When All Worry Has Been Gently Confirmed

Further tests on the Carrolin whales.

2010-12-31T02:56:00.000-08:00

31 December, 2010 / Further Tests On The Carrolin Whales / By Jaret Ferratusco.

An ever thickening blanket of rain held our front windows hostage from the night. Almost nothing could be seen beyond the sill, as if a large gray wall of runny wet cement was growing up from the surrounding hedges, and though all the curtains were closed in case the same wasn't so from the outside looking in, it was still painfully obvious that our privacy could not be secured anywhere in the main part of the house. I shut all the lights off behind me to get the glare out, but I could still see nothing out there. Not even as far as the driveway. And with the steady pounding of the rain, I couldn't hear when cars passed by on the street although at times I could make out the watery red of the taillights. Under these circumstances, if a car pulled up to the house we'd never know.

We wouldn't know if someone was on the way up to the house until it was too late and they were in.

So that was that. The main part of the house was just no good tonight.

We moved our meeting to the most private room available on the first floor, the front hall closet. It was never really used unless we had guests over, so even if someone came through the house we'd have time to hear them walking around before anyone found us. Adequate room for our party of four was effected by pulling out the vacuum, some brooms and suitcases and a box of old leather coats. The evidence of this clearing we deposited into the basement stairwell, another safe spot. The basement was not used at night unless to take care of excess loads of laundry, and it being days off from laundry day, we could even stand to let a lot of it sit overnight if we had to.

Underneath the carpet in the closet was a fire safe we installed at the beginning of the summer. Emy alone knew the combination to this lock so she was in charge of keeping all of our more sensitive documents there. When we needed to confer over a certain set of notes, two of us would squeeze out of the way and Dannis would lift the carpet and look in the other direction as Emy spun the dial of the combination lock and let us in and out of the world of private notes. Her secret was our pride, because some of us were bad liars and we didn't want to have to know about things we didn't need to, in case we were to be questioned on the spot at any point. She had the combination written down in the woods and she told us if we ever really needed it when she wasn't around, we would definitely know where to look. All of us kind of did, but we didn't go out there ever, unless we had to.

Now, all together in the closet, we quieted down and listened to Emy talk about the bruises.

Distinct bruises on our two parallel whales was the first topic to be raised during the early stages of the conference, scrutinized under a thin yellow beam emanating from the small flashlight Emy brought with her everywhere. She moved the flashlight over the chart and did most of the talking. As she shifted between the flashlight and her notes, I offered to hold the heaviest item, the chart itself, but she said it wouldn't be necessary. The other two watched intently, listening closely. I found it hard to concentrate. Unless I could be made useful I always found it hard to concentrate, so I asked her again if I could hold the chart. She looked at me impatiently and sighed, “Just listen, okay?”

“Okay, Emy.”

The sketch tracing the histories of the whales from birth to now was scribbled across a dry erase board that I got off the kitchen wall in our neighbor's house. Without the dry erase board we'd have had to use colored chalk for the graphs and write on the white closet wall, and that always leaves stains, so inadvertently I was able to contain myself a little knowing I'd helped Emy with the presentation in this minimal way.

I fidgeted around a lot, but stuffed my hands into my pockets to try to stop. No matter what I did I always thought of myself as the least important out of the four.

I was more used to breaking and entering than anyone else and was actually good at it, so that, at least, was a strong point I could claim. One of my more noted performances had been the snatching of father's heart pills from the dashboard of his car while he was at work and I was supposed to be in school over nine miles away. I'd been able to sneak out of class that day and hire a cab using money lifted from the math teacher's purse. And with an authentic pass to the nurse's office, I used my time wisely getting to and from father's factory job parking lot and back into class with a forged release note from the nurse written up by Dannis, the committee script writer. That night father had to go to the hospital (mother stayed with him) and they were gone for the whole night and next day, giving us plenty of time to move the whales in and make sure the tanks were working before we covered them up with tarps.

I just wish she'd let me hold the damned chart. She's barely able to do it all, she just wants to be controlling.

To be fair, this was her job anyway, the presentations.

Emy would normally have me assist her in most of the presentations, but only really because I pestered her about it so much. And it would sometimes cause Dennis to smirk or make callous accusations. Such things would conceive to undermine the overall idea of our meetings, but I learned to just look past it. Besides, tonight Emy was skittish, and her long red hair repeatedly fell in front of her face as she talked, causing her to stop and push a lock of it here or there, disrupting the presentation. I was for the most part forgotten. After so much of her barely even looking my way I pulled out a hairband. It was green, her favorite color. She said thank you and I held the flashlight for her while she strung up her hair and we continued. I didn't feel so out of place when I was able to help Emy and this break in her presentation might have been a little distracting to the other two, but it made me feel a whole lot less nervous.

