showed plenty of literary genius. It seems like readers and critics struggle to know how to determine the art from the artist. My rule of thumb is that when a character utilizes curses, it’s their trait that may or may not be based on the personal experience of the author. When second or third person narration uses curse, it’s coming straight from the author to the reader which may often be the display of the author’s personal mindset, or it could be a creatively intentional style made to get certain reactions from the reader. Do you see how this isn’t so black and white as the prudes and cursers would have you believe?

My closing argument is this, who gives a fuck if you want to utilize curse words. They are words and words will carry whatever impact you attribute to them. The translation of vulgar terms affects people differently, for example — and this is not to justify these problematic terms — is vulgar words with sexist or racist connotations. Fuck and Shit are universal but slurs are more toxic because of the dehumanizing nature of their intention when they are targeted to a specific group of people. But when people are using the n-word or the f-word amongst people who aren’t targeted of those original terms, those words don’t seem as toxic but I don’t wish to write them here because readers will forget context and regard them as words that I give some support to, which I do not. I don’t use slurs in my opinionated works because of the labeling effect of those words which carry ugly historical context to them.

But when utilizing creative writing, I take some use of slurs in order to give readers a true experience of the world I want to portray. If I have a character calling another character by a racial or sexual slur, my intention is to create an emotional impact to set the stage of the hostilities between these characters. If I narrated the use of such labels on my characters, that would be my decision to describe those characters in blunt and heartless ways, which would reflect poorly on my expression to the reader and create the misconception of me supporting racism or sexism.

Slurs are a more problematic form of language because of their association with horrific crimes that have and still take place in our modern world. Many of us want there to come a time when slurs lose their impact and become toothless, but that requires change outside of the creative world. As an author, the use of slurs would be deliberate on my part to emphasize a character that you aren’t supposed to like or cheer for in the story. But for me, to overuse such slurs or fill my story with too many examples would paint the picture of me being more aligned with such idiots, even made-up ones.

I don’t know a graceful way to end this fucking essay. Let me give this shit a try and say that measured words are powerful words. Words have value because they have varying meaning from person to person and someone out there has a low threshold for certain words. But that shouldn’t tether us to censorship when it comes to using language that carries across the message of unhappiness. Be mindful of your choice of words but don’t lock up your tongue if a curse word is the best way to express what is inside, just don’t rely on it like a crutch if you want to be regarded as a clever person. Now fuck off.

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Many parts of the body are taken for granted and often go unnoticed, until something goes wrong. Like a car with a wearing transmission, the warning signs are often ignored until the clutch slips, or a gear seizes, and you are left stranded on the side of the road because you put off the preventative maintenance. To Charlie Knight, his mouth became that transmission, and the damage was something to be considered for future reference.

Charlie Knight always enjoyed eating. He loved consuming food and flavors of all kinds. He never could explain why he compulsively ate at a minimum of twenty times a day. Some would view this as a binge eating disorder, since his caloric intake was nearly triple the recommended intake for a grown adult male in his late twenties. He had already noticed that he was packing on the pounds that an extra mile on the elliptical couldn’t shed. But he couldn’t hold back his fallback comfort of snacking on something on a regular basis. Until he saw the vehicular breakdown on his parents.

He decided to make a major lifestyle change after his father passed from a massive acute myocardium infarction and then, within four months, his mother had a cerebral hemorrhage that debilitated her left sided occipital regain and caused permanent blindness along with paralysis of her right side. This devastation gave Charlie some insight into how he maintained his own health, it made him sign up for a personal workout trainer to give him better discipline for his exercise and some consults from a nutritionist to help him improve his quality of meals and snacks. He became a stringent health food fanatic, no more processed sweets nor any fried foods would coat his enamel. He shed off the pounds and felt better and it gave him more confidence that translated into more success at work.

When he was younger, he was plagued by plaque and held a highlight color of yellow on his teeth all the time, made worse by impacted wisdom teeth that twisted his front teeth into a jagged awry of small incisors. He was overweight too from munching on bulk food junk that his parents bought to cut corners on their grocery budget. From childhood he didn’t floss and needed several encouragements to brush his teeth long enough and in the full spectrum of his oral area, but his parents were two working class folks either too fatigued from full days of working menial jobs or too numbed from the cheap beer and tequila they took in to offset the pain of the rat race they lived in. That with the convenience of fast food and microwaved dinners gave them a minor luxury of poverty that would be the undoing of both Charlie’s mom and dad.

Some would say that this hustle and bustle with a negligence to Charlie’s development shaped how he came to have such a need to succeed while turning a blind eye to small problems. But Charlie never cared about looking at details that didn’t give him success. To him if he could make enough money, he could live better than his parents had, he could afford luxury and with that luxury he would consider himself victorious in life. But the small ache in his mouth was starting to draw the attention that Charlie didn’t want to forfeit.

Charlie worked in Real Estate, trying to convince folks to consider making major purchases on a regular basis. When he was at work, his personal presentation was crucial in order to entice would-be homeowners to front their down payments which gave him the commission that he lived on. So, he not only needed to have a likable persona but also and approachable appearance. He always prided himself on his Hollywood smile; it was worth the investment. The one thing he spent the most trying to improve was the most neglected part of his health.

“I have an appointment today.”

“Checkup and cleaning Mr. Knight?” The small and cute receptionist inquired.

“Correct, although that cleaning may be redundant,” Charlie exposed his pearly white trophy of his hard work. Of all the lifestyle improvements he threw his paycheck at; his mouth was the last and the costliest. Cavities needed refilling after years of wearing down the caps with the same bad eating habits he couldn’t shed. His enamel was thinner than balsa wood and couldn’t tolerate heat above Luke warm and cold below room temperature. The discoloration of his teeth from youth was another expensive endeavor to correct, it needed Ultraviolet treatment which was essentially using concentrated sunrays to eradicate bacteria and bleach his teeth to the approved form of ivory that society aspired to see in a mouth. His gums were also a tough process to resolve. The constant inflammation and bleeding from just brushing his teeth when he could get around to it in his early teens and twenties made him hate the process of home oral care even more. That and the crooked arrangement and the impacted wisdom teeth that his parents couldn’t afford to get removed were another long hassle to fix, but worth every cent when it was over.

All these problems were now a history that Charlie had buried, and now his mouth looked like it could compete with the Kennedy family. The surgery to remove is wisdom teeth, the transparent braces to straighten out his crooked incisors, the Ultraviolet photo bleaching, the refilling of cavities with a stronger — costlier — filler, and better home equipment to reduce the sensitivity of his gums. He now maintained flossing and brushing three times a day; the plastic braces were another way for him to preserve the dental care he had spent thousands of dollars on. But the results made him more pleasing on the eyes. Now when he toured an open home to potential buyers, he could open his lips when he smiled, and it appeared to brighten the room and draw in his clients and their checkbooks.

Charlie took his seat in the examination room, lying back in the longue chair while the hygienist came in to inspect the gum line and the overall condition of his mouth.

“Looking good in there, Charles.”

“Thanks,” he responded when her tools were out of his mouth, “it’s been a long road but I’m glad I still have the original hardware.”

“Indeed, it’s a long and troubling process to extract and replace original teeth with implants and worse if you have to settle for dentures, especially before you reach your sixties.” from there the Dentist came in and congratulated Charlie on his quality work.

“It’s like I always said after graduating high school, Doc: It’s never too late until they declare you dead.”

“Quite the morbid philosophy. By the way, it seems that there is a discoloration on the tooth where you had that root canal.” Charlie felt the blood in his warm face dump out as if someone had opened the drain to a hot bath.

“Discoloration?”

“I’m afraid so. Since we had to kill the nerves on that tooth it has caused the vessel to diminish a bit, and the tooth has more of a grey tone that the rest. But it’s on the number two molar in the back of your mouth. So don’t smile too wide and no one will know about it.”

“Can’t you give it a light treatment?”

“Won’t make a difference. It’s essential dead from the inside. The only thing we can do is extract it if it causes you any problems. Otherwise, we typically file down a root canal tooth and cover it with a crown. There’s no rush on the matter if you wish to weigh your options.” With that Charlie and the dentist shook hands and Charlie left the practice with a dazed expression on his face. All that work, all those hours of diligent oral care, all those months of feeling his teeth shift to a straight order, all of those treatments and there was one spot in his mouth that wasn’t perfect like the rest. Charlie couldn’t help but concentrate on the discolored tooth, lapping over it with his tongue. He then became aware of a dull pain from that tooth, as if something were trying to tug it out.

The discolored tooth didn’t trouble him at first until he saw in the reactions of clients and his date with Sherrie that seemed to imply something was uncanny about his award-winning smile. It started when he was giving a tour to a young couple in their mid-twenties who were taking that bold financial leap into owning a home with what meager funds they could gather to be approved for a mortgage. As Charlie showed off the bedrooms, he went into his typical pitch to stoke the emotional dreams of these two eager novice homeowners.

“As you can see, it’s got three bedrooms and a bathroom on this top floor. A perfect setup for when you have family visiting or perhaps when you both decide to expand into a family of your own.” The young lady seemed to shrivel into herself as if the liquid of her body concentrated into her eyes which were beginning to stream out tears and she darted down the stairs. Her partner’s icy reaction at Charlie seemed to tell him that a scar had been hit with his remark, to which Charlie tried to give his warm smile, but the young man looks as though he came across a fresh pile of roadkill. Charlie’s smile shattered as his facial muscles felt lost in what arrangement to form to remedy this problem. As the young lady was trying to keep her sobs contained her partner said at the top of the stairs over his shoulder to Charlie,

“She’s had three miscarriages over the past two years. We were looking for a home to foster pets.” He descended out of sight as the words to formulate some excuse or apology became lost in Charlie’s throat, and his discolored tooth began to throb, as though it might bust open like a pimple. The viewing ended with cold farewells and Charlie had the sinking feeling that the clients would drop him or abandon their search for a home, all because of one remark from his eager mouth. The remainder of his workday was at the office, sorting through paperwork for listings to promote and two different homes that were waiting replies of lowballed offers from potential buyers.

After closing out of his office he went straight to Wheatfield to meet with Sherrie, his girlfriend of the past three months. Although this would be about their seventh date, Sherrie was still wishing to go slow with Charlie and wouldn’t make their relationship official (meaning, posted on social media) until she felt ready. Tonight, Charlie was eager to get her to confirm her love for him or let him move onto other options. He was turning twenty-eight in two months and didn’t feel like the dating game was giving him much other than high charges on his Mastercard and the occasional notch on his bedpost. After seeing the tragedy of the young couple at the viewing, he wanted to find his own settlement, since he didn’t even have a house like the many he toured with folks, trying to convince them that the purchase was possible and would only be beneficial. He rented in a nice modest townhouse but longed for that American dream he had seen in ads and movies that replayed in his psyche like some emotionally provoking curse.

Sherrie was pretty, in a short and stocky with smooth tanned skin and pin straight brunet hair that domed her head and curled into her jaw to make a black helmet that matched her little black dress to wear in this Italian restaurant. It wasn’t the most high-end place to eat but carried some low light and cozy ascetics to give the experience adjacent to high-class life but with linoleum floors and faulty air conditioning.

Charlie wanted to get to the root of the matter of settling this arm’s length relationship with Sherrie, but he needed to get through his dry martini first. The brine and bitter taste stabbed at his dead tooth and reminded him of the flaw hiding in his mouth. Sherrie was preoccupied with her phone, claiming she was responding to emails for her massage work. Even though they had explored plenty of each other between the sheets, Charlie always felt a hollow part in his bed when Sherrie wasn’t there, but it didn’t have to be her. But if the vacancy was available and his date made for stable company, wasn’t that good enough to give him the life he dreamed of.

“Hey Sher?”

“What?”

“Could you put your phone down for a minute.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry but if I don’t reply to these I will forget and then I won’t make my sessions and then I won’t get ahead of my bills and then my parents will be on my case for not being responsible and then—”

“Sherrie, would you look at me for goddam minute!” His silverware rattled when his fist dropped next to his plate. He realized too late that eyes from around the dining area had been startled by his outburst and were assessing the threat. Sherrie barely reacted but set her phone on the table, face up, and looked at him with her chocolate brown eyes. Her face rotated with displeasure to instruct him to continue.

