Tag: bad feelings

Dear Miles

hermanshermitLeave a comment

I opened the letter and regarded the hand written pages. No one wrote letters like this anymore, and I hadn’t received one since my grandma passed a decade ago.

“Dear Miles,
I have been trying to warn you of what’s happening but I can’t get through to you. I’m so worried! Everything is falling apart and they’re coming for you next.
No one can stop them. They’re everywhere, in everything. If they could darken the stars above us, they would.
Be careful what you eat. What you buy. Where you go. Who you’re seen with. They’re building a narrative to use against you, so that when you’re killed or commit suicide, it will be just another intellectual who couldn’t handle the cruel world, gone before his time.
They’ve already made the words “freedom” and “truth” illegal; they say they’re tools of the enemy to spread fear and dissension among the people.
We’re starving here, and they say there’s a surplus. Then they outlawed foreign media to preserve their narratives, so there was no competition for their propaganda.”

There was no signature. I didn’t recognize the handwriting or the postmark. I showed it to my wife.
“Who sent this? Is this a joke?”
“If it is, it’s not very funny.” She turned the papers over and sniffed the pages. “Is that perfume? Reminds me of Jen’s perfume, are you still talking to her?”
“Come on, Mary, you know I’m not. Someone’s telling me that I’m in danger. You think it’s another woman I’m messing around with?”
“I’m not saying anything, Miles. I just know women, and sometimes they like to mess with guys’ heads.”
“Should I call the police? This feels really creepy. I don’t know anyone who’s a political prisoner or who’s in a war zone. I don’t even know what war this would be. You know I don’t follow the news anymore.”
“The doctor said it would help your blood pressure.”
“What am I supposed to do? Live like a hermit so I don’t get assassinated for reasons I don’t understand, by people I don’t know?”
“I’d get off social media if I were you. That’s just a risk you don’t need to take.”
“Ok, fine, I’ll delete my accounts. That’s probably what you want anyway, isn’t it?”
“Me? I’m trying to help you. But this is a time where people get in trouble for sticking their necks out on controversial issues, and you’ve got too much to lose and nothing to gain.”
“I get it, I get it. If I post anything, it’ll be anonymously.”
“No! Don’t post anything! They can track your IP address, they know your phone and your home computer. Nothing is anonymous now!”
“Jeez, fine, I won’t say anything anymore or go anywhere or do anything.”
“I’m just trying to look out for you, Miles. You’re so naïve. You act like you’re this good guy doing good things for people, but it’s all just fake. You want attention.”
“Mary, you win, OK? I’m deleting everything. I didn’t do anything, I just got a letter.”

What He Said

hermanshermitLeave a comment

“I’m just so angry. I can’t calm down. It’s the children, it’s what he said to the children, there’s something not right about it.”
“He’s a wonderful father. He probably just cares too much. He would never do anything to hurt them.”
“I don’t want to believe it, but I heard it. I can’t ever go back to a time before he said that.”
“You have to tell me what he said.”
“It’s too awful.”
“Come on.”
“He said he wished he never had any kids. That he should have divorced me before I was pregnant with them. He completely regrets being a father.”
“Oh God. That’s so dark.”
“I’m shattered.”
“He couldn’t have really meant it. He loves those children. And they love him!”
“It really seemed like he meant it; he had that look in his eyes, you know the fury that he gets. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“Where is he right now?”
“I don’t know. He left to go drive around. I’m scared about what he could do.”
“Maybe you should call the police. I’m scared.”
“ I’m scared to come out, but what do I tell them?”
“Just tell them how angry he got, and how he was talking crazy. They’ll just come and check him out. He’s bound to show up here at some point.”

The police came, but he never returned to the house. He was out in the streets, giving a speech to no one.

“Every day they take another piece of me. Every day there’s a little bit less of what I used to be.”
“You have kids and you start a family because you love someone so much that you just want to make more of it. But what really you make more of, is misery. You really just spread it out, two more people, more mouths to feed, more people to disappoint.
“More lives that you can ruin, kids, that you can turn out into the universe to have them abused and murdered and degraded. What’s the point? What’s the goddamn point?
“It should end with us. This generation should be it. We have run our course.
“I’ve seen what can happen to people. I’ve seen how they die. I’ve seen how they suffer. I don’t need to do that anymore. I don’t need to see more.
“All these little ways, all these pieces of me, they disappear forever.
“All of the naïve things that I’ve hoped for. I’m such an idiot. I should’ve known this was how this is going to turn out.
“When you have hope, you just get fucked over worse. It’s better never to hope, never to try. I’m done. I’m done.”

