FACES IN THE DARK

for Neha,who listens



flotsam

He lay in bed, smoking his last cigarette. The ash-red dot ,smoldering and dimming,blinking,between his shaky nicotine stained fingers,light and dark,dark and light. He had been smoking a lot lately, what was he averaging? Two packs ? The one he held was probably the forty-third nail (of the day)on his coffin, but who was counting? Not him for sure. He’d have to scrounge around for a butt or two later. The night was still at adolescence and he needed the cigarettes. But more than the smokes,right now he needed to get out of the bed. The bed felt too vast, too cold and was covered with memories instead of sheets and blankets,memories of the worst kind. Then again,there are no such things as good memories, are there? All memories bring hurt because in one way or the other they are ghosts haunting us,reminding us of what could have been.
Slowly, he stumbled out of bed. His head felt heavy as if it had been replaced by a block of concrete and his heart as empty as the bottles of cheap booze and sleeping pills that cluttered the floor.Even breathing was tiresome now. The clock ticked meaninglessly, endlessly, absurdly. “Life” he thought. Outside a lone mongrel? wailed into the bleak dark void that was the night, sounding more human than anything. What it was crying for, nobody cared. It was alone (“like me!”) A sudden chill sliced its way through the hollow pit of his stomach ,came to rest upon his equally empty heart and finding enough space, decided to roost there a while. He moaned. He moaned because he could not cry anymore, he had run out of tears. Even tears had forsaken him.
He was lonely, his only “companions” other than the night (and perhaps the lone mongrel outside) were his demons...and some demons could not be exorcised. He wanted to escape but he was a prisoner of his own consequences and he was in for Life. He was tired and longed for sleep but he was scared too because when the dreams came, they mocked him. The pills didn’t help either nor did the alcohol .Hell, it made it worse. He was tired, so damned tired. Dark spots danced before his eyes and suddenly the bed seemed like a million miles away as if it was on another galaxy. He managed three steps before his feet gave away; He teetered, clawed the air blindly for purchase, knocked his head against the bed post and then collapsed into a heap.His last thoughts were of cigarettes.

It was the summer when he was seven years old, he had made an amazing trade with a not so bright cousin. He had bartered his magnifying glass in return for for a one legged (and slightly rusted) tin soldier .Of course, after an hour or so of looking at people and god-knows-what through the glass, the cousin having lost all his former enthusiasm when he realized that a magnifying glass could only do so much, had wanted the handicapped soldier to report back to base that being his jean overall’s front pocket. He might have gotten his AWOL toy back had he been a foot taller or maybe a year older, but that wasn’t the situation, hence, had only succeeded in getting knocked flat on his chubby rear. The sore ended cousin had run off wailing retribution but still clutching the magnifying glass.

An hour and an amputated soldier later, both casualties in the old grudge war of "trump" to a friend (who happened to be both a foot taller and a year older) he trudged towards lunch planning fantastical covert operations to free the POW. And then over at the neighborhood sand-pit, he had spied the cousin bent over a mound of dirt, his snotty face taunt with sweat and concentration. In his hand he held something that glimmered harshly in the blazing sunlight. He thought of evil wizards and witches in the fairy-tales about to cast a spell that would turn the handsome prince into a toad or the pretty lass into an ass. “Lass into an ass” now that was poetic, a real beaut.He’d have to remember this. Poems like these would make him famous. He could barely stifle the laughter as he stealthily made his way towards the young wizard meaning to wedgie him ( for practice)when he had realized what was going on. His cousin was using the magnifying glass to burn ants! He had knelt beside his cousin filled with awe and watched the ants twitch and burn. Right then he felt a peculiar feeling rise within him. He had felt pride?(was it pride?)”The retard aint so slow after all” he thought and then affectionately patted the boy's sweaty head. The cousin had looked at him beaming and declared “look! I am god!”...

God (if there is one) is cruel and fate is his favorite toy

high tide

...He woke up, shivering, quite unsure of where he was. His head felt two sizes too big and halfway empty.The left side of his body had transformed into a pin cushion. He needed a smoke and stretched out to grab his pack, that was when he realized he was squatting on the floor. He had no idea how or why he was there,or why his head felt like it had been used as a football.He figured he might have dreamt his way out of bed but not quite believing it. Had he been asleep? Had he been dreaming? Was he still dreaming? And somehow the idea of still being in a dream felt catchier so he crawled back into bed (the cigarettes forgotten for now) and waited for the waves of sleep to carry him away. And as tiredness steadily gave way to sleep, a thought occurred to him “We are but ants” “and God..God is the kid who sits besides the ant-hill holding a magnifying glass” Such a thought would have normally surprised him but right now he was walking the thin gray between sleep and awareness so he just chuckled at the walls...and the bare walls just stared back at him, silently, perhaps angry to be disturbed at such a ghastly hour or perhaps just contemplating the irony of his thought. The waves of sleep didn’t steal in, instead they swelled into huge tides and they crashed into him. He panicked (had he taken too many pills? had he taken ANY at all?)He tried to fight it, but he was tired. The tide broke upon him relentlessly until he gave in and finally it enveloped him. Silence.....Pitch Black Silence.. and he felt himself drowning ......drowning...drown..

George Jenkins from down the street was a fantastic bore and perhaps the only thing that exceeded his legendary talent for boring the shit out of folks was his cursed optimism. He was so optimistic that if someone had mailed him a sack full of horse-shit, he would assume that the person had simply forgotten to include the horse (Maybe that’s why he was such a bore, because nothing would/could bring him down. No sirree!! His was a world of dreams, rainbows and fucking butterflies).Now good old George had nothing,literally,except for his mother, his optimism and his damned dream.Every time you ran into him he would give you an earful of his mother and the house he was going to buy for her. He would grin that insufferable grin of his and tell you,"Momma says...this " and "Momma said...that”. A regular Forrest Gump in the making, except he wasn't as slow. He taught math and social sciences at the Holy Cross preparatory school.The kids there must have known what came out of Ol' Georgie's beloved momma’s ass every time she took her mid-day dump.

Any-a-ways, after years of carefully planned financial savings and two suits (always Dogshit Brown and Snotty Green) per year Georgie's date with destiny arrived,He had pulled it off. He purchased for his mother ,a modest cottage ,just like he had told everybody and (probably)any unlucky soul who happened to pick the wrong time to visit our side of town. The poor bastard had been so happy that week...that was until he tripped over his mother’s knitting,skewered himself through the neck and turned into a human kebab. And then as if things could not get any worse, his mother, after seeing her beloved boy writhing and gurgling in a pool of his own blood, had just rolled up her cataracted eyes and taken a dive, face first, in her Georgie’s blood. After Seventy Three years of uninterrupted service her old ticker had called it quits, just like that!!

Georgie had barely survived the accident but the people who saw him now and then (he had sold off the cottage for his mother’s funeral and moved back to his old one room shit-hole apartment) said that Ol’ Georgie had been buried along with his mother. George Jenkins never spoke of his momma again, he hardly ever spoke at all..

Georgie was a fuckin ant, and ants got burnt...

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