“Where are we going?”

“After this? Your place again, I would imagine.”

“No, no! I mean us, our relationship. Where is it going?” she took a heavy gulp of her Riesling and smacked her painted lips before saying,

“You really want to get into this now? When I haven’t eaten since ten am? We’ve been dating for like three months. I figured if you wanted to make this official and have us be exclusive you would’ve made a move by the third time we went out.”

“We went to that club, and you were black out drunk. How would I have discussed this with you in that state. And why does it have to just be up to me to pop the question?”

“You brought it up.” He replayed her words this evening as something sounded out of tune to him.

“Wait a minute! What did you mean by ‘be exclusive’? Have you been seeing other men?” Sherrie looked at her wine, which was getting depleted from her large glass. She didn’t meet his gaze as she replied with some strain,

“I figured you didn’t want just me, so you were probably schmoozing with other girls out there. Working your charms and shining that smile of yours.”

“So, you just assumed I was seeing other women while we were dating? I wasn’t!” His voice seemed to be drawing the eyes around the room back over to their table as Sherrie looked worried, then annoyed.

“Hey, I waited on you to make a move that wasn’t just up my skirt. I’m sorry that you didn’t pick up on the message that I needed you to decide for us if it was going to be, just us.”

Charlie rubbed at his face and the ache in his dead tooth seemed to throb, but he was too heated from the news that his girlfriend was and open house instead of his personal home. Now a looming curiosity came to his mouth that he had to expel like a bitter taste,

“How many other men have you seen since we’ve been dating?”

“I really don’t think that’s any of your business, Charlie.”

“We’ve gone out every other week since February! I’ve had you in my home and in my bed! And you just inform me now that you’ve been out with other guys, doing more of the same?”

“Keep your voice down! I’ll walk out right now if you keep making a scene! Yes, I have be dating other guys, but aside from you I’ve only been close with two of them and that was over a month ago. One was just a quick overnight, and the other dropped me for some blonde he used to see. So, right now it’s just you and me, Charlie.” He had the urge to destroy that pairing but after his day, between his tooth, the lousy showing, the lack of new clients, and this cold reality of his girlfriend sleeping around because he failed to establish the relationship. He just wanted some comfort before he burst open.

“Well, can we finally put that to rest and just let it be the two of us?”

“You want to just see me?”

“I’ve only been seeing you, why don’t you get that?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Don’t changed the subject!”

“Charlie, there’s blood in your mouth!” He paused from his frustration at her and wiped his lips with his white cloth napkin and saw the crimson smear to confirm her declaration. He pressed again and found more blood darkening on his napkin, which set a fire of panic in his neck that pulled him to his feet as their waitress was coming over to ask them to order, he quickly demanded from the young woman in the apron with the notepad,

“Where’s your bathroom!”

He had burst into the dimly lit lavatory to run to the trough quartz sink that held one giant rectangle of a mirror above three neighboring faucets. He spread his lips and found red all around the edges of his teeth, seeming to give them a macabre outline. He set the hot water on and scooped a handful of water to swish around his mouth and spat out the pink colored tap into the cream-colored quartz trough. He looked at his worried reflection with his lips pulled back to inspect the source of the bleeding. Just as he feared, it was coming from the base of the dead tooth. A steady ooze of red was highlighting the dark grey ivory. As he stared at the tooth, hooking his lips back further to get a more open look at the tooth.

Then the jolt of electric pain hit, and he saw for a flash, the tooth twist within its placement of the gums. The scrapping grind of tooth-on-tooth sensation followed by the sound of the neighboring teeth cracking echoed through his skull as blood slid down his throat, causing him to gag and expel saliva diluted blood into his terrified reflection.

The cracking and twisting and shifting of the tooth continued. The pain was dominating his mind, as though some invisible pair of pliers was trying to rip and tear his tooth out. He needed help and fast, he pulled out his phone as more hem filled spit poured out of his mouth, greasing the screen with sticky human fluids. The first urge was to call his dentist for an emergency tooth extraction but when he dialed it went straight to messaging service as it was after office hours. Caught in the grinding pain in his mouth and the pooling of spit and blood, he had to keep hacking out in mouthful amounts he thought of needing an ambulance.

As he back through his calling feature, the blood tickled his uvula, causing he coughed out a spray of crimson that coated his phone and to his misfortune this bathroom had hand dryers instead of paper towels. He considered running the phone under the water but then realized the solitary bathroom stall would have toilet paper. Stomping through the pulling and twisting agony in his mouth her tried to push open the thin panel door of the stall but found it locked to which a heavy voice on the other side said,

“Occupied!” Charlie still tried to get the door open but found no means to undo the small cylinder lock on the other side and the man in the stall became more irritated and shouted,

“I said occupied! If you have to puke, use the garbage!” Charlie tried to compose himself despite swallowing more blood, so much that he wondered if he would faint. He made his best effort to clear his throat, which was still lined with juicy saliva made thick with plasma. But the pain keeping his mouth from fully closing combined with the heavy amount of fluids in his pallet made his attempt to ask the man inside to get him some paper sound like,

“Ki...leed...come...ahper!” A silence came before the man in the stall replied,

“Look, give me five minutes and I’ll be done. You ought to take it easy on those Manhattans, the bartender is pretty heavy handed and—HEY!” Charlie had caved into the persistence of his pain and fell to his stomach and proceeded to crawl under the door, terrifying the portly man on the porcelain throne with his khaki pants around his ankles.

“Are you on drugs! What’s the matter with you!” The man exclaimed as he seized the waistband of his pants and yanked them up wile grabbing the assistance bar to pull himself to his feet. His massive stomach drooped over his genitals and hoisted his belt around his gut, not able to buckle. Charlie was getting his hips through the opening under the door and the man saw the thick crimson streaming from his mouth and started screaming,

“HELP! HELP! There’s a lunatic in here attacking me! SOMEONE HELP!” The man was still fumbling with securing his pants around his waist, his large gut seeming to be getting in the way of belt and button. The large man tried to back up as Charlie crawled across the floor towards the toilet paper. The hefty man tripped over the edge of the bowl as he tried to retreat and tumbled into the wall of the toilet stall, knock it off one of its two metal brackets. Charlie was yanking handfuls of thin tissue from the spinning roll of one ply paper, ignoring the fallen man and the unflushed work in the toilet. As Charlie proceeded to wipe his phone clean and then stuffed handfuls of paper into his bloody mouth the bathroom door had burst open with two waiters and the manager of the restaurant to witness the bathroom stall collapsed with a fat patron cradling his head in pain and some other patron sitting of the floor of the stall seeming to be eating toilet paper. The manager told his waiter on his right,

“Call for the police!”

Despite the incident the police let the second ambulance take Charlie to the hospital, following after the ambulance that took the overweight man away to assess his possible concussion. Charlie was wheeled out in a stretcher, holding a vomit bag after the EMT’s packed two rolls of gauze into his cheeks to soak up the blood. As they passed his table where Sherrie sat in panic and remained there, lost for any instinct of what to do, Charlie expelled a spray of blood and bile that half went into the vomit bag and the other half splattered on the tray of bread on the table next to Sherrie. She expelled a series of shrieks and curses as the technicians took Charlie out of there. Even though he could understand that his chances at a relationship with Sherrie were extinct, he was more concerned with trying to breathe around the blood and vomit that coated his nostrils and throat, now with a fuming acidic burn.

The pain in the tooth returned with a higher degree of concentration. He began to thrash and press his maxillary area to apply pressure on the tooth. But despite this tactic and the EMT’s requesting, then demanding that he calm down, the pain persisted. As he pressed into his cheek and the ambulance began to rock with movement, he felt something strange. Another loud crack like that of a low caliber gun went off that alerted the technician sitting beside him, and Charlie felt a jagged and solid nugget knock between his molars and against his tongue. He spat out the tooth which was only a partial piece with one root and most of the crown, onto his lap and the EMT blurt,

“What in the fuck was that!” The driver called back if everything was okay to which the technician, looking shocked for what was probably the first time in years say,

“He just spat out a broken tooth.” To which the driver asked,

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“In his fucking mouth, Tony!” The driver called back

“Zack! Be a professional! Keep him stable, we’re almost at the hospital.” But then Charlie felt the other part of his come out, —seeming to be pushed out of the gum— and felt something moving around where the tooth once was. He pointed to his mouth and the EMT named Zack realized he was signaling for help and asked Charlie to open his mouth as he grabbed his pen light and disposable eyeglasses. When Charlie opened his mouth, Zack nearly emptied his bladder and felt his face go cold as he saw what appeared to be a long boney finger with a needle of a nail — more like a claw — pointing out of the digit, feeling for any surface to contact with.

“Holy Fucking Moses!” Zack croaked before seeing another claw like digit squeeze along the first out of the gum hole, and then the meat of Charlie’s gums started to rip apart as more was coming out of his spot. Zack unleashed a horrid scream along with the residual urine in his bladder as his partner at the wheel reached the bay of the emergency department while shouting for some explanation to the screaming and cursing. When the driver, Tony, darted out of his seat and raced to the back doors of the rig to see if this bloody maniac was trying to assault his partner. He noticed the box of the rig shaking on its struts as he seized open the door.

Tony’s anger was paralyzed like the rest of him at the sight before him. From left to right, he focused on the scene towards the only remaining movement in the box. The vomiting gentleman they had scooped up was dead; he had to be, as evidence by how his face had exploded open like a shattered pumpkin. The body of the burst skull remained lifeless but standing next to it was grey skinned monstrosity he had never seen, nor conceived of existing. The figure was anorexically thin and naked, with bluish grey skin and no ears of hair. Its head was turned away from the driver with its face pressed against Zack’s limp body, as if it was making out with them. Yet the sounds coming from this creature sounded too nauseating with wet slurping and wincing crunches.

Tony was at a loss for words and only a choking sound escaped his mouth as the ghoulish creature noticed his presence and broke from its embrace of Zack’s face. What faced him on that skull with grey flesh was not human and yet its eyes and nose and mouth resembled that of the man they had responded to at the restaurant. But in the blood-soaked mouth of this ghoul was a set of teeth that looked like jagged pieces of cinder blocks, some yellowed, others black, and all misshaped and pointing in all directions. Somewhere in that mouth of insanity he could see pearl white teeth moving around the jagged teeth as though by tiny fingers and positioning into whatever was between those teeth in that nightmare jaw. The ghoul starred at Tony’s gapped face of horror, locking its eyes on his mouth and saying with a saturated voice that sounded like broken glass scrapping against wet flint before it lunged at Tony,

“What a nice set of teeth you have.”

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Buy Me a Coffee

I suppose it would do me some good to promote this project ahead of the release date (early May of 2026). I have finished my second novel and combed through it looking to fix typos and confusing tangents and other blunders that first drafts leave in the rush of creation. I’m awaiting some feedback from my beta readers and hoping that I don’t have to revise too much before I can get this out into the world. I didn’t expect this novel to take off as it did and overshadow other works.

A quick synopsis if you wish to know: Cedric Xikas is a mechanic living in a small town in the mountains of New York, trying to be quiet and maintain his living. But when he meets new faces in his new home that show the more seedy side of this quiet place he finds himself reflecting on his recent past that sent him up here and maybe confront those shadows that he cannot escape.

I hope that wets some appetites for what will be available this upcoming spring. This is part of why I haven’t made too many new short stories for my page and have emptied out some of my files to give old stories to engage readers, it’s a cheap tactic but I don’t get paid (yet) for this passion of mine. But know that soon I will have another completed novel to my bibliography available for purchase in the spring. For now, let us endure the winter and cozy up to some good works of fiction or some insightful essays. I will keep myself as active as I can on this site, but this novel is my primary objective to get ready by it’s release date.

If you can’t wait then read my first novel Drop Dead Drunks. It’s only available on E-book through Barnes and Noble because that’s all I can afford as a writer working pro-bono in the shadows, alone. Maybe if some wonderful person purchases my book and spreads the word *cough, cough, shameless plug* or just buy me a coffee if $6.00 is too steep, then I can consider other avenues of publication for a wider audience.

