Consumption II

Next one please.
People. Lined up, wanting to be served. One tall anything, two units of sugar, a number-seven to go.
They are like a herd. Like a mass of animals coming together in a line to get what they think, they deserve. What they need. They all talk with their friends. They talk over each other. Louder, more, pushing the line, stepping forward.
They spend four dollars on a third of a liter of coffee. And they complain about the gas prices, the dollar per liter. Fucking hypocrites, junkies, consume-herd.
Next one please.
One addiction to go. Extra foamy and absofuckinglutly indifferent. Lined up to be served. Lined up for decadence, in their designer wear, their expensive whatever, that they need to be here. The make-ups and brand-name underwear, just to stand in line like a cow in the slaughterhouse. For brand-name coffee. Waiting to be dealt with.
Next one please.

A dream from the past

[A scence for a character from my Shadowrun pen&paper group. It's a dream, a nightmare, that haunts the character all night long.]

Late at night, you find yourself in the old penthouse, your parents used to own. A strange feeling hangs over your thoughts, as if there was a unknown presence hiding in every corner of the room.
You stand in the living room, but it's empty. All the antique furniture, the old chairs and carved tables, the memories of your childhood, brought to Seattle from europe, they're gone. You can't think straight, everything seems so familiar, yet so strange. And still, there is this presence lurking in the shadows. You wander through the penthouse, and as you stand before your old bedroom, you open the door. A look inside, the lights are turned on, but the room is not the room of the 15-year-old that it belonged to, but it's filled with the belongings of the little child, that grew up in England. It's full of toys and books. Books filled with theories and knowledge of the awakened world. At the end of the room, you look out the window, and something inside of you expects the skyline of Seattle, as you watched it every night, between your studies. Another part yearns the view out to the open gardens, the forest in the distance, that your house in England used to offer. But instead, all you can see through the dusty glass are the redmond barrens. There are burning cans, there are decaying buildings, rotten streets. The sky is black, no moonlight, no stars. Only ruin and misery.
The feeling of dread, the knowing of this strange presence, overwhelms your every thought and you start to cry. Through the dirty glass, over the darkness outside, you can see your face reflecting in the window.
You are 15 years old and everything is going to change.

Behind you, your mother calls your name. You turn around, but the hallway is gone. You stand on an empty street in the barrens. A street, that cracks under crushing weeds. A street of dread, with shadows moving in the corner of your eyes.
Behind your mother, you see the frame of the patio door of the penthouse. Your father appears behind your mother, holds her shoulders and looks into your young face with sorrow and regret. Your mother is about to whisper something, but you can't make out, what she is saying. She tries harder, but her words can't reach you. You want to walk up to your parents, as a loud gunshot disrupts the silence, the misery of the moment. Your father still bears dread on his face and he stares lifeless into your eyes, as the bullet enters his back, tears open his chest. Your mother falls forward, because the bullet is now stuck in her neck. In the distance, inside the door frame, in the middle of the street, you see a shadow. A shadow with a long coat, with a smoking gun in its hands. With a streak of silver hair hanging on either side of his face. Your mom is crawling before you.
Your are 15 years old and everything is going to die.

Your mother, bleeding from her neck, she says, "I'm sorry."
As you look up, your father is gone. Just this shadow with silver hair and a smoking gun is standing inside the door frame. Behind the frame, you now see the patio of the penthouse, Seattle's bright skyline on the horizon. The shadow, the killer of your parents, it nods at you, before it jumps over the railing of the patio.
Leaving your mother to die, you run after him. Standing on the patio, behind you the penthouse is complete again, full of furniture and plants. You look down to the streets of downtown, as the sound of another gunshot tears apart the night. . .

Choke

Breathless, like the quiet breeze,
rests your silence in my strife.
Timeless, as a soul at peace,
but worthless, as emotions freeze,
it's my heart that leaves your life.