Nevertheless Dennis in the back smirked and I shot him a look.

Emy and Dannis sssshhhhhed us both, though it wasn't me who'd said anything.

Resuming her presentation, Emy went over the bruises previously noted on the whales. There were two of them. Freshly captured baby Carrolin whales we stole from the town harbor cages before they could be tagged. We put one of them in the built-in swimming pool, carefully re-filtered with a saline-saltwater oxygenation with ammonia previously tested out on a few manta rays we got from the Marina Library saltwater tanks. The other baby whale we kept in the above-ground pool in Dennis' backyard next door using the same filtration system. Both whales were raised precisely parallel in this way, from feeding and petting to the readings we gave to each, switching off from Emy to Dannis usually, but sometimes to Dennis too, all except for me since I couldn't keep from stumbling over the sentences all the time when reading aloud. In the daytime when we were supposed to be in school, the whales were given similar cycles of swimming to adhere to in tandem, from clockwise to counter-clockwise and then occasionally straight back and forth; we took turns skipping summer school classes to make sure the cycles never lapsed. At dusk small electric shocks were administered. Not heavy enough to electrify the pools or incapacitate the whales but enough to confuse them into temporary stillness. Their levels of stunned perplexity were recorded on line graphs and their progress back into the given swim cycle was noted on the clipboards. We raised or lowered the shock frequencies according to how similar their reactions were.

Over the course of the month different variables were added into the filtering tanks, from chlorine solutions to small amounts of talcum powder or old soot from the fireplace. Their meals were always fish-based, from crab meat to white fish, interspersed with tiny doses of pepper, soil, bleach and expired hamburger meat we left out on the pool decks every few days in clear plastic containers. In the latter experiments, all attempts to introduce food poisoning into the whales' systems failed, after which we concluded that their immune systems were so far advanced as to make our own digestive systems appear amateur on a line graph. After two inconclusive weeks of the spoiled meat we discontinued that portion of the testing and moved on to adding small amounts of confetti paper into their meals. Both whales suffered tremendously and their swim cycles slowed parallel, so the confetti was abruptly pulled and we started tainting the water supply with daily teaspoons of paint thinner.

ABB WHALE in the built-in pool was given a head start in her cycles because the pool was more elongated, so as to match up in a way with BEBB WHALE's larger circular tank. Overall the circumference of the pools differed by two feet only. So with the head start, our charts were fairly accurate.

Towards the end of the summer, troublesome rainstorms not only limited the amount of work we could do outside, but the thunderclaps had begun to scare the whales as well.

They were both running into the sides of the pool. Abb Whale suffered the most, as her walls were made from concrete, while Bebb Whale's pool was lined with sheet metal plating under a thin rubber covering.

The more physical the thunderstorms became, the more panicked the whales grew.

As the flashlight followed the charts of bruise exposure, Emy's voice started to waver. She told us if the whales got any worse they may damage their fins or give themselves concussions and drown.

Her eyes welled with tears, “The bruising is becoming more intrusive,” She said, sniffling. “It's just not getting any better. And it may come to a point where they can no longer be tested.” She trained the beam of her small flashlight down toward Abb Whale's statistics on the line graph, whose harm line went jagged in spiking zig-zags over Bebb Whale's less stressful one. “Whether it's the storms or the head-butting against the pool walls, the end effect and our current reality is that they may both be dying,” she said, pulling the flashlight from the dry erase chart and pointing it up at her face so we could see her talk.

Her haunted black eyes bulged from their wet sockets, twinkling like stars in the sky.

I pushed some more coats up against the inside of the door, both to further insulate the sound of the conference as well as to allow more breathing room for the committee.

Dannis reached over for the chart. “Let me see that for a second.”

Emy handed her the chart.

Dannis frowned deeply. “This is serious. We may have to let the whales go.”

Dennis smirked again, this time more obnoxiously. “We can't let the whales go.”

“But if they get any worse,” Emy stressed, pounding her fist against the closet wall, “there's just no way of saying whether or not they'll start panicking. If they splash under the tarps while other people can see it we'll be found out. Not only are they getting more physical day by day, but we're running out of sedatives anyway. We can't give them any more than they're used to, and clearly they've built up a tolerance. Are you sure you can't get any more?”