Overall, I am grateful for those that have been following and subscribing to my page. I appreciate feedback so any questions, comments, or criticisms I welcome as long as they are respectful. I hope this keeps growing so I can devote time and maybe more resources into more novels that are just barren frames of manuscripts sitting in my desktop files. Until then, thank you for any support you can offer and stay tune for Stripped Gears in the Deep Woods.

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This is a business question, please hear me out. I’m not on cocaine or suffering from CTE from trying base jumping as my new hobby nor am I sleep deprived in some influencer claimed method to connect with my subconscious for new ideas. But I have a serious pondering about the status of financial economics in the modern world.

Aren’t shareholders just gamblers?

A shareholder contributes their money into a collection of stocks (their bets) in the hopes that those stocks will gain value on the grow of the company (the game to bet on). When Shareholders have a large number of stocks they are seen as crucial to the financial support of the company and thus are given decision making power when the time comes for the company to make changes. This seems like a worse form of gambling, to me, because the successful gambler now gets to decide how the game is played when the stakes are at their highest. Does anyone else see a problem here?

Isn’t gambling an insidious vice that rivals alcohol and heroin in levels of ruining the lives of people that are susceptible to impulsive hedonism? Despite its thrilling appeal of gaining large sums of money, there is a fair to severe risk with gambling, if left unrestrained. There are entire practices, support groups, and industries tied to the rehabilitation of people who suffer from unrestrained addiction, even with trying to wager money on some game of chance? If that is true, then why are we not concerned about those that play the investment game of stocks, which is just a long form of gambling.

For those who think I don’t understand the stock market, the world of economics, or even the nuances of day trading, I will admit that it isn’t my field of expertise. But I am still allowed to observe and ponder why people engage in behaviors that seem to cause more distress than success. I know the basics of stock trading and participate in small trades for my own self-directed retirement fund (it’s more tragic than rewarding, in all honesty). I find that stock trading is just a more organized form of gambling that gives small groups of people too much power over something that they have no direct involvement in, aside from gaining profits.

This is going to be a tricky essay to articulate, and I want to disclose that it is mainly about the absurd reality of the power of shareholders. It seems to me and my contradictory brain that being a shareholder gives you the ability to influence a company’s future — provided that you have invested enough currency to be given the royal powers of paid democracy — while not needing to be directly related to that company nor a consumer of that company. It seems bizarre to be the owner of a company where you and your employees are beholden to some random collection of people who happen to place bets on the success of your company’s profits but are going to reap those profits for themselves when they wish to cash in.

This dynamic of giving power to people removed from the service or products of a business doesn’t strike me a democratic nor truly capitalistic in a traditional sense. It’s the wild entangling web of connections through transactions that gives power to people who don’t need to worry about the reality of what they invest in. I’m one of those novice and idealistic people who try to buy and sell stocks, when I can afford to, mostly to companies that I have some confidence in and who haven’t made some ethical violation that would splatter blood and bile on my money. But when I try to express this grievance to those that are more experienced or formally involved in the world of stock exchange, I am met with the confidence and blinded faith of a fanatic who seems to speak in a separate language of finance-ease that gives me no clarification nor closure.

I’m not trying to be the kid throwing a rock against a tank, expecting it to make an army surrender. I’m merely asking a series of questions that I don’t see discussed. It’s not me asking how the process happens; I’m more curious and concerned about why it exists at all. Going back to the separation between shareholders and companies, it seems that we can’t truly believe in the messages or goals of a company once they are publicly traded and become the financial servant of those with the biggest pockets. It seems like a ridged game when those who have the fortunes of small nations in their bank accounts can become the hand that guides a business. The extent of their influence can seem omnipotent, even when claims come that they are just part of the group of decision makers. To me, it seems schizophrenic to have someone with no training nor experience with the ins and outs of *insert company name here* decide whether said company makes a major decision about their future.

Circle back to the gambling metaphor (read: reality) with me and consider this. Would you want the gambler to have the ability to shift the decision of the game they wagered on? No, oh, that’s right because that’s unfair and illegal in most cases. Yet when it comes to a billionaire becoming a decision maker of a company, yet they aren’t really involved in the production, employee relations, or the societal effects of the business but only the figure head that influences the perception of the company, this becomes a problem. When such a figurehead (*cough* *cough* Musk *cough* *cough* Altman) becomes a toxic personality that is too hooked on delusional beliefs or wrapped up in the dream pitch but intentionally separate from the logistics of how such a company runs; at best we get volatile markets that react to some circus of sensation in the media, or at worst a product that fails to live up the utopian hype of this mouthpiece with too much capital and not enough self-reflection.

I find shareholding to be a ridiculous practice because it kills this self-made dream we still cling to in the United States. If you make a successful company of any size, there may come a day where it grows to gain the attention of people with money to invest and impulsive ideas to throw into the flow of your production. The only thing worse than clueless and reckless investors are their sinister counterparts, the malicious and maddening evil that are private equity firms.

If you are fortunate to be blissfully ignorant of the fungal contagion that can be classified as private equity firms, allow me to burst your oblivious bubble. PEFs are groups/firms/small companies that make bets on the success of a bigger company by taking their equity or assets and using the cost to invest in other companies, constantly moving the money around like a shell game in a subway terminal. There’s no layman way to explain the operations of PEFs without them sounding like nefarious scams or organized crime syndicates but (for worse) they are working within the complexities of the financial legal system. I can’t claim to be an expert on the topic, but plenty of others can elaborate. I will drop a link to a video essay that sums up the basics of PEFs which has only added to my distrust of them and worry of their insidious infiltration into many companies throughout the world.

WTF Does Private Equity Actually Do?

The main drive of my fear with shareholders and PEFs is that they are absolved of any consequences other than not profiting from what they bet on. When a company is in free fall; terminating employees, and shutting down offices, and cancelling services to their clientele or liquidating their supplies for cheap funds; the separate parties that were playing roulette with the stocks and assets of the company will still have jobs and not lose much other than a small portion of their portfolios that they will replace with the next economic black jack game. They may sell off their shares when the writing of bankruptcy is on the walls and by the time the main company is facing that reality, it’s often too late with severance packages looking like handouts of scraps to keep the terminated workforce from rioting. But perhaps I’m being too pessimistic about this narrative. Then again, we have seen multiple examples of companies closing down after dabbling with PEFs and seeing their shareholders still stroll out of the bank unscathed.

To summarize my distain for shareholders, they carry excessive influences when they hold the bulk of the tickets to claim any profits and will ditch the wager of success when they smell foreclosure. Sometimes just the phantasm of thinking that a company will fail drives it into bankruptcy because the shareholders panic and sell off their shares to get ahead of the imagined downfall. Call me old fashion or just dense in the world of financial matters, but I feel that guiding decisions to affect the progress and maintenance of a company should be reserved for in-house staff. The investors shouldn’t have much say once their seed money has been paid off. Which factors into how a company needs to offset its debt first and foremost before it can claim to be on the road of succession. Plus, why rely on outsiders in PEFs or useless consultant groups to meddle in a process they have no anchors to. When the ship sinks, the PEFs and the consultants will be on their own safe Yachts counting their profits from your company regardless of its collapse.

Perhaps its a sickness that can’t be remedied by discussion from people vaguely aware of this trend that turns the stock market into a roller coaster casino. The day will come when the numbers come down, and much like a gambler blowing away all of their savings or a cocaine addict running out of cash or their score, that come down will be ugly. The unfortunate part as many have learned through America’s long history of stock market tragedies is that it won’t affect the shareholders, the companies, the owners, or just the employees. It will affect all of us and those that have more safety nets of paid off assets will carry on better than those of use living paycheck to paycheck. Save up what you can and watch out for bad habits. Good luck everyone!

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Buy Me a Coffee

The sun had set about an hour ago. The crickets were lightly chirping in the fields. The trees swayed in the cool fall winds. Then all of a sudden in this small field in the woods a light appeared in the middle of the space.

It looked like a crack forming on a windshield and began to grow. A light-blue light was shining from this rip that grew five feet above the ground. None of the trees or flowers or the wind were disrupted by this phenomenon. A small jackrabbit was passing through and saw the bright light in the crack in the sky.

The crack opened up, shedding more bright blue light into the field. The light was illuminating the area more that the faint lights from the city off in the distance. Then a leg stepped out of the opening and the rabbit fled into the trees.

The leg was joined by a second leg, attached to the thin pair of hips and a slender torso. Finally the head of the figure appeared in from the opening of light. It looked like a normal human face for a second, shook slightly in an unnatural way and then returned to looking like a bald man with a sharp nose and a small mouth.

The man looked around at his surroundings for a moment. He took what looked like a marker and traced the edges of the opening of light. The opening shut and the light went out. The man looked over to the lights of the neighboring city and started to walk in that direction. As the figure walked through the woods, the grass under his suede shoes grew three times their size and then rapidly changed colors.

The figure drew out a small device that looked like a hand held computer tablet. His eyes scanned the blank grey screen and figures and letters began to float up between his face and the device. He nodded with approval at his device and stored it back in his leather jacket, or what looked like such.

The figure was more than half way to the city when a deer jumped in front of it. The deer locked eyes with the figure. The figure’s eyes turned solid black, seeming to mimic the eyes of the deer. The deer fell over and started twitching for a second before gaining consciousness and running off in a panic.

The figure drew out a notebook and scribbled down a line that read in English: Deer have weak constitutions.

The figure continued towards the city. The trees it passed by grew new leaves of vibrant colors that humans could not see. The figure looked around and saw a small park on the outskirts of the city. Sitting on the bench was a homeless man who looked up and locked eyes with the figure. The figure’s eyes turned to mimic the shade of brown that was the homeless man’s eyes.

“What the!? Who…What are you?” The figure stood over the man as he curled up in fear on the bench.

THAT’S ONLY IMPORTANT IF YOU ARE WORTH MY TIME

“How did you talk without moving your lips?”

YOUR PROBLEM SOLVING SKILS ARE DELAYED IT SEEMS. YOU CAN NOT PROCESS THE TELPATHY.

“Oh Christ. How are you in my head? What god would allow you?”

GODS ARE THE INVENTION OF THE TIMID. I SEE YOU HAVE A STORNG ENOUGH MIND TO LISTEN. THOUGH THERE ARE CONCENRING PLACES IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SEEM DILUTED AND DISORGANIZED.I COME WITH QUESTIONS OF YOUR PLAIN. WILL YOU ANSWER THEM?

“Get out of my head!” The man screamed as he grabbed his skull and curled into a ball on the bench. The figure held off for a moment and when the man regained his composure. The man looked back at the figure who stared at his eyes.

IS THERE ANYONE IN THAT CITY THAT I CAN COMMUNICATE WITH SINCE YOU DO NOT WISH TO COMPLY?

The man wondered where the police that usually kicked him out of here where.

POLICE? CURIOUS BEINGS THEY SEEM. I SUPPOSE THEY CAN ANSWER MY QUESTIONS. FAREWELL.

The figure walked off through the park as the man on the bench started to cry and was too afraid to run away. The figure came across a police officer who started to approach him.

“Hey Pal the park is closed. Please leave.” The figure locked its eyes on the officer’s and they turned light blue.

I HAVE QUESTIONS I WISH TO HAVE ANSWERED. YOU HOLD SOME DEGREE OF AUTHORITY IN THIS PLAIN. WILL YOU COMPLY?

“What the fuck?” the officer reached for his gun. The figure scanned the officer’s psyche and drew out what looked like a thermos. The figure opened it and a swarm of insects that resembled bees swarmed the officer. The officer fell to the ground, forgetting about his firearm. The figure walked off and once he was out of sight the bee creatures dissolved like sparks and the officer composed himself and realized that he was unharmed.

The figure came to the end of the park and saw several car lights flashing by. The figure walked down the sidewalk, scanning the cars that drove by. One driver met the eyes of the figure and for an instant he heard the voice of the figure in his head

WHAT PRIMITIVE MEANS OF MOBILITY IS THIS?

The driver panicked ad swerved into a telephone pole. The figure observed the crashed vehicle as a man in jacket walked up to the figure.

“My god, what happened?” The figure didn’t speak or meet the gaze of the man next to him. The figure did notice that the man wore a black outfit with a white collar. The man was a priest but this was an unknown profession to the figure.