But still, you look me in my eyes;
say, is there madness or a star?
Though still, you pull the string of lies;
Don't you know, we yearn demise?
We drift away from what we are.

So taste the bitter in my kiss,
the ashes, that I now adore.
We cry for what we surely miss;
the wounded wind becomes a hiss,
till nothing chokes of life no more.

Lights

Sitting outside, late at night, on my pre-assembled garden chair made from one-hundred-percent whatever-tree, looking up to the stars seems dull and depressing.

The city lights from downtown, no matter how distend and unimportant, blend over the darkness and endlessness of the night. One lonely candle struggling with the light breeze, a glass of cheap whiskey and the rushing sound of passing cars are my only companions right now. The sky, with all its beauty, all its promise for eternity, is faded. Just a washed-out gray on the horizon of my reality.

Maybe it's the whiskey, but right now I'd wish that time would freeze, would savor the moment. That time would end, things would slow down and stop. I want to drown my thoughts, kindling like the flame of the candle, caged in a little glass.

Around me, most lights of the apartments and cute little first-time-homeowner townhouses are off, just here and there a single window glows in static, electric gray. The curtains are shut. I ask myself, do the people around me, the people still awake, feel even remotely the same as I do?

Disconnected, uninspired, isolated from everything, every-day-life affairs.

Probably, I can only guess, not.

From up here on my four-by-eight feet balcony, I can see my car. The piece of Japanese junk. The oil-dripping catastrophe of environmentally unfriendly rust.

Between the railing of my balcony, a spider is hanging in her web, waving with the wind. Just waiting for anything to fly into the her trap. Patience as purpose for life.

Again, my head falls into my neck and I find myself looking into the sky. All those lonely stars. Isolated, all their little brothers and sisters eaten alive by the pollution of false light. They're too weak to shine through, too distant to their relatives, their loved ones. Like an uncompleted picture of an artist, long dead before he could finish his masterpiece.

And around me, no one cares.

Isn't there one genuine soul left out here?

Maybe it's just the whiskey boiling my brain, but right now I want to forget what I know. Who I am. What matters. That nothing matters.

I'm indifferent.

As I close my eyes, I blow out the candle with a gentle kiss of breath. There's a part of me, deep inside, that yearns for something more. For something else. A part, that hopes for all the lights to die like the little candle. A part, that doesn't want me to open my eyes ever again.

Let the world go by, the feelings and thoughts wither in time, like my rusting junk of car. Let the world take me wherever it may. Let my love be eaten alive by an all-blinding ignorance.

Let my soul forget, for all things must end.

And let my heart know: true art comes from within, and it dies long before it's complete.

John's night out

(Another piece of my current project. Edited 07/23.)

I ask, what she is running away from?
The girl sitting on my bed, the old, used motel bed, she has black hair. It curls around her white face, around her big round eyes. She is completely naked, her knees are touching, her arms bend through at her elbow joints. Her entire body is pale, like she's never seen any sunlight. Like a vampire, pale and thin. Under her small, perky breasts you can see her ribcage. Her fingernails are painted black, her toenails are black. The shadow underneath her eyes, black. Black hair on her head, none anywhere else. The rest is just pale. Not white, more a washed-out gray, like ash. Like the bedsheets. Right in the middle of her mouth is a tiny silver ring pierced through her lower lip. From the ring, a loose chain is just hanging down.
Her name is Mona. Mandy. Something with M.
Her answer simply is, "From myself."