He wandered the streets, night after night. He hadn’t spoken to his family for months. He muttered to himself. He had seen too much; he had learned how the world really worked. He wasn’t going to participate in the lie anymore.
He left the city and wandered the countryside The words hammered in his head as he walked, ground down, until he was nothing but dust.

The Freak

hermanshermitLeave a comment

I look at myself in the mirror, and I’m disturbed by what I see. I’m not a freak. I’m just not quite human, not anymore.
My ears are a little too low on my head. My eyes are so wide across my forehead that they go around the sides. I raise my eyebrows and they only cover part of my eyes.
My mouth opens top to bottom and side to side, with a slit along the midline for when I unhinge my jaw. I can open it so wide that I can swallow a live trout without chewing. I don’t do that very often, but I can.
My nose is really just two slits almost on the sides of my head. It doesn’t stand out; it’s just there for extra help when I need it. Mostly I breathe through my mouth or absorb the oxygen through my gills. Didn’t I mention my gills before? They’re at the side of my neck, just waiting to flap and get some respiration going.
I feel much more comfortable in the water these days. My fingers and toes are webbed, and I can move fast. Everything just slides by me. I don’t have to come up ever, but I do, eventually. I still sleep on land, in a bed, like everyone else.
When I think of my life in the lab, I get sad. I remember screaming every time they’d cut me, make me bleed, or force me back into a cage. I had a normal life once, family, friends. That’s all gone now.
But here’s the thing: I chose this. I made myself do this because I came to believe it was the way for humanity to survive for another generation. The waters are rising, and the heat is unbearable. Living in the water is the only way to go forward.
By making myself into a fish man, I’m going to be able to survive the cataclysm that is to come, and so will my children. Now, these won’t be the children that I’ve raised. These are children who will be grown in a lab. It’s my genes that will survive and form another race.
More and more , I don’t identify with humans . I’m not like them. I spend so much time in the water that most of the mammalian concerns I used to have don’t mean that much to me. My blood runs cold, so to speak.
I see things differently than the humans that I talk to. Their voices feel strange to me, too deep and lacking in the high notes that I’ve come to expect from the underwater creatures with whom I converse.
Their kind see my kind as food. They have poisoned this planet. I can’t stop them from facing the consequences.
So I’m going to do everything that I can to survive. But the human race can die.
And that’s the irony of this. I was tortured and re-reshaped and reformed so that something could survive, and I am going to. But none of them are. And I think that’s why I did it. Let this world burn.

On the Street

hermanshermitLeave a comment

There are things that happen that you think you could never endure, that you couldn’t handle without dying or killing yourself or going insane. All of that has happened.

We sleep on the street. We don’t work. Sometimes we find warmth and food. Some nights we go hungry. I know I’m going to die soon. My wife knows too. I can’t live much longer. But it’s OK. I fall apart, piece by piece. I spend more time dreaming, asleep, immune to everything.

When you live on the street, everything gets a piece of you. The insects, the bees and hornets are everywhere. Bees like to buzz around garbage cans in the summer, where there’s sugar and syrup and everything sticky and gross. I live in the trash. I get stung all the time. I roll over and there’s bees there. I get stung, it hurts, I scramble away and thrash, but there’s nothing I can do. My face swells up, my skin blisters and I have to just deal with it.

Waking up in the night, it always gets colder. My wife is here with me, we huddle for warmth. I have a few items with me from our old life, some of the kids’ toys. I miss the children, and all that the joy they used to bring our lives. They’re gone, placed by child and family services with new families. We have no contact with them; we’re not allowed to. Not after what happened.

My wife fought in the past. We don’t anymore. We don’t talk much, we just look for food, move from place to place. I can’t protect her anymore. She forgives me for it. After I tried the first few times, she told me to stop, and just to let her handle it. I don’t even notice when it happens. I just keep sleeping, waiting for it to be over.