“I hope he’s alright. Have you called the police? Sir? Are you okay?” The figure met the green eyes of the priest and the priest froze at its gaze.

CAN YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS? YOU SEEM TO BE AN INTELLIGENT BEING. I DID NOT WISH TO HARM THAT BEING IN THE VEHICLE. I CAN HELP HIM THOUGH.

The figure drew out the thermos looking item and opened it. A purple aura formed around the car and it pulled itself away from the telephone pole. The door opened and the driver floated out of the car and was gently brought to the sidewalk by the aura. The figure hid the thermos object and drew out the tablet which scanned the unconscious driver with a blue light.

The figure read the strange texted that hovered above the screen and turned to the priest.

HE IS FINE. THERE SEEMS TO BE NOT INJURIES TO HIS BODY. HIS MIND SIMPLY WENT INTO SHOCK WHEN I TRIED TO CONNECT WITH HIM.

“What are you?” The priest asked as he gripped his rosary tightly in his hand.

I AM FROM ANOTHER PLAIN. The figure looked around the environment.

MUCH DIFFERENT FROM HERE. MUCH CLEANER TOO. I CAME HERE AS AN EXPLORER AND I’m LOOKING TO RESEARCH ON BEHAVLF OF MY PLAIN. WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS,

“Are you an angel or a demon?” The priest blurted out. A puzzled look formed on the figure’s face.

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THOSE TERMS MEAN. HANG ON. I SEE. FROM YOUR IMAGINATION. HOW CRUDE. YOUR KIND STILL THINKS MSYTICISM IS A PLAUSIBLE REALITY. I CAN ASSURE YOU I’M NO MANIFESTATION OF MAGIC FROM YOUR HEAVEN OR HELL. STRANGE IDEAS. TELL ME WHY DO YOU NEED TO IMAGINE SUCH FANTASIES?

“W-w-what? There is a heaven and a hell. Isn’t there?”

FROM MY PLAIN WE HAVE NO SUCH CONSTRUCTS. WE DISCOVERED OVER A MILLEMUM AGO THAT THE EXPIRATION OF OUR KIND IS JUST A DIRECT THING. NO, WHAT DO YOU THINK BEINGS HAVE HERE, A SOUL. VERY STRANGE.

The priest started to take a few steps back and muttered a prayer. The figure shook his head.

I FEAR THAT NO ONE HERE IS WILLING TO HELP ME. YOU BEINGS ARE SO EASILY STARTELED. I ONLY WANTED TO ASK ABOUT HOW THIS PLAIN OF YOURS WORKS. I SUPPOSE THIS WAS AN ERROR. A SHAME AS YOUR PLAIN HAS POTENTIAL FOR SUCH BEAUTY AND PROGRESS.

The figure drew out his marker device from his pocket and slashed the air behind him. The priest stared into the opening and saw such beauty. A utopia of botanies and buildings that melded together in harmony full of vibrant colors lay beyond window walls of the laboratory on the other side of the opening. Other figures were looking in as this figure stepped forward.

ATLAN, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS EARLY END TO YOUR EXPIDETION? One figure spoke without opening what looked like a mouth on its face.

IT’S A FUTIAL CAUSE I’M AFRIAD. THESE BEINGS DON’T SEE ANY POTENTIAL IN THEIR PLAIN. PERHAPS ANOTHER CENTURY WILL BE SUFFICIENT BEFORE WE BUILD OVER. The explorer Atlan looked back at the priest who had fallen to his knees.

GOODBYE MY FRIGHTEN HOST. The portal closed and the night was quiet.

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Another short story pulled from my archives. A chance to cleanse my hard drives of old files that I left tucked away like some old memory pushed into a dark closet, oh how fitting. This was another attempt at writing a horror story based on an old “half-dream” I have in my childhood when I had trouble sleeping and one of my parents would try to comfort me in the night. My overactive imagination always got the better of me and fed into the nightmares I read about and saw on TV. Even overplayed monsters can still resonate with that primal feeling of fear when you let your emotional mind imagine how you would confront something that as designed to destroy? Especially the potent imagination from the mind of a small child. I hope this quick one entertains you, I wrote it back in 10/13/13.

Jeff stirred under his comforter in his dark bedroom. He had been tossing and turning for the past two hours. His eyes kept darting to every shadow he could make out in his bedroom. There were no blinds on the window and all he could see outside was blackness.

Inside his bedroom there was a dresser across from his twin mattress just under the window of darkness. There were clothes and toys scattered on the floor, they looked like rocks and large insects in the darkness. His toy chest was partially opened and seemed like a mouth for a giant frog. His closet door was half opened and inside it he could only see a greater blackness.

In the blackness of the closet Jeff saw something move. He began to scream. Moments later his mother rushed into his bedroom. A burst of light extinguished the dark and terrifying shapes in the room. All that was left were scattered toys and dirty clothes.

“Honey what’s wrong?”

“I saw a vampire!” Jeff pointed to his closest. His mother switched on the lights to his bedroom and the last of the shadows remained behind the half shut door of the closet.

“There’s no vampire in here.” Jeff sat up about to yell for her to spot but she opened the closet to reveal the vacant storage space with hanging jackets.

“See Jeff nothing in here. Look at this mess. I’ve told you a dozen times you need to clean up in here.” His mother began picking up the clothes and the toys. Perhaps to lead by example or just to get it clean. Once the toys were shut in their chest and the clothes were tucked into the dresser she sat on the edge of Jeff’s bed.

“Did you have another nightmare Jeff?”

“No, I was awake. I saw a vampire! Honest!” She put her hand on his leg and shook her head slowly

“Honey there are no such things as vampires. You shouldn’t have watched those Halloween specials with your cousin. They’re giving you night terrors. You probably had a nightmare and thought you were seeing a vampire.”

“Could I stay in your bed tonight mommy?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary sweetie. Why don’t you lie back down, I’ll wait here and make sure you’re safe.” Jeff fell back on his bed and his mother tucked the comforter under him.

“But I can’t sleep. What if something bad comes through my window? It will see me sleeping here and it will come in and get me!”

“Honey, there’s nothing out there. Plus we’re on the second story. Nothing can get up this high to get through your window. Besides, it’s locked shut.” She stepped over to the window and pointed to the latch. Jeff pulled the covers up to his nose. His mother dropped her hands to her sides. She walked towards the door.

“Please don’t leave mommy!” Jeff called from under his comforter. His mother stood in the doorway looking down at her son.

“You gotta be brave Jeff. There’s nothing in your room in the dark that wasn’t there when the lights were on. Do you understand?” Jeff nodded his head with the comforter covering his mouth and nose.

“Good, and don’t covered your face like that. You’ll lose oxygen. I’ll be in the next room. Goodnight.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead and shut the bedroom door behind her. With the lights extinguish Jeff could see nothing but a black void. Then slowly he started to make out the shapes in his bedroom.

This time he couldn’t see the insects or ominous shapes that his toys and clothes turned into. His closet was opened even wider than before. Inside it was a still blackness that did not cease when Jeff could make out with the rest of his bedroom.

His gaze locked on the void in his closet, waiting for the first sign of movement. For a long time his eyes just zoomed into the black space where his mother had shown his hanging coats and shirts. Inside the black space something seemed to move. Once again Jeff screamed out.

Within a minute his mother rushed back into the room in her bathrobe. Jeff could hear some yelling from his parent’s bedroom, it was without a doubt his stepfather. His mother didn’t turn on the lights to his room and let the sliver of light from the hallway illuminate Jeff on his bed.

“Jeff, what is it!” She sounded more annoyed than concerned with her tone.

“I saw something move in my closet this time! It’s got to be a vampire!” A heavy sigh belched out of her mouth. Her husband called from down the hallway what was going on.

“Nothing Frank. Jeff’s just had a nightmare again! Jeff would you feel safer if I got you a night light.”

“No! It won’t keep the vampires away.”

“How about if I stay in here with you.”

“But what if they come after you.”

“I had some garlic in my pasta salad tonight. If they come near me they’ll get sick to their stomachs.” She forced a chuckle and Jeff gave a weak laugh.

“Okay.” He scooted back so that he was against the wall. His mother climbed into his bed and laid down next to him. Jeff laid on his left side looking at his mother who was laying on her right side. She shut the door behind and the darkness was back. Jeff could just make out his mother’s head against the silhouette of the light cracking through the frame of the door.

After a minute or two Jeff was able to see her face and she had fallen asleep. Jeff still stayed awake and peered over her head at his closet. The closet was still a black void within the dark room. After keeping his gaze of the empty space across his room for a straight two minutes or so he relaxed against his pillow.

He started to doze for a little bit and then something rose up from the edge of his bed, over the horizontal curve of his mother’s body. The figure stood tall and Jeff’s eye’s snapped opened but he didn’t scream or move. The figure seemed to have come from under his mattress, his mother hadn’t checked under there.

The face of the figure was pale, looking more lizard like than human. In the fait silhouette he could see the thing curled back its lips and Jeff saw its fangs, a whole row of white needles. It lowered itself so that its mouth was just over Jeff’s mother’s neck.

Jeff could make out its yellow, blank eyes. Its mouth opened and then it froze with a puzzled expression that left Jeff petrified to move. It looked down at his mother’s neck for a moment and croaked in a voice that sounded like shards of glass grinding together,

“No, not this side of the neck. Not for my tastes.” It paused and then looked up and its empty yellow eyes locked onto Jeff’s.

“That’s it, that side of the neck is what I like. The better tasting blood.”

It smiled and Jeff pressed hard against the wall. He couldn’t scream from the terror he felt. The nightmare reached forward with long and scabbed fingers and wrapped over Jeff’s mouth just before he tried to scream. His mother did not stir from the movement as the monster yanked Jeff out of the bed and under the bed in a flash.

His mother remained asleep until dawn.

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I wish to explore something that some of you reading may find unpleasant. I propose it by a simple question that seems to be divisive when I’ve pitched it out to others. Are trigger warnings effective? I have my doubts, and I find that trigger warnings in writing ruins the reading experience. Please give my essay a full read before you launch into the comment section to lecture me on why I’m mistaken.

The intention of the trigger warning is noble but the execution seems to have consequences that make for worse readers and more frustrated writers. The thesis of this concept of warning people that what they are about to read is unsettling or could cause a reaction to those who have trauma, in order to lessen the reaction, seems like a good idea to make sure a reader knows what they are about to read. If this practice was just giving a heads up that there’s rocky roads ahead and you the cherished reader may be made unhappy by it were effective, I would have nothing to write about and would champion the idea of using trigger warnings. But I find trigger warnings to be a form of social censorship that hinders any attempt to help a reader and instead insulates them like children in a padded playroom.

When following along with my logical exercise, please remind yourself of two things: First, I am speaking about adult readers, not children who are still developing, because that is a separate argument where limitations on content can be argued. Second, is that trauma is a subjective form of psychological pain that varies from person to person, and what could be benign for some may be terrifying and chronically avoided by others. Hence, trauma is universal in its representational definition but is not universal in its manifestation to all people. While trauma can handicap human lives, it is treatable and for some can be transcended if they are willing to address it with proper help. Please remind yourself that we are adults talking about adults and trauma isn’t the same for every person.

Everybody got that? Good, then let’s get into this briar patch.

Those who would champion the use of trigger warnings are those well-intentioned people who think that softening content is a sure-fire way to give marginalized individuals a safe and pleasant reading experience. I have argued about the difference between writing to entertain versus writing to express and reflect an experience to give to readers. There can be an overlap of those two directives, but writing is the translation of my thoughts to yours through these organized collections of words in a specific structure to elicit more thoughts in your gray matter. That is how writing turns to reading and what one wants to read is a personal preference. But these trigger-happy-warners want to make sure that the most sensitive reader in the group isn’t harmed by what they are going to read on their own time.

Let me give that claim some more critical analysis; people who promote trigger warnings seem to believe that readers are delicate creatures that can’t be made uncomfortable. Perhaps because if a reader finds something in the content upsetting, they will...stop reading? Maybe but that’s their responsibility. Tell others to avoid the content because they found it upsetting? Possible but I doubt it will hinder book sales if zealots cry for blocking the content, that has shown only to give the content more allure to the curious readers out there. Cancel the author? That’s irrational but does occur and history has shown that cancel culture is a lost cause. At the end of the argument for trigger warnings you are just left with the writer or their constitutes claiming that someone somewhere might not like what was written and make a fuss about it.