How this girl stranded in my motel-room was, last night, I ended up in a small joint called Sally's Beer-Bar. A stench of sweat and smoke pushed its way up my nose as I first entered the room. The light was dim, the few tables full of local folk, farmers and such. The barkeeper, Sally, stood behind his counter, wiping a dirty glass with a dirty piece of cloth, then putting it with the other, well, cleaned glasses.
So I made it behind the state line. So I took the first step into my new life. Standing in this small bar, I took a deep breath of smoke and sweat, a full nose of sweet freedom. Sweat stinking freedom.
Everything went as planned. From the point on, I shot Jenn, I mean.
I can't quite remember all the details, everything happened so fast. I took the money right out from Jenn's hand. Looking into her eyes, wide open and filled with fear, I said, sorry. When I turned around, I saw old Patty with her annoying fat child standing in the snack aisle. Old Patty Harrison. She is the local fat bitch of a walking and talking gossip machine. She sucks the life out of her hard working husband. She'd suck the life out of everybody if she could. Her demon of son is loud. Annoying, careless and fat. He must have begged for more potato chips. His mom must have tried to take the bag out of his hands. He must have fought for it. They wrestled the vacuum-packed bag until it cracked, it ripped. Until it popped open. Popped with a loud freaking bang. It was then, that I pulled the trigger.

Then, I was here. First I checked into the motel. Next, sitting at the bar, I ordered a beer. Then another. And another.
Sally cleaned another dirty glass with the dirty cloth and said, "Haven't seen you here before. Just passing through or here to stay?"
I'm not a farmer, I said, just on my way through. Checked into the motel, I told him, but I'll be heading out soon. You know, see the country, cruise around, enjoy the sunsets and such. Enjoy some quiet peace and me-time.
I carried the gun in my belt, hidden under my jacket, still loaded.
Turning the dirty beer glass around and around, I tried to think. I was about to actively realize, what I've done, as this girl suddenly sat next to me.
She leaned over to grab the bowl of peanuts besides me, and her pale breasts showed themselves under her thin, black and worn-out dress. Just presenting herself right under my nose, her face was just a drunken breath away from mine. I was hypnotized by the dangling chain on her lip and her naked skin under her dress, as her big eyes glared at me and she smiled, "Hi, my name's ..." well, something with M.

Now, in the one-room motel-box, I'm standing in front of the window and it's still dark outside. With my back to her naked skeleton of body, I ask, what she means, she is running from herself?
You see, the deal with a girl like this is, she grew up in a middle class environment, with middle class parents, middle class school. Middle class friends. She had an older brother, successful, the perfect son. Of course, everybody would expect the same from her. It's not that she was bad in school or stupid or anything. She just couldn't see herself in this kind of life. Making everybody proud and happy and all. So she rebelled for the sake of rebelling. Hung out with the losers in school; drugs, heavy metal music, casual sex with whoever comes along. Blond hair dyed black. Worn-out boots, worn-out dresses, strong makeup and pale skin. Anything to make her parents not proud. Anything to proof there is no future for her in this suburban middle class lifestyle, no career in big companies downtown. She wants to become a writer. You know, travel the world, learn the culture, write it all down, let what's in her heart out.