This question was directed at Dannis, whose mother was constantly on tranquilizers. Half the sedatives were pulled from the overloaded medicine cabinet.

But according to Dannis, it was getting harder and harder to do this because father was starting to complain about the refills. Mother was always too doped up to confirm her doses, and at one point Dannis had been asked by both if she had been taking the pills without asking. It was hard for Dannis to keep coming up with new ways of denying the fact, and so the pills were being hid around the house in different places. From our surveillance, we'd discovered a few of the more obvious hiding places, but once a hiding place was pilfered it was then left naked and Dannis was more and more becoming a suspect.

“We have to do something different,” she pleaded. “What if mother just plain stops bringing them home? We'll be stuck. We need to figure something else out.”

In her defense Dennis suggested raising the voltage of the electric shocks.

“No good,” Emy said. “They could drown. We already came to that conclusion a long time ago. If even one of the whales drowns we're stuck with a failed study. Worse, the whales are bigger now and they will be harder to get rid of if they die now.”

Me this time, “Yeah, but it'll be hard to do anyway. We can't keep them forever. Sooner or later we're going to have to do something with them. And anyway, we can't keep them unnoticed forever either. Sooner or later someone's going to want to go swimming.”

“Not now that summer's ending and father's still sick from the missing medication.”

“But what if the pools need to be drained for autumn? They'll be discovered.”

“What if they drain the pools without knowing the whales are in there? They'll suffocate.”

“Impossible. You can't drain a pool without lifting the tarp. They'll know.”

“Then we're fucked.”

“We're not fucked if we find a way to complete the study before the whales die.”

“Or before we run out of sedatives.”

“I already said we have to look for another option right now. I might not be able to get any more tranquilizers.”

“Shit,” Emy said.

We were all silent for a little bit. The hall closet started to feel smaller and smaller by the second.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “It's just bruises. Maybe their muscles are weak and their defenses lowered. Can't we just put more protein in their diets? We can double the fish, or . . . wait, we can feed them from Dannis' basement freezer.”

Dannis' whole family were hunters. They had seasonal kill in the basement freezer year round. Some of it from years long passed. Why not?

Emy smiled a little. “Maybe. But we still have to advance the study. It's going too slow. We have to parallel the whales better. Faster. We need to figure out where the bodies are going, what they're doing inside. None of us know how to do a post-mortem so we need to figure it out while they're still alive.”

“We could take Abb Whale out of the deep pool and put it in with Bebb Whale. The above-ground pool has a higher elevation, naturally, so perhaps they just need to breath better.”

“That's stupid. Bebb Whale is dying too.”

“Yeah, that doesn't cut it at all. They're sea creatures. Anything above sea level's probably dangerous. If we're really talking about joining the whales to make breathing easier, we should be thinking about adding Bebb Whale to the tank here.”

“What if they fight?”

“They're not the type. Carrolin whales never fight each other, even in times of starvation or disease. They travel together in packs and are known to carry and protect their dead and bury them in sand banks. They've even developed a sort of ceremony that's not entirely unlike a human funeral procession. Which is all the more reason why we should be thinking about joining them. They might give each other strength and protect one another, or one will help the other somehow, in ways we probably can't even tell. It'll cease the panic attacks if anything can.”

“But then we'd have to alter the purpose of the parallel. If they're both in the same tank we can't compare living conditions or situational growth pattern because there won't be any difference in the conditions.”

“What if we blind one of them?”

“We're trying to get them healthier, not increase stress levels. If one of them is sick and the other is forced to abandon the cycles and play protector there's no project anymore, just a patient and nurse routine.”

Emy's face lit up. “Wait! A relief cut. We could put relief cuts underneath their fins.”

Dennis slapped her on the shoulder, “That's great! Who's the best at cutting?”

Dannis raised her hand. “I help father field-strip deer and dogs every spring. I could probably do the relief cuts in my sleep.”

Emy shrieked with giddiness. “That's the thing! That's just what we need to do!” Then she lunged forward and hugged Dannis. The flashlight fell to the floor and rolled in between our feet, visiting a haunted yellowish scene of our legs moving on the bottom wall of the closet that looked like trees in a forest swaying.