I hated my life. I stared into the screen of my phone hundreds of times a day, looking for a response, for confirmation of my existence.  I am very real.  Everything hurts and nothing hurts. Our stories are ending, and so will we end. Once I thought about killing myself to make the pain go away. But not anymore. Maybe I’m already dead, and this body is just a shell, going through the motions. 

Sometimes you think you’ve fallen enough, you’ve hurt enough, you seen enough, but there’s more, there’s always some new degradation, some new way they can hurt you. Well, not me. By everything I’ve been through, I’m invulnerable. There’s nothing that they can take from me.

I have a shell of dirt on me, of grime, filth, and crust. It protects me. Others don’t come too close to me. Whatever I have isn’t what they want.  I have wounds on me that won’t heal. My ankle is swollen and has a sore on it that oozes, that never heals. I think I can see the bone through the wound. I can’t open my right hand, it’s always cramped, like it’s stuck. I hurt, therefore I am. Every throb, every pinch and burn, every bee sting tells me how alive I am. I will never be any freer than I am at this moment. 

The Psy-Op

hermanshermitLeave a comment

Rex was sure this was a setup. It had to be. What were his weaknesses, after all? He had enough money; his family was independently wealthy. He was already famous, like he had been since before he was born. He knew he could never drink or use drugs again, because he got random drug tests all the time, and he could lose everyting if he picked up. He was in the program, and he stayed on the straight and narrow.

He liked women and he liked being attractive to them, and that’s how they would snare him. Julie was watching him like a hawk, and he was paranoid about even talking to a woman. He texted women, sure, but he was always careful never to ask for anything, and to exit the conversation if it veered toward anything incriminating.

So, he was safe, he was fine.

But he knew they were coming for him. Security experts coached him on avoiding undue influence. He had a therapist, to whom he’d disclose everything, and whose confidentiality was assured by the security experts. His home and office were regularly swept for bugs.

Julie was the one who he worried about. She came across as his controller more and more. She watched him, his comings and goings. She scanned the internet constantly for anything related to him, any paparazzi photos, anything leaked about him, any rumors. She talked to his mother, his brothers and sisters and stepfather, more than he did. She watched the camera by the front door, and chirped greetings to him by her cell phone when he came and went, while she was on vacation.

He couldn’t figure out her endgame, though. Was it to keep him in politics so that he could be used later? To keep a lid on him, so that he would never get too deep, never too close to the truth? Or was it just simply a wife who didn’t want her husband cheating on her, didn’t want to be lied to and deceived over and over again.

Which he sympathized with, certainly. but he couldn’t live like that. Feeling himself like a criminal on probation. He had to have a release, something that was just his own, not everyone else in the world’s.

He did resent it. Also, the idea that Julie, someone who he had cultivated and cared for her entire adult life, was now his owner, someone who surveyed him and watched him, rankled him. But he needed Julie because she was the key to everything. Without her, he was just another rich kid with a substance abuse disorder who got sloppy and tried to sleep around when he was hammered.

That wasn’t who he was. He was better, more than that. He had tried to be honest, up front, and transparent with her. She had rejected him. She had listened to the lies of her family, had snooped and misinterpreted, had refused to talk about what she had seen and didn’t want any context for it. She was the one who had undermined him when he’d needed support the most, who had tracked and targeted him, ultimately leading him as close to severe depression and death as he ever had been.

He took responsibility for his actions. He didn’t blame her. But it seemed like she had no insight into how everything went down, how it transpired and why. He was always bringing her on stage with him at events, connecting her with other people, talking about her as his wife, showing her off, being proud of her.

But it didn’t seem like that mattered to her when they were behind closed doors. She still viewed him as her enemy, looked at him askance, rifled through his things when he wasn’t looking. There was no way for him to get back to where they had been before.

And, he didn’t feel the same way toward her as he used to, he had to acknowledge that. There wasn’t the magic, the sparkle when he regarded her. He felt that way toward Francis and Rhona, as angry as they seemed with him much of the time. They still felt like part of him, but Julie didn’t. She felt alien, an aggressor and antagonist.

Rex talked about this to no end with his therapist, Gili. The tension between them, how hard it was to be attracted to her, even when they were together, how childlike and petulant she could be. Gili was pushing Rex to leave her, to bite the bullet and just go, get on with his life, live in the now.