What I find damaging with requiring a disclaimer (because I’m sick of the term trigger warning and I hope that you are too) is that it is a passive form of censorship, which is often a major problem when promoting ideas through the written word. To tell an author that they cannot write something because it will offend a reader but not allow discussion nor explanation outside of “those words are bad,” kills any chance to give people an honest form of communication. To slap a warning of your work being filled with “bad words” that someone might not like puts the creation in a cage of whether a distributor wants to send it out to the public or if aa publisher wants to market it, or if a soulless algorithm wants to bury it away from receptive eyes.

We live in a world where we seem to want to avoid making people upset and strive for some cozy comfort safehouse twenty-four-seven, which is delusional. Life isn’t about only feeling one type of emotion constantly and as being capable of growth, we hinder any form of improvement when we put limitations on our own experiences. Reading is a harmless experience; nobody develops a physical injury from what they read unless they were not looking at where they were walking while reading (who walks while they read?). I see no real argument of validity made by putting safeguards on books when it cannot communicate with you without your physical interaction. Unlike music or videos, you can walk by a book and not have any understanding of it’s content and context until you turn the pages and process the sentences. A cover, a title, and a synopsis can give you a hint of what’s inside, but you have to put in the work as a reader and stroke your curiosity by opening up to what the writer put in those strips of paper.

That leads me to my other sour reaction to these disclaimer pornographers; they are killing curiosity, much like stripping out trees to make a playground that seems like a safe environment until the lack of oxygen and accumulation of homeless people ruins a child’s experience to explore the world. But I’m not talking about children, not actual ones anyway. What makes an adult isn’t necessarily their age but their ability to maintain responsibilities over their autonomy. By that I mean that if you want to claim to be an adult, then demonstrate you can be one, part of that is having a dying trait called resilience; that when you encounter unpleasantries, you don’t demand the eradication of the unpleasant stimulus, you acknowledge it and find a solution that isn’t scorched earth or Orwellian lockdown. The gateway method to killing the development of resilience is crushing curiosity.

Disclaimer pornographers hate curiosity because they worry it will lead to something unpleasant. Some discussions that may, perhaps, turn into heated arguments, and then become uncontrollable conflicts, where everyone is on fire! Take a deep breath and ground yourself because this is what’s known as catastrophizing.

But Ratidox! (The disclaimer pornographer claims) You should heed the old proverb: “Curiosity killed the cat!” Doesn’t that give some argument to why trigger warnings are needed to be considerate of others!

Well, my well-intentioned coddler, I think you should recall the following verse of that overused proverb: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” Meaning that curiosity is risky, but the reward of knowledge earned makes for a more developed explorer. One of the main drives of reading is to seek an experience and/or knowledge. Here, we will stick to fiction writing which is more about experience than knowledge which can be fractured into entertainment with against artistic expression.

Consider how long it takes you to read a book, some can polish off a three-hundred-page airport hardcover in a weekend, maybe even a day if they have a long flight or nothing to do on a Sunday. Others, like me, read over the course of days to weeks to months. I average about three to six weeks to get through a novel depending on the page count or the density of the prose used to tell the story. This totals between thirty-five to forty books a year, depending on if I utilize audiobooks or just read the texts. That’s a fair amount of time dedicated to taking in words and translating the intended meaning of their creators.

Throughout the many novels I have consumed, I have encountered a fair share of challenges in the prose and subject matter of these works. Be it the subject of racism, sexual assault, murder, torture, or abuse I have read plenty from various works throughout different settings and times. Not once was I ever offended by the author for writing anything intense or felt the need to demand some emotional compensation for my reading experience. I have been in therapy for nearly five years now and not once have I needed to reference some book I read as a source of emotional distress, no more than watching a violent movie or hearing vulgar lyrics in a song. I can’t hold the creators accountable for making something I find unpleasant when they hold the right to artistic expression. When a writer is expressing a manifesto or calling for organization to act in a violent matter, that’s a different matter that transcends the right to free speech when hostile planning of harm is directly intended.

What this amounts to is that trauma is a personal experience, and it is insane to expect the world to bend to your expectations of what you are sensitive to. It is fine to ask if a book contains graphic descriptions of violence or if certain subjects are explored but ask those of people who would recommend or dissuade you from reading a particular work. The author doesn’t owe one solitary reader anything but a story that should hold their attention from beginning to end. Whether the experience is intentionally rough or pleasant is up to the author and the result depends on the emotional constitution of the reader. It’s a dynamic that has carried on since the invention of written texts on paper. To act as though the reader is entitled to be given a heads up about what they are about to read as though they are a sensitive child is pandering and conflates this belief that people cannot handle unpleasant words.

There are people who want to avoid any adverse stimulation and would jump to the safety of their keyboards and touchscreens to speak about how terrible it was that they had to read something triggering. But what doesn’t help these people is when advocates looking for easy solutions to minimal issues take it upon themselves to make a censorship crusade in the guise of protecting these frail individuals. They are treating adults as if they are helpless children. The other common argument that disclaimer crusaders make that holds no real weight is that harsh themes will glorify toxic behaviors. But that is a weak argument when applied in general and vague terms, so allow me to be specific to cut through that delusion.

Say you read A Clockwork Orange, a classic novel about the nature of violence in young adult males and how society could address and correct this violence. First off, I want to congratulate you on not just reading a classic but one that often requires a full translation index to get through the novel. If you know of the story only through the iconic and visually stunning Kubrick movie, just know that the original novel had a more uplifting ending to it that was edited out for American audiences that seem to thrive in a culture of fearmongering. In the original novel, the narrator/protagonist/deviate teenager Alex was cured of his psychological conditioning that handicapped him from being a brutish thug to a helpless victim of violence from the very community he was dropped back into after his incarceration was ended with the Ludovico’s Technique. In the final chapter, now cured of having a sickening reaction to violent thoughts he forms a new gang of “droogs” to commit violent acts in his community just as before, but before the novel stops to make you think it went full circle, it ends with Alex realizing he no longer wishes to remain this form of a person and wants to give up the life of violence and settle down to be a family man.

While it is idealistic to think that a criminal suddenly grows morality, it does happen. Reformation is a real thing that takes place in both the criminal justice and mental health systems, but more often manifests with criminals when moral growth is guided instead of forced. This is the entire thesis of Anthony Burgess novel, of a teenage psychopath run amok who is tortured by the criminal justice system into being an obedient (yet helpless) citizen, only for that process to backfire on his life, and then be cured of this detriment and thus free to return to his crimes, but only until he sees the futile outlook of keeping up with being a criminal and decides to take the mature journey to leave that life.

The title of A Clockwork Orange hints at this by the metaphor of an organic source of life (food) being tampered or copied with an imitation that renders its original purpose useless. I go into the tangent of this specific novel because it works in a double entendre of why I take such umbrage with the trigger-happy crusaders. This novel was seen as ghastly by those who read it, and the Kubrick film gave the shock and horror visual representation that is known and referenced/parodied by modern culture after the controversy surrounding its creation. Did Burgess have to throw up trigger warnings on his book that scenes of assault, rape, drug use, murder, psychological torture, revenge, and systemic abuse? Not to my knowledge until later additions came along. The synopsis of the book could let you know that it will be full of unpleasant themes that some people may not want to read or think about, and that is fine. It’s up to the reader to decide if they want to read such a work of fiction, but I would recommend it because past the psychedelic milk, sexual assaults, and intentionally dense slang is the story of how to address violence in the youth and what the repercussions can be when extreme and authoritarian means are taken.

If you pulled Anthony Burgess with his unpublished manuscript into our modern world, would A Clockwork Orange be allowed to pass publication? I’m skeptical because, while other controversial novels and more extreme forms of fiction do exist and get spread into the public, they are relegated to the self-publishing world or shared amongst small publishing groups. Unless you have a massive audience of devoted followers that will buy whatever your name is branded over, any novel with graphic content will not get far through the modern world that fears the backlash of keyboard warriors and TikTok ranters who will cry for boycott or some delusional legal action because there are unpleasant words in a book somewhere. Tell me what separates the christian fanatics that want to ban books that don’t align with their faith from the social justice warriors that want to overregulate whether you can write a slur, or depict a violent scene of rape, or make an abusive character with a tragic backstory. I see little difference because both are cut from the same cloth of thinking they know better than the people creating the content on what is acceptable to have in society.

But Ratidox! I hear the more even-tempered supporter of trigger warnings call out. Isn’t it reckless to let people write anything, like hate speech or exploitative tales of rape fantasies. Should a creator who champions using empathy be aware and considerate of the traumas of others? I thank you for expressing your concern and not calling me a racist for not liking trigger warnings but let me give my opinion on such concerns.

People misconstrue empathy for being passively kind all the time. Empathy is about understanding a person and giving it acknowledgement and, if appropriate, validation. I don’t see how a writer can be empathetic to a reader through their work outside of speculating how the reader will react based on some likeminded human responding to certain topics. But a writer that avoids writing a scene that gives the presentation of dread and shock and despair isn’t practicing empathy, it’s exercising restraint for fear of someone not liking it enough to make a fuss. There are troubled minds that want to write their own torture fantasies or some gruesome revenge porn that just scratches an emotional itch they carry with them. But those folks aren’t often concerned about writing works of quality when the content is about being graphic for attention rather than making a point for the reader to understand or question. To be an empathetic writer is to acknowledge and show the reader a true form of humanity even when it’s unpleasant. The exploitative writer just wants you to lose your lunch so that the controversy gives them some bragging rights in their circle of literary pornographers.

Answer me these questions before I wrap up this tirade of mine: Who are you protecting? Someone you know that needs help and can’t read anything more graphic than Cather in the Rye? Or are you defending a marginalized group that you think is in need of allied defense? I would caution that white knight tactic because when you are speaking outside of your own experience and overshadowing the voices you seem so eager to fight for, you may be overstepping your knowledge and infantilizing those you wish to defend. Please, enlighten me with why you disagree, hopefully in a civil manner, but I know emotions are the driving force of our thoughts and logic just gives it articulate presentations (if developed well).

I’m guilty of my own forms of bias due to my own limitations of my single human experience. Perhaps my essay will seem more high-brow and aggressive to some that chose to read through it. Please understand my position and my reasons, I am not dismissing or invalidating anyone’s trauma or telling them to “suck it up and shut up”. Everyone has tragedies in life that affects them in certain ways, more often leaving all forms of scars. But nothing in the practice of throwing up a disclaimer will change that trauma or give it grace. It might acknowledge the trauma, but it doesn’t protect it or heal it, nor does it explore the original cause of it and why such trauma was cursed upon someone. If anything, it may make a reader avoid what could be a cathartic experience that gives them a chance to feel acknowledged through another human being’s artistic expression.

As delusional as this opinion may be, we are adults when it comes to this subject. Being an adult entails that you are responsible for the well-being of your existence, whether or not others have violated that existence. You have options and the ability to excel if you find the right opportunities and take the right chances. When it comes to reading fiction, which (let’s be honest) sit way at the bottom of problems in society next to what form of exercise is best for getting in shape, we shouldn’t be getting into reckless censorship and social witch hunts because some words may be deemed offensive. Triggers are subjective, meaning they vary from one person to another, so we can’t act like every potential reader is too sensitive to read a book about rape, or murder, or racism so that governing authorities must jump in and build a wall through banning the book or slapping disclaimers or insisting on strict editing processes to make a safe story.

I’m tired of this essay and although I could go on, I promised to end this over two paragraphs ago. Understand that I have cautious skepticism about the validity and efficacy of trigger warnings and disclaimers. I think they ruin the adventure of a new reading experience and give adults justification to infantilize other adults and bully those they deem as offending sinners. If you or anyone you know has been triggered by this essay, utilize your coping skills or resource and feel free to discuss with me any opinions or questions you have. Thank you for reading along.