"One day," Miss-M tells me, "I just took the next bus out. Been on the road ever since. Just me and my diary."
Behind me I hear the scratching of a lighting match. A smell-cocktail of sulfur and marijuana spreads in the room. I turn around and see her with a joint in her mouth, still naked.
"I'm running from the life, they wanted from me. From my false future. I'm running from the perfect daughter, I don't want to be."
Must be hell to have caring parents, I say.
"Swell," she says and disappears into the bathroom, still sucking on the reefer.
Next to the bed on the floor is her backpack, full with all her belongings. It's open and her diary sticks out. Looks like leather binding, and pretty thick, expensive paper. Next to the bag is our used condom. Just withering there is my semen, all nicely wrapped up in a rubber bag. I pick up the condom, hold it just with the tips of my thumb and finger, and look at the milky soup inside. This is my legacy, right here, packed up and ready to go into the trash.
My life, my legacy, a waste.
Through the bathroom door, Something-M starts talking again. Yelling over the running shower, she says, "Being successful doesn't teach you anything."
I place myself into the dent of her skinny ass on the bed and turn the knob on the TV.
"Its the things we do wrong, that teach us. That make us grow." I'm turning the knob, flip through the channels to look for something half-ass interesting to watch.
"Even if you do something right, even after everybody pats your back and congratulates you, you will think about the little mistakes you've made. The things, you could've done better, you know?"
Here we go; good old cartoons. Good old distraction.
"Looking back at anything, you are always smarter, when you can't change it anymore. When it's too late."
Jenn comes to mind.
From the bathroom, I can hear the water running over her body. The rattle of the old plumbing, the hissing of the old shower head, the water pearling on her skin, and her voice yelling through all of that, I turn up the TV. Just blend her out, distract her away.
Louder than before, the stupid bird, always being chased by the same old cat, says, "I fink I faw a puffy cat." I can feel my heartbeat in my forehead.
Right here, in this animated retro-experience of childhood, I'm home.
Right here, when one moment brings you back to somewhere completely else, reality could mean anything.
Next to me, the partition wall to the next motel-box starts to shake in the same beat as my upcoming headache. I turn the volume-knob all the way to the right, all the way up, but still, I can't get the upcoming grunting from next door out of my head. The moaning and banging. The prayers from my childhood. The reality of memory.
Oh God. Twelve years later.
Oh my God. The banging is like a hypnotic drum of chaos.
Oh my fucking God! I'm not here, I'm not existing. I'm waste, I'm nothing.
I'm a little child with his cartoons. A never ending spiral of self-distraction.
Right here, inside the only real care I've ever known, the cat turns to me. Its voice is that of the Girl-with-M, and it says, "Once you start running from your life, there is no going-back."
Then, the grunting stops. The walls stop shaking, the pounding in my head, however, remains. The TV is off. M-Something stands before me, all covered in tiny pearls of water running down the lines of her body. She turned off the cartoons, turned off my nightmare of childhood.
She grabs her thong with her toes from the floor and says, "Buddhists believe that we are in this life to learn, to correct flaws. We have to make mistakes, we have to learn from them and grow, and eventually rid ourselves from whatever it is, we have to clear our karma from."
I've heard this crap before. Spiritual cleansing one-o-one for the everyday life.
"With every reincarnation of our spirits," she says, "we go through this process until we are enlightened."
She sounds like my mother.
"So," she says, after she put on her string of underwear and is now lying next to me, "I set out to do as many mistakes as possible. To learn from them. To grow and speed up the process of enlightenment."
With her voice fading as she slowly falls asleep, she says, "You don't learn anything from being perfect for others."
I lie down next to her and stare at the ceiling. I'm a mistake.
The feeling of failure stays with you forever.
"You can't change the future by upsetting the past," she says. Lying next to me, still wet, still with water running down her breast, and the dark hair spread all over the pillow, soaking it all wet, she looks like a drowned angel.
Next morning, she will be gone. When I'll wake up, only the headache remains.
"Life," she whispers, "life is tragedy waiting to happen."

John's parent plus one

(pure fiction)

I must have been ten years old. I sat in front of the TV, watching some stupid cartoons. You know, the kind with talking animals dropping heavy stuff on caricatures of real people. The kind of nerve-calming replacement of parenthood we all grew up with.
Before my mom went to her room, before she took his new boy-toy to her chamber of light and love, as she called it, before she fucked a new excuse for her life, I told her, that Bobby from school was teasing me, because I didn't have a dad.
She looked into my eyes and after a sincere sigh she said, "Johnathan," she sighed, "Bobby is an idiot."
Her boy-toy looked foreign. Not that my little brain flooded with cartoons and such could really have known any difference. Though, he looked not american, I thought. The bedroom door closed right in front of my face and the sound of a snapping lock followed. For the next few hours I had to keep turning up the volume of my cartoons to make the noises, the banging and moaning and screaming disappear.
Never did I see any of her boy-toys twice.