But to him, any thought of leaving Julie took him right back to the bottom of that hole, the darkness and cold, the humiliation and pain Julie was nice, most of the time. When she got angry, it seemed like a misunderstanding, or his fault, or something that he could forgive her for.

He was at the center of a web, spiders coming for him. There was his wife, there was his opponent, Cranmer. There were the shadowy Urizenites, trying to start a world war, and the Anandites. There was Chester Camullus, the golden god of fire. They all vied for him, wanting to devour him and destroy him, and he couldn’t do anything.

Rex struggled to keep his mind right. He couldn’t give into the forces of paranoia. He couldn’t let them win. He was on a mission, to redeem his father’s and his family’s legacy, to cancel out the sins of his past, to take leadership of the people of Caledonia, and to save this fallen world.

He was enough. He was doing enough. There wasn’t more that was out there that needed doing. All he had to do was keep his eye on the prize and keep moving towards it. He couldn’t be stopped; this was his destiny.

His secret, though, was the key to everything. Once he was firmly in power, he could bring out Moxie, and she would be the remedy to all the world’s ills. She would unite everyone.

The Wheelchair

hermanshermitLeave a comment

Rex was out jogging, and he encountered a woman helping a man in a wheelchair into his car. As he jogged closer, the woman loaded the foot pedals into the back of the car, leaving the empty wheelchair to roll into the street. Rex caught it and turned it around, and rolled it back up to her. “Think you lost this,” he said, smiling.

“Perfect timing,” she said; he laughed and jogged on.

As he got back to his house , he undressed and showered. He dressed and went to the kitchen, where he found his wife, Julie, furious with him. She was smoldering. “What’s this I hear about you trying to fuck a disabled man’s wife!”

He stammered, “Why? When? Who?”

Somehow, he had been photographed catching the wheelchair, and it was already all over the media. The story had been spun so that his innocent interaction with the woman in her driveway was the act of some sly seducer, some evil lothario.

“I don’t even know them at all. I was just there for a second and then I kept going.”

“Rex, I just don’t know what to believe. I thought I could trust you. You have too much to lose to be pulling shit like this.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Rex said. “You can’t just assume everything anyone thinks or says negatively about me is true. I need confidence in myself. I need to have a wife that supports me. I can’t be paranoid and self conscious every single time I talk to a woman.”

“Dad,” Francis walked in.”This is so incredibly embarrassing. Would you stop it, please? I get made fun of so much at school because of you and women. It messes with me a lot.”

Rex shook his head. “I should quit this race. It’s bringing up so much old, awful stuff that I just can’t take, and it’s making my kids upset.”

Francis cried out “Why aren’t we enough for you? Why can’t you just be with mom!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Rex roared. “Goddamnit! I helped a random neighbor for a second and the tabloids turned it into something that it wasn’t!” His face was bright red; whatever calm and grace he’d gained from his workout was shot. “My whole life is an endless reflection of my worst moment because I’m trying to do something for this country!”

Rhona came out of her room. “Dad, I believe you, and the lady has already come out saying that you didn’t do anything, it was the paparazzi that turned it into an affair, that it was nothing at all, she didn’t even know who you were!”

Rex sat down on the kitchen stool. His heart was in his throat. “Do you see?” He turned to Julie. She had her hands on her face, looking down; “you brought all this up and we’re all devastated and I did nothing wrong. You can’t do this to me! You can’t believe the worst that anyone ever says about me, you break me down when I need help!”

Fracis walked into between them. “Don’t yell at mom! She’s just trying to do what’s best for us!”

“What’s best for you? What’s best for you? I’m trying to give you a legacy! I’m trying to maintain this family name! My father was president, and I’m trying to give you a better, safer world, and you’re dragging me down with gossip and lies!”

“You’re such a fucking asshole, Dad!” Fracis shouted. “Everything is about you! You don’t even care about us, we’re just props for your career! You don’t listen to us, you don’t want us, you don’t need us!”

Julie turned to Rex. “It’s true. You don’t even feel guilty about what you’ve done. You think it’s all your privilege. Well, you need to take some responsibility for yourself, for your actions, for your life. You can’t just be Brian Tyler’s son for your whole life and expect to be president. You have to be a father, you have to be a husband.”