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Max took a long drag on his cigarette and then looked into the binoculars he had to scan the parking lot, nothing but the overturn Volvo and the shopping carts at their own parking space. Max could see nothing on the road that led into the parking lot, then he followed the road to its ramp that led to the highway which had smoke off in the distance, probably from a car that caught fire and hopefully the trees wouldn’t catch it.

He relaxed back in his lawn chair on and thought to himself, All quiet on the Western front, then he look at the compass feature on his watch and corrected himself, South-Western to be exact. He turned to the personal table he set next to him, which had a bag of Fritos and two different drinks, a Scotch mixed with Root Beer and a Grape Gatorade.

“Pick your poison.” Max murmured to no one.

He finished the Gatorade and then stood up, stretched and walked to the door that led back into the store. He trundled down the stairs with no concern for lights that were flickering from staying on too long, and then he reached the ground floor and opened the door to the vast store with its aisles of everything a man needs. He went to check the barricade at the front entrance; he had used some scrap metal from the storage room and a welding torch to cover two of the three doors at the entrance so that only the left one was available but he could still see through the right door since he used metal grating. On the outside doors he did the same but left the right doors uncovered and covered the left and middle doors with sheet metal and the empty vending machines press against it.

Everything was in tact, he checked the windows which had shatterproof glass (or so people claimed) and Max had set the cages that made shattering the glass pointless; why would shatterproof glass need cages? After seeing that everything was just as he left it Max went to the frozen food aisle and took a Hot Pocket box and walked to the microwave he kept in the managers office (which he made into his quarters) knowing the manager wouldn’t mind since he was probably not amongst the living anymore.

After he ate his Hot Pocket Max went back up to the roof to scan things out and if there was nothing he’d come back and use the exercise equipment, to cancel out his Hot Pocket. He came to his lawn chair with the rifle resting at his table and something in the distance caught his eye, a person walking down the parking lot. He grabbed his binoculars and looked into the distance to see that it was a woman, yet she was one of them, she was pale and twitching as she shuffled towards the store. Max grabbed the lever action rifle, got down on one knee and peered through the scope. There was a small breeze but nothing to throw off his shot, she or it was about less than three hundred yards and closing. Max put his ear plugs in before lining up his sights, he pulled the trigger and the shot echoed throughout the empty parking lot as the woman’s right eye splattered from the shot and she collapsed to the tar surface beneath her. Max wished he had used his compound bow instead of the rifle, anyone of those bastards that heard the shot would start scampering this way.

“From now on the rifle is for defense only.”

Max walked downstairs and grabbed the shotgun he modified, loaded the shells then slid it into the carrying sleeve he strapped over his shoulders. Then he grabbed the compound bow in case that abomination wasn’t dead, permanently dead that is. He scanned the parking lot before unlocking the door then vaulting over the four foot barricade he set up closing around the doors. He slowly walked towards the body with a broad head arrow drawn and set in the bow. When he stood at the body he kicked it in the side with his boot, it didn’t react. Max returned the arrow to its holster, put his bow down leaning against his leg and drew a cigarette and lit it. He scanned the parking lot and upon seeing nothing he grabbed the dead body by the wrists and carried it over his shoulders and walked to the only entrance to the parking lot that he had left available. Every other end of the parking lot had either a commercial truck or an over tuned car closing it off to make a pretty sufficient wall, even the trees to the West had been blocked off by a Mack Truck he hotwired and some sedans to get the open spaces blocked. He walked to the road were he came across the pile of smoldering bodies that had been his disposal spot for these vermin, he dropped the body on the pile, wiped his brow with his bandanna and looked around.

Guess that was a good enough workout, he thought, that bitch had to be a hundred or so pounds of dead weight that I just brought to this pit, which was on a grassy median in the road. He hacked a tar filled lugie onto the road and realized there was another one, a Charger, the kind that could run, and how because it was closing in fast from the town. Max threw his bow aside and drew out the shotgun and aimed. He had to hold until it was in range; since he sawed off the barrel of the gun it could only reach twenty or thirty feet. His grip on the duct tapped handle tightened as the bastard rush towards him at full speed. When it was six feet away Max fire a shot that made his ears ring but he was too focused to care as the shot struck the Charger in the jaw and throat, it flew to the ground and its legs twisted to the side. Max rush to it aimed at its forehead and fired; its skull popped like a party toy.

He took in a deep breath and coughed violently and almost fell over;

“Damn cigarettes” he wheezed.

Then he made a one-eighty degree turn to check behind him, nothing but a dirty road and a pile of crispy-corpses. He turned back and saw nothing coming and then dragged the new body to the pile; his ears still rang but his right one wasn’t ringing so badly. Max took the small can of lighter fluid from his side pocket and proceeded to pour it on the new editions. He then lit a new cigarette and dropped the match on the bodies and was pleased that they started to burn. He picked up his bow and headed back to the store while ignoring the smell of burnt flesh but noticed his left hand was starting to shake.

Nighttime wasn’t that bad, those vermin could only see and hear as well as any idiot, so they weren’t that much of a threat when Max needed to sleep. The lights to the store and the parking lot ran on a backup generator, but Max could shut them off manually so as not to attract any unwanted guests. He finished his can of Guinness while watching the television he set up in the office and wasn’t surprised that the national news wasn’t covering what had happened these last ten days. No mention of the National Guard and Coast Guard blocking off the entire Island and killing anyone that tried to sneak by without going through quarantine. He shut off the television and looked outside the small window; he looked out into the parking lot without any lights on. Nothing was out there, no movement or sound or anything.

“Time for some rest.” He said with a yawn and walked over to the sofa, pulled back the sheets and set his watch to go off in four hours. He stretched out onto the sofa and shut his eyes so he could build some energy, as soon as he drifted off Max heard the sound of a motorcycle in the distance and it was getting louder. He sat up and got his boots back on and picked up his pistol and the compound bow and headed to the roof. He flipped the switches for three of the parking lights so he could see if he had company. He only had the central lights on, so the store was still dark enough to be ignored, and the parking lot was lit just to the car barricade. The sound was coming from the highway and getting louder.

“Hope that he’s alone. ‘Cause I don’t need this shit this late.” Max said as he stood on the roof and slid an arrow onto the bow. He saw a headlight coming down the road trying to make a sharp turn into the parking lot but skidded and crashed just as the motorcycle came to the pavement. Whoever was on the bike quickly pulled themselves up and raced towards the store. Two figures, both with jackets and face helmets sprinted towards the entrance. Max turned around and headed to cut them off. By the time he got to the doors one of the strangers had tripped over his smaller barricade just outside the doors while the other must have seen it and leaped over it and was now pounding on the glass door. Max left his bow at a register and drew out his pistol and aimed it at the person hitting the door.

“Stop that or I’ll drop you!” Max shouted and the person stopped as the other was getting to their feet.

“Please, open the door, they’re coming!” the man who had tripped said through his helmet and the door in a muffled tone.

“Hold on a second” said Max and he unlocked the door and slid it open to let the strangers in. Then he shut the door, and turned to his guest, gun first and said,

“Come with me now.”

Both people went without hesitation and Max could see a Charger at the entrance of the car barricade. Max turned to the two strangers and said,

“Don’t move or you’re both dead.” He stepped out of the entrance, standing right behind the outer barricade, lined up his sights and waited for the vermin to get in range. He fired a direct shot that shattered its nose, and its feet flew out from under it and its head smashed into the parking lot.

Max stepped back behind the doors and locked them. He turned to the two strangers who hadn’t move and pointed his pistol at them and motioned with his head for them to walk. The three of them headed to the office right by the stairs where Max shut the lights to the parking lot off to resume discretion, they sat in the office with Max in the desk chair and the two guests sitting on the sofa.

“Why’d you come here?” Max asked as he lowered the gun to his lap but still had it in his hand.

“We came from the middle school where some survivors had been staying until those zom—”

“Don’t say that fucking word or I shoot you right now!” Max snapped.

“Ok, well…those things attacked, and Kerri and I took off when they made it inside. I’m glad you let us in.”

“Yes, thank you.” Kerri said and took of her helmet, and then the man sitting beside her did the same.

“By the way I’m Charles. And you are?” Charles asked as he reached out to shake Max’s hand. Max looked at the fair hair young man sitting across from him and pointed his gun right at his nose.

“If you two punks have brought any more of those vermin with you, I won’t shoot you, instead I’ll feed you to them myself.” Charles was looking terrified then Kerri interrupted,

“Please sir, we had no where else to go, we saw the lights come on and Charles turned to them, we left the rest of those things far behind us.” Kerri pleaded

“You’d better have.”

“So will you let us stay?” Charles asked.

“You can stay but if you do anything to cross me, I throw you asses out of here. And don’t mess with anything unless I tell you that you can. Got it?” Max breathed in and coughed out.

“You’ve got it Mr… uh…what’s your name?”

“Max.” he replied

“Thank you so much Max.” Kerri said, and Max took a good look at Kerri for the first time and saw how beautiful she was but shrugged it off right away, he had no more time to love. Not after what he experienced with the first seven.

The sun was beginning to rise and Max sat out on the roof to see if anyone or anything was around. He didn’t get any sleep, even when Charles and Kerri already had fallen asleep on the couch. Instead, he got rid of the body in the parking lot and moved the motorcycle up against the gate that led to the loading docks then sat up on the roof until dawn. Kerri came out looking for Max and walked up to him, he only turned to see who it was then went back to scanning the parking lot.

“How’re you feeling?” Max asked while he still looked out with his binoculars.

“I’m fine, thank you.” She answered in a sweet voice. “I got some clean clothes to change into and had some waffles with Charles. Is that ok?”

“That’s fine, just don’t leave any mess and you guys and I just might get along.”

There was a long, calm silence then Kerri stood next to Max looking out at the empty parking lot.

“Are you looking for a rescue?”

“No, just making sure that nothing’s coming without me being ready.” Max replied. She noticed the compound bow was leaning against his chair.

“Why are you so paranoid?”

“Because it’s kept me safe through this whole mess. And I don’t like young people questioning me. Just how old are the two of you anyway?” He looked up at her smooth face reflected by the orange sun.

“I’m twenty and Charles is twenty-four, how old are you if you don’t mind me asking?”

“As a matter of fact, I do mind you asking… Just know that I’m old enough to take care of myself and maybe you two if you behave.”

Kerri snapped back, “What do you think we are, children?”

“I’ve seen people twice your age break under pressure when a swarm of those pests start to come a-running.” Max said as he lit a cigarette, and Kerri made a face of annoyance.

“Those things will kill you.”

“Well, that would only do me a favor. Are you done picking my brain because I’d like to eat something in privacy?” He turned to a box of Power-Bars and a bottle of Vitamin Water. Kerri looked at him with her arms crossed one last time then turned back to the door, as she went Max turned to watch her walk away in her pajamas. Scolding himself for leering like a teenage boy.

Max came down to find Kerri and Charles sitting on a couch in the office talking while they held hands, and it made Max sigh on the inside, but he pushed it down in his gut. He strolled past them and Charles quickly turned to Max and called out,

“Hey Max! Good morning.” Max responded with a loud grunt and started to continue walking away. Charles got up to follow after him and caught up while Kerri stayed on the couch.

“So can I ask you something?” Max didn’t even bother looking at him.

“Whatever it is better be worth my time, Chuck.” Charles was a little aggravated by being called that.

“Well how come you’re here all by yourself? Aren’t there others who stay here?”

“There were others four days before you showed up.”

“What happened to them?” Max stopped, looked right at Charles, who felt uncomfortable by his gaze.

“I think you can use your imagination for that, Chuck.” Max turned and walked off while Charles stood there, then he called out to Max.

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“’Cause I don’t have to.” Max yelled over his shoulder and walked to the main entrance with his bow. Charles shook his head and walked back to Kerri who was lying across the couch and when she saw him, she sat up.

“No, you can lie back down.”

“Why don’t you sit first then I’ll lie back down.”

“Ok then.” Charles sat down and Kerri rested her head on his lap and Charles began to play with her hair as he looked off into the window across the office.

“Can you believe that guy?” Charles said abruptly. Kerri looked off at the window with him then said,

“He probably hasn’t had anyone around since this all started.”

“No, he said that there were other people here, but they aren’t here anymore.”

“Maybe they took off.”

“Baby, be serious. Why would anyone take off into the impending doom out there?”