It was then that I realized it. Not having a dad was not normal. I guess, when you grow up with it, you just grow right into it, too. Some kids have two parents, some simply have one parent plus one interchangeable extra. I never saw enough of the extras to remember any details. All that's stuck with me were the shaking walls, the high-pitched squeaks from springs and bed frames rubbing on each other. My mother praying to God, screaming for his attention.
You know how you always associate one thing with something completely different, because they first happened at the same time?
The melody of this famous Beatles song paints a picture of that summer you fell down the stairs and broke your wrist. Every time you hear this song, your wrist starts to tickle.
The taste of blood, the iron, the sharp pain when you bite your tongue brings you back to the school yard, when the idiot Bobby beat you up for calling him, well, an idiot.
The rabbit saying, "What's up, Doc?" It's like the stranger makes your mother cry in the room next door, all over again. You are a little boy with a parent plus one and that's your life.

As a little boy I believed her every word. It wasn't until years later that I clued in. She was out of her freaking mind. Her entire life was orbiting around her own version of miracles, wonders and bullshit. She was all hyped up on this holistic stuff, like meditations, inner balance, scented candles and energie-transformation-delusions. That was, before all this cosmic-consciousness stuff became popular. You know, before lonely wives made a hobby out of upping there inner-selves, or before self-aware guys, that want to get in touch with their other side. You know, the tarot-lady at three in the morning on TV. You know, the meditation for a better life. Spiritual cleansing one-o-one for the everyday life. Yoga. Feng shui. Holistic healing and channeled angels to find your next step in life. Karma, afterlife, past life and so on. You get the idea.
Her personal self-cleansing was the real thing. Marijuana, a bedroom full of chinese symbols and crystals. The chamber of light and love. Men, to reveal her inner goddess as she gets fucked out of her mind by a stranger. Letting go. Letting loose. Her ritual for finding whatever her version of Jesus was, inside somebody else's naked skin rubbing her sore. On sundays, other kids went to church with their moms and their dads. This little child, however, listened to his mother finding God in the agony of sex. He learned that love is just another drug, another distraction to loosen your bounds and find your inner-self. It had nothing to do with anybody else. It was just for yourself.

This stuff transforms your perception for anything.
What is Dad, I wanted to know.
Not the strangers in her chamber. Not the cartoons. Not God. Imagine to be a ten year old child. You learn that all the other boys in school do things with their dads; want to become just like them. Salesman, Storeowner, Policeman. Realize that the thing, that was supposed to shape you in his own image, your father, doesn't exist. Only strangers.
What would you become?
Might they just be the closest thing to a dad-like figure, to love, to God?
After long enough, when we have nothing to believe in, we are longing to accept anything.

The ways we go.

  I love airports, train stations or bus stops. The only place life can really happen is here. So much tragedy, happiness, joy and fear; all come together in one place, where everyone can be a part of another stranger's life. Here it's the real thing.
Families unite, lovers part ways. Infinite possibilities for escape. The idea of home comes to life, is in reach. The timeless moment, before one person leaves and another one comes around, that is memory-in-progress. 
  Outside of this little world, when everybody goes about their own lifes again, it will all be over; the little climax of life, when everything changes. However, right here we all share the experience of destination; of destiny.

Consumption.

Noticed, how things are always measured, sized and scaled?
Small coffee, extra cream and two-sugar. Can I order a number-seven, please? Do I want large fries with that?
Familiepacks of cereal, of batteries; value packs full of underwear, of napkins, even of condoms. Super sturdy plastic stir sticks with sipping-hole to stir, you know, the small coffee with two units of sugar. Ten percent extra of life-enhancing this and that in every box for a limited time; placebos, nobody needs. Kingsize cigarettes cause kingsize cancer. Promised royalty of self-abuse.
Nothing is save. There is a little box for all of us. I'll have one life-ending disease with an eternal-damnation on the side; and a diet coke. Oh and make it to go.
"Small, medium or large?"
I'm an XXL consumer. Oversize my decision. Undermine my choice. Walk tall, take the high road; hit rock bottom.