“Responsibility!” Rex roared. “I have never done what I wanted to in my life. I have always answered the call, I have always done everything asked of me and more! Look, when all that stuff happened two years ago, I went to rehab. I go to AA. I owned it, and I don’t drink anymore, I don’t see any of my friends anymore. It’s all over.”

Rhona put her hand on his hand and he calmed. “But it’s not really over, Dad, is it? You’re just biding your time, waiting till the cameras turn off, so you can start sneaking around again.”

Rex stepped back. “Your mother has turned you against me, even you, Rhona. What I have to do is a calling, a destiny. I’m a leader, and I have to do all the things my father never did. If he hadn’t have been killed, I know things would have been better for us, for the country. I don’t want to be exposed all the time, I want my privacy. I want to be able to meet people without being some sleazy salesman, always trying to impress, always trying to get somewhere. But this is the broken and fallen world in which we live.”

Julie took his hand. “OK, I’m sorry I accused you. You didn’t deserve that.”

Rex nodded. “I need you guys, more than you could ever know. Things are going to get easier, they’re going to get better, I promise.”

His family clustered around him and hugged him. He sighed, fighting back tears. His biggest secret was still to be revealed to them, and he wondered how long it would be before it came out. Would they still love him?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

A Couple

hermanshermitLeave a comment

We see her from across the bar and we’re smitten. Jon stares for a little too long, and June has to take his hand to get his attention. “You like her, baby?” June says quietly, but of course we do. She’s breathtaking, just sipping her drink and glancing around the room non-comitally.

There’s a quick conversation we have about her; who should approach, and how. We try and gauge her bi-curiosity/experience, though June always says that it doesn’t matter. Everyone woman wants to be the center of attention, and to be between us is something too tempting to deny.

Jon questions if she has a boyfriend, which also doesn’t matter. June shakes her head, and reminds Jon that if a woman that fine had a man, he’d be here watching over her. Her ringless fingers and the empty stool beside her spoke volumes.

Politeness in these matters is a tricky thing. Like, we never want to offend anyone, but people obviously want to be with us, they want to know us and experience us at every level. And we want the same. Yet, inviting a stranger into a threesome isn’t a normal thing to ask, and we get that. Still, it’s all about being patient, getting to know someone, creating a rich and compelling world to invite them into, bringing them home, exploring every single inch of them, and then keeping a relationship with them for regular adventures.

June makes her way over first and introduces herself. The woman’s name is Sadie, she just broke up with her boyfriend, and she’s here to get out of her apartment and get out of her head for a little while. Her hair is what attracted us in the first place; luxuriant, cascading in waves down her shoulders, a black so deep that it’s a mirror. Her skin is peach, warm, and delicious. Her smile is ruby red, and sparkling.

Jon is there introducing himself, maybe too fast. She tries to introduce him to June, and we have a hearty laugh and kiss each other deeply in front of her. Sadie is speechless, and June laughingly explains our relationship, and how we like to go out and meet new people. She takes it all in, a little anxious, but clearly excited.

And then she stops. It’s when Jon runs his hand along her cheek, tracing her jawline. “Wait, aren’t you two a couple? What are you doing with me?”

June hesitates, Jon stammers. “It’s like we said, we like to meet new people and … play with them. All together, like friends do.”

Sadie is shaking her head and backing away. “This is all too weird for me.” She hands her credit card to the bartender. “I mean, that’s not what couples do. That’s not right.” She turns to June. “Are you telling me that that’s what you really want? Aren’t you just trying to keep him happy by degrading yourself? Where’s your self respect?”

June puts her hand over her mouth. The fantasy is lost, the evening ruined. “Sadie,” she says, “this is all the life we get. What’s degradation and what’s excitement, is all in the eye of the beholder. It’s OK if you’re not interested, but this is what we like and you don’t need to judge us.”

Sadie signs her receipt and leaves. Jon gets our bill and coats. It’s a quiet drive home. This happens sometimes, and it does hurt. But we love each other and we know what we’re about. It will be fine.

Jon holds June in bed until she falls asleep, and then lies awake for awhile. He’s not angry, just thoughtful.