“Well, maybe Max threw them out because they didn’t cooperate with him.”

“Or maybe he killed them.” Kerri turned her head to look up at him.

“I really doubt that he’s been nice enough to us.”

“So far. But I don’t think we can trust him.”

“I bet he’s thinking the same thing about us.” She turned her gaze back to the window.

“What if he snaps or tries to hurt you or…”

“Hey, I can take care of myself pal.” Charles looked down at her.

“I know but that guy could be dangerous.”

“The only danger is what’s outside and that’s all Max seems to care about.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“You know I’m right” she said looking back up at him. Charles grinned at her then he leaned down and kissed her.

Meanwhile Max placed down his bow right in front of the entrance behind the barricade and adjusted his laces while he waited for them to get within range. There were three of them shuffling towards the store, Max hadn’t mentioned them to those kids because he didn’t want them to get all cry-baby, or worse gun-ho, on theses vermin. He stood up when a fellow in a torn business suit covered with dirt and blood came into range, Max picked up his bow, then set an arrow on it and drew back. He lined up his sights to aim at the man’s forehead.

“This is for Vicky you shit.” He released his fingers, and the arrow was imbedded in its left brow within a second and it fell to its knees then the rest of its body fell forward and caused the arrow to push deeper into its head when it hit the pavement. Max pulled another arrow out of his sling when another one was closing in; tears were starting to grow in Max’s eyes as he lined up the sights.

“And this…” His mouth began to quiver “…is for my little Susie… Go to hell!” He let the arrow loose and it caught the heavy woman right in the voice box, but she kept shuffling foreword. Max set up another arrow as fast as he could, this time a big game arrowhead and shot it off yelling,

“Die you sack of pus!” When it struck her in the eye and she collapsed he threw his bow aside when only the last one was left; another woman in a small dress with one of her breasts hanging out. He drew out his bowie knife and hopped over the barricade and charged at her and at the last second swung his knife up into her jaw and the blade went threw her mouth and into her head. When her body went limp Max yanked out his knife and her body collapsed to the pavement. He looked around and fell to his knees, crying, and then whipped his eyes with his forearm. He got up, wiped his knife on the dead woman’s dress and put it back in its holster then started to drag his last kill to the pile. He peeked around the edge of the barricade to see an empty street then pulled the (permanently) dead body and slung it onto the pile then turned around to collect the other bodies. When Max got to the heavy woman he stopped to take a deep breath, then he saw Charles and Kerri standing at the entrance unlocking the door. Max turned to the dead woman and yanked the arrows out of her (the one in her throat broke when he pulled it out).

Why does their blood look like that? Max thought as he stared at the blackish-green blood on the arrow tip then he shook his head and tossed the broken arrow aside. He grabbed one of her arms with both hands and started to drag her carcass across the parking lot, about halfway to the pile he almost lost his grip then he yanked her arm and her shoulder dislocated. When he came back for the final body Charles had stepped over the barricade, careful enough not to get caught it the barbwire Max set up on top of it, but he had left an open spot to climb over, and walked up to Max.

“What happened?” Charles called out.

“I had to kill these fuckers and now I have to clean them up before they start to rot.” Max said as he wheezed and grabbed the man at his wrists and Charles rush up and grabbed the dead man’s feet. Halfway to the pile Charles noticed how pale Max looked as he let out a violent cough.

“You don’t sound to good Max. Are you alright?”

“I’m alive right? That’s all that matters, the more of these things I take out the better I’ll feel.” Max and Charles threw the corpse onto the pile and Max took out his Zippo lighter and brought the lit flame to the dead man’s suit and it caught fire instantly and the bodies underneath would burn up too. The bodies below had been reduced to scorched bones and ashes; Max couldn’t care less. Charles looked at the burning bodies and covered his nose.

“Damn that smells. How many bodies are in there?”

“I don’t know I didn’t make it. The police did.”

“Where did they go?” Max started to walk back to the store.

“Right into the pile.” Charles then gazed at the burnt corpses and thought of whether there was about twenty or thirty bodies in there now. How many more bodies could be thrown on there before a new pile was needed? Max picked up his gear and headed back inside; Charles and Kerri followed him. As Max grabbed a water bottle from a register display Kerri said,

“You said there were others here before Max. What happened to them?”

“They’re gone that’s all you two need to know.”

“That’s not good enough.” Charles protested. Max turned around and looked at both of them, he scratched his bread and put the water in his pocket.

“If you kids don’t stop asking questions I’ll throw your asses out of here and you can ask someone out there for info.”

“You’re not being fair.” Kerri said.

“Fair? Life isn’t fair honey, and I make sure it won’t cause me any more grief than I’ve already got.”

“Like what?” Charles asked.

“Like none of your fucking business!” Max screamed then the whole store went quiet as his screams echoed down the empty aisles. Then Max headed to the sporting goods section to get more arrows before heading to the roof with his equipment, while Charles and Kerri went to the find somewhere to talk. They found the furniture section and sat down on a display mattress that still had clean sheets on it.

“What’s that guy hiding?” Charles asked not expecting Kerri to answer.

“Charles, I think he has problems.”

“You can say that again.”

“Well, it’s probably personal or something that was too terrible that he doesn’t want to remember.”

“But he won’t get over it if he keeps it inside.” Kerri started to rub Charles’s shoulders as he sat on the edge of the bed.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll lighten up. We may all be stuck in here for a long time.”

“Yeah, the radio and TV don’t pick up any stations on the Island, only just what’s out past the city. And they won’t mention anything about what’s happened. Add that to our situation here with that basket case Max and I’d say we’re pretty much screwed.” Kerri wrapped her arms around Charles and whispered into his ear,

“You should try to take your mind off of these things right now if you and I want to make it through this.”

“Yeah, well how am I supposed to not think about this?” Kerri then giggled in his ear, hugged him tighter and said,

“I think I’ve got a good idea.” Charles turned to end up looking right in her green eyes and smiled. As they embraced Kerri pulled back the sheets on the mattress while Charles went to unclip her bra. Kerri was right; it would take Charles’ mind off of everything, even the fact that they left the front door unlocked.

Max had been sitting up on the roof for half an hour. He sat up against the stairway entrance looking up at the cloudy sky for a long time; he then lit a cigarette and took in a long drag. He took a envelop out of his shirt pocket and inside where three pictures; one had himself standing with two other men and a young boy all carrying rifles except Max who had another compound bow in his hands, they all stood next to two deer hanging up ready to be gutted. The second picture he looked at was at a barbeque where a couple and another woman were standing with Max around a grill. All drinking beers and smiling as Max smoked a cigarette while flipping some burgers.

Max hesitated to look at the last one, he wasn’t in it but the two people who had meant the world to him were. As he gazed upon the photo and saw a blonde woman with bright blue eyes and she was hugging a little girl with even brighter blue eyes. Max began to shake, and tears were coming out his eyes as the two smiling still life faces looked up at him. He wanted to remember them smiling, all of them, not how they were when he saw them last. He sobbed and put the photos to the side then he stretched out his arm and put out his cigarette on his forearm, then his crying stopped, and he leaned back against the wall and rubbed his eyes with fury. He took the bottle of Jim Bean that sat next to him and gulped down a mouthful.

Why can’t I just die?

He looked up at the sky again and then he heard a thud from downstairs, he rushed to the ledge and saw half a dozen of those things walking half way down the parking lot, he leaned over more to see that two were already at the door and it was opening when they kept hitting it. Max rushed to the duffle bag he had brought up with him. He strapped on all of the gear he could carry; Bowie knife, pistol, to separate boxes of ammunition (one pistol and one rifle), and his machete. He left his bow and arrows on the roof then grabbed his rifle that was leaning against the doorway and rushed downstairs as fast as he could.

Guess this is it… do or die, he thought as he got to the bottom of the stairs. He past Charles and Kerri who where still under the sheets making love but Max didn’t even notice as he rushed to the front doors. Charles was startled when Max bolted by them then he got off of Kerri and reached for his pants. Max got to the register when a Charger burst through and leaped at him, Max was knocked to the floor as the thing snapped its bloody mouth towards his face. The rifle was keeping it out of reach and Max turned it so that the butt of the gun smashed it in the face,

“Jesus Christ!” Charles yelled as he came to the scene, causing the Charger to turn its attention to Charles. As it made a dash Max grabbed one of its legs and when it tripped it turned around to meet the barrel of Max’s rifle and then had the back of its head burst with a blood-filled explosion. Max got to his feet, Charles was shaking and looking down to see the blood that had splattered on his jeans, Kerri rushed over, she hadn’t put her shirt on yet, so Max had a good view of her bare chest, but he suddenly remembered the door. Two slower ones were through the second set of doors and Kerri screamed at the sight before her; Charles grabbed her by the shoulders and held her tight.

“Get to the roof and lock the door until I get there.” Max shouted as he cocked the lever on the rifle and fired without aiming and caught one of the vermin in the stomach, it fell on its ass then started to stand back up. Charles and Kerri hadn’t budged.

“Go now Dammit, I’ll be up there soon. Now!” They jumped and turned around and rushed to the stairs. Max fired again but the rifle jammed,

“Shit!”

He tossed it aside and drew out his pistol, took aim and fired, hitting one right in the nose (which seemed to explode) the other his shot just blew off its ear. Max could she three chargers outside running to the door, one by one. They all tripped over the barricade, one smashed its face on the cement sidewalk and died, the other’s legs were tangled in the barbed wire, the other was getting to its feet.

Max holstered his pistol, drew out his Machete, and sliced sideways at the teenager undead in front of him; he caught it right in the temple and the blade was stuck in its skull. Max tried to wedge it out and when it did pop out the Charger tackled into his stomach and knocked him down again. It bit into his clothes and broke through the cloth and skin. Hot pain ran into Max’s side. He yanked it off by the hair and threw the bitch back and kicked it right in the jaw, he got to his feet and sliced the woman in the neck, cutting halfway through and it became nearly headless. He saw that more were coming, and he was bleeding too much to fight through, Max pulled out his Machete from the hacked body and turned and ran for the stairs as more of those nightmares poured in the store.

Charles looked over the ledge and saw the store doors overcrowded, and they were getting in by the minute. Kerri still didn’t have her shirt on since she forgot it while running up to the roof. But Charles found a sweatshirt by the lawn chair Max used and handed it over to her, she zipped it up and hugged him full force and began to cry.

“Come baby, don’t.” Charles said as he ran his hands up and down her back. She tried her best to stop but still sobbed a bit as she looked up at him.

“I can’t believe it’s happening again. I don’t want to die up here.”

“Hey, don’t think like that.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes,

“Max won’t let them get to us, and there’s a fire escape in the back which leads to a back road. And we can head to town if we have to. Now we have to wait for Max, alright.”

“Ok.” She was shaken up more than scared, Charles kissed her on the forehead, and she walked to sit on the chair. Charles saw the compound bow on the ground and picked it up, tried to pull back the string but couldn’t move it an inch. Then a violent series of knocks came from the stairway door.

“Open up now!” Max screamed through the door. Charles dropped the bow and rushed to the door, when he opened it, Max collapsed and crawled out of the doorway leaving a trail of blood behind.

“Shut the door now, their inside!” Charles obeyed and turned the key on the handle and bolt locks. Kerri screamed when she saw that Max was bleeding, Max ignored her and sat against the wall where he sat earlier.

“Kerri, get that box by your feet and bring it to me.” Max moaned to her, his was breathing heavy and took out his knife, took off his gear and began to cut his shirt off and pressed the ripped clothes against his wound. Kerri brought over the First-Aid kit Max had left up here. She looked sick after see the bitten side of Max, it had taken off half of the tattoo he had there and if it went any deeper his liver would’ve been damaged. He opened the box and began to pour some Peroxide on his wound, then took out a large cotton pad and pressed it on his wound (better than the shirt) then took medical tape to hold down the pad and Ace wrapped his torso to keep pressure on it. Max took the box of Camels out of his pocket and saw that there was one cigarette left so he put the box back in his pocket.

“How many of them got inside?” Charles asked as Max looked up at him then the grey sky.

“I’m not sure; after one of them bit me I saw dozens heading to the door from outside. Three or four were already through the doors and I wasn’t able to hold them off.” Kerri picked up the pistol all of a sudden and pointed it at Max. Pulling back the hammer.

“Kerri what the hell are you doing?” Charles asked.

“He’s bitten Charles; he’ll turn into one of those things soon. I’m sorry about this Max but it’s best to be ready for something to come.” Max began to chuckle but coughed right away from doing so.

“I don’t blame you Kerri, but you don’t have to put me down just yet. As long as I stay alive, I won’t become one of those things.”

“What are you talking about?” Charles asked all of a sudden. Then the door began rattle with the pelting of those things trying to get out to fresh meat.

“Charles, Kerri, help me up please.” They pulled him up to his feet, Kerri still had the pistol, and they walked to the lawn chair, Charles turned the chair to the side so they could keep an eye on the door. Max plopped down with a groan of displeasure before settling in and catching his breath.

“Now what were you saying before Max?” Kerri asked with the gun in her hands, but she wasn’t strong enough to keep it aimed at Max.

“You don’t become one of those…those… zombies unless you die after you’ve been bitten, like if you bleed out or one of your vital organs fails. So, I’m not gonna change, trust me.”

“How do you know for sure?” Charles added.

“Because you dumb kids I’ve been bitten twice before, and I’ve been alive for eleven days now. See.” Max raised his left arm and showed a bit mark on his tricep and then pointed to his thigh and Kerri put down the gun.

“I’m so sorry Max, I didn’t know.” She looked like she was going to cry again.

“That’s alright honey, I’ve been through that paranoia before. I think I should tell you guys about the other seven people who were here with me when this all started. Seems like I should while we’re up here right now.” Charles and Kerri sat on the floor in front of Max. The pounding from behind the door was still going but the metal door was too thick for them to break it down and the stairs were too narrow for enough of them to attempt it.

“On the first day when this outbreak happened it was two towns away from my home. Two of my neighbors and I didn’t want to take chances, so we all headed here to grab supplies at first. My neighbors: David and Steven and I were former National Guardsmen. We left the Guard at the same time a few years before we but had an inside friend that said something chaotic was happening and that we should head for shelter at a public place. Most people went to churches, the schools and the town halls. Those things had spread through all the east towns by then and were heading for the rest of the Island. Those things were multiplying every hour, so the National Guard was just told to take survivors to shelter or off the island before it was sealed off.”

“Sealed off?” Charles interrupted.

“Yeah, the military forces were stationed all around the Island to make sure nothing got out. Until they could control the situation, that is but three days have gone by and it was too out of control. David said we should stay here for safety and plus no one other than his family, Steven’s and my own came here so we had the place to ourselves. It was good for the first four days; we set up the barricades, rationed the food and checked all the weapons and supplies and picked off any of those pests when they came. But soon Steven’s son was trying to get outside to play and became a handful for Steven and his wife. David’s wife was a mess from the beginning and committed suicide on the fifth day of this mess and that made David go crazy, and he shot Steven’s wife but didn’t kill her. We locked David up in a lounge in the backroom and he killed himself with a plastic bag before his dinner could finish cooking. One morning, I think it was the sixth or seventh day, Steven’s son and my daughter Susie.” Kerri gasped when Max mentioned his daughter.

“They snuck outside to play with the shopping carts, and a pack of those things attacked them. Ate them alive, and their screams were what woke us up.” Max let out a sigh and seemed really depressed by his own speech but continued trying not to cry, “After Susie and Steven’s boy died Steven and his wife took their car and left without a word. My wife, Vicky, went out the next morning while I was still sleeping and when I found her she was by the pile of bodies and she looked up into the sky and poured vodka all over her head and set herself on fire. I watched it happen and couldn’t do anything. And I’ve been on my own ever since then.” Charles and Kerri looked horrified; Kerri had her hands over her mouth and Charles was staring at the floor muttering,

“Oh my god.”

A loud pound came from the door, and Max shook his head in anger, got up (holding his side, but started to fight through the pain) and fetched his weapons he had back behind the stairway door.

“Come on I’m not gonna let you kids die up here.”

“You can’t expect to fight your way through.” Kerri said, still shaking from the story.

“That’s exactly what I plan to do and if there’s too many you can take all that you can and get out by that fire ladder. Your bike is parked back there too. Got it?” They both nodded and started to build up courage with him.

He handed Charles another shotgun and gave Kerri a crossbow. Max picked up his bow and went to the edge and sat with his feet dangling over and aimed at the first vermin he could pick and fired. Charles fired and the recoil knocked him back and he almost fell on his ass.

“Hold it tight against your shoulder or you’ll dislocate it.” Charles got back to his spot; he had hit one of the pests in the legs and it was starting to crawl towards the store. He fired again and caught one in the chest, its head bashed hard enough on the flood to crack open. Max launched an arrow into another one’s face and Kerri caught one of them in the temple with an arrow. When half of the pests were dead Max got up and limped towards the door with his shotgun draw out and called Charles and Kerri to come over.

“I’ll take them down when they come out, Charles, you cover me. Kerri, you get ready to open the door.” She nodded and unlocked the bolt and the handle before she looked at Max.

“Now!” Max shouted and the door opened. Max fired down the first one, Charles caught the third one to come out. Kerri ran behind Max and Charles. There were only six and Max got three with direct head shots. Charles only got one twice in the chest and the other in the knee and Max finished them off. The last one was slow, so Max took his pistol, aimed at its head and fired.

“Follow me, stay close and listen to what I say. Make your shots count and don’t run off. Just keep as calm as you can. Hunting season’s now opened”

Max reloaded his shotgun and pistol then holstered both of them. He readied his bow and headed down the stairs. Charles reloaded as they went down and Kerri stayed close with the crossbow; she wanted to avoid any trouble. When they got to the office Max turned around to the two of them and said,

“Kerri, stay here and gather up as much clothes and food as you can. Charles, you watch her back. You should be used to that.” Max chuckled but Charles was a little pissed off by his joke. “When you guys get enough stuff head back to the roof and don’t wander off in case there are any of them running around the store. I’ll get the doors sealed, above all be safe.” Max lurched off as Kerri threw the crossbow strap over her shoulders and put food and clothing from the office into a box. She and Charles went to the roof and came back to get more supplies.

Max walked slowly to the entrance; he picked off a woman walking into the clothing section. A Charger was at the other end of the store, but Max readied another arrow and took it down just as it started to run at him. There were at least ten or eleven more at the registers, all slow ones, but Chargers could be coming through any minute, Max found a row of shopping carts off to the side and pushed them to block off the entrance. Then the ones left inside turned their attention to him. Max turned and took off as they started to trundle towards him, two Chargers came out of the crowded entrance, one knocked over the carts.

Shit, Max thought, he turned around and got one of the Chargers in the mouth with a shot from his bow, then drew his pistol and shot down the second with two shots. The crowd left in the store was still headed right for him, so he emptied the last four shots from his pistol then returned it to his holster. He grabbed his bow and ran for the back of the store while they followed; there were at least half a dozen more still outside trying to come in. Max vaulted over the sporting goods counter, and readied his bow as they came, the pain in his sides and in his lungs was tremendous. He took care of the three closest ones then he remembered that he had some weapons hidden by the counter he was behind he just couldn’t remember where. He reloaded his pistol and then put it on the counter and set his last arrow up and struck down the closest pest with a direct shot between the eyes. He dropped his bow and grabbed the pistol and turned to look for the weapons, but Charles came rushing over and shot at the crowd with wild fury.

“No Dammit get back to the roof! You dumbass!” Max shouted and Charles kept firing until he was out of shells, he also had only killed two of the seven that were left, then as another six or seven came through the entrance one of them was another Charger that bolted right for Charles who stood their trying to fire another round from his empty shotgun into the crowd. Max tried to get to him first, but the Charger pounced right on Charles and bite into his shoulder and went to bite a second time at his throat when Max kicked it right in the temple. As it tried to scramble back up Max held it down on the throat with his boot and fired a point-blank shot into its skull. He rushed to Charles who was screaming in pain. Max dragged him back to the counter, lugged him over the counter and then laid him up against the inside and tore Charles’ shirt off to cover his wound.

“Why the fuck did you come back for me you idiot. Do you want to make Kerri a widow?” Max yelled as he pressed down on the bloody shoulder.

“I didn’t want to let you go alone, they got you before, so I thought…” Charles was starting to go into shock, but Max slapped him hard across the face and yelled,

“Listen you dumb punk; I got nothing to lose because I already lost everything I had. You have a damn fine woman with you, and you go and try to play shootout. You didn’t even kill more than two of them. Kerri is way too fine of a woman to abandon. I’ll make sure that that girl doesn’t lose you.” Max tied the shirt around Charles’ arm then turned around and saw a shopping cart handle poking out from the end of the aisle. Of course, that’s where they were.

Max rushed over as Charles held down the bloody shirt while the moaning and shuffling from behind him was getting louder. Max reached the cart and found a semi-automatic hunting rifle, a hatchet, a semi-automatic pistol, and an axe. He took out the rifle, checked the magazine, loaded it, and then turned it to empty on the remaining vermin. When the magazine was empty, he discarded it and saw that there was one left and there was defiantly six more coming from the front doors. He tossed the rifle back in the cart since there were no more magazines, he would have to reload one first.

He pushed the cart to Charles, helped him to his feet and sat him inside the cart and pushed him with all his might to the stairs. His side burned, and he was having trouble breathing. When they got to the stairs Max gave Charles the ax and the pistol and told him to get to the roof. Max stood there reloading the magazine as fast as he could, he was two bullets away from being finished loading when he began to cough, harder and harder, and couldn’t stop. He beat his chest then spat out a blood filled lugie onto the wall.

Dammit. Well, I guess this is where I make my stand.

Max loaded the rifle and took out four of the remaining, until the gun was empty and he threw it aside. He put his last cigarette in his mouth, lit it, then grabbed the hatchet and marched to the scum that had taken everything he ever loved away.

“It’s gonna be a cold damn day in hell if you pus-bags think that you’re all gonna get those kids upstairs.” His cigarette bounced around as he spoke but never fell out of his mouth, he drew the longest drag he could from it. Max then drew out his bowie knife and kept marching.

“Those two have a future and I won’t let you take it away from them. Come on you undead fuckers!” He swung the hatchet sideways into the first one and it lodged into the side of its skull, the second one he drove his knife into its temple. There was just one left, and it had a National Guards uniform. Max dropped his weapons, threw his cigarette butt aside and ran full force at it and tackled it to the ground. As he sat on its chest as it clawed at his face and neck, cutting his skin with its long unclean fingernails. Max just looked it right in its empty eyes and snapped its neck, but it still clawed at him. Max drew back his fist and punched it in the face again, and again, and again, and again. He stopped once he heard its skull crunch and its body went dead. He got to his feet and then limped to the front door, locked it and headed to the roof.

On the roof Kerri had stopped Charles’ shoulder from bleeding and gave him three Tylenol as she cradled his head against her chest. He had passed out from the pain but was still breathing. She was crying and heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She aimed at the open doorway with the pistol but lowered it when Max’s face came into sight. She smiled and Max’s tired, old and bloody face smiled back. He fell face-first onto the ground and rolled over to look up at the cloudy sky beginning to clear.

Kerri left Charles asleep in the chair, rushed to Max and got on her knees to look over Max who still smiled.

“Kerri darling, you know what to do, right?” He patted the pistol in her hand.

“No Max! You’ll make it! You’ve gone this far.” He brought his hand up and stroked her face.

“Charles is a lucky man, I guess someone should be. Too bad it’s not me.” He coughed and blood started to pour out of his mouth. He grabbed her hand with the pistol in it and brought it to his forehead. Kerri started crying again and shook her head, yet she still looked beautiful to Max.

“No. No Max I can’t I just…”

“Shhhh.” His voice gargled through the blood, “It’s for the best; I’m forty-two, I’ve lost my little girl and watched my wife burn herself alive, I’ve got nothing left. And I don’t want to be one of those things. I’m too tired to move anymore. I want to see my wife and daughter again. So just do it for me, please.” She nodded her head, leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. She placed the barrel of the pistol right where her lips had been. Max let out a pleased sigh, closed his eyes and with the final gunshot at the store Max finally went to sleep.

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