With the matter mostly settled, I took the opportunity to slip out of the closet to make a round of the house. Our tea candles were still lit in every room. Thunder rumbled outside and a few times lighting struck somewhere in the neighborhood. Definitely not good for the whales. I peeled the corner of the picture window curtain but still couldn't make out much further than the line of hedges directly in front of the window. There could be a helicopter landing in the driveway and I would neither hear nor see it doing so.

In the bathroom I washed my face and watched a shadowy reflection of myself flickering in the mirror.

Maybe it was because I was always nervous, but I was never the one who came up with any answers right when we needed them. Sure, the protein supplement could work, but that would take too long. If I ever had any truly useful answers they encompassed the long-run, never the now. Essentially we all had our strengths and weaknesses, and for recognizing these things we were able to function pretty good as a committee. If I could have just a little more out of it, though, I wanted to be more than a set of fast hands sometimes. I was the good thief; it's interesting to a degree but a lonely skill overall because I can't bring it out into the open. It's not a skill that helps in the study, just one that enables it. In the lab setting I basically just make sandwiches and be the look-out.

Or hold the chart.

Emy, Dennis and Dannis would excel in life, I have always felt that. Confidence bleeds from them in determined, white bolts of energy. They could go anywhere, and they undoubtedly would. But me, I could only go somewhere in life too if I followed along after them. I'd never make it on my own without at least one of them. Thankfully we were very close not just as a committee but as friends. The way it looked now I just might always be Emy's go-to—fetching supplies, figuring out how to get past a padlocked yard fence. Sneaking in and out of locked department stores. Getting the best gifts for her on her birthday.

And she'd always be there to protect me when I felt like I wasn't worth anything. Things were about as good as could be expected. But I still wanted to be something a little more than just the thief and the sandwich maker and the chart holder.

Despite my own shortcomings I very much liked the committee. We made fun of each other a lot, but we were really friendly about it.

I walked slowly back down the hall in the flickering candle light and then softly tapped out the secret knock at the very bottom of the closet door. It opened slightly and I slid in. We had about an hour to do something that had to stick; to come to some kind of proper conclusion on how best to go about the future of the study and the fate of the Carrolin whales, and get to work on it tonight. When seven o'clock rolled in we'd have to be on our guard. And probably separated again. Dennis and Dannis at home. Me here. Emy hiding out under my bed, whispering lines to me in case I was questioned about anything on the spot.

Yours,
JARET.

The carve road.

2010-10-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

9 October, 2010 / The Carve Road / By Jaret Ferratusco.

Absolutely sure of his direction, Alyster nevertheless wound his way through the woods in almost no real direction at all. His curiosity made for habits toward veering off the path in misshapen s-hooks, myriads of disingenuous zig-zags and short cuts which were hardly short cuts. Numerous times it was sufficient to throw him entirely off course. But he liked being lost a little. It gave him a reason to explore.

He had a sort of make-shift compass system in waiting for sounds from the near distance. This system had so far saved him from ever getting truly, hopelessly lost, though it was a careless system bound to show its flaws in time. The tallest ridge of this part of the woods was always visible, it seemed, where peaks of leafless winter trees towered in bristly triangular spiderwebs and crisscrossed branches and where Alyster looked to in his peripheral vision as he sailed through on his way. If completely lost and the ridge was playing hide and seek, he need only to stop just a moment and take a breath in relative silence to check on his whereabouts by training his ears or eyes, maybe spotting the occasional whitish gray blur of a truck or van as it passed along Carve Road. That would be the top of the ridge, he knew, and then, though sometimes a bit off the mark, he would once again know his way.

This wasn't the most brilliant thing in anyone's ability to do and Alyster knew so, but it was a long, sometimes agonizing way home if he ever just used the same exact path. The monotony of a single path was like the monotony of a highway road and could put anyone to sleep. Two hours is a long time to bother with paths if done the same way over and over again, and every once in while when he did get a little lost, it was actually exciting to be able to find his way again all by himself with no help from anyone. It was a small sliver of independence that nobody would care about but him. And that secret little sense of victory that nobody could take away made him feel good.

And so this afternoon he went along his usual almost careless way, except this time he was cutting it pretty close, because the sun was starting to set already. It was a far cry from the summer, when the sun would usually be up until God knows when.

Before long it would certainly become way too dark to see the top of the ridge with the sun setting on the other side of the world, so obviously it would also be too dark to make out distant cars or even their headlights unless he actually made his way up there and walked the road itself. But it was extraordinarily dangerous to walk Carve Road at night; lots of people had been killed that way. Drunk or just unlucky, stumbling about in pure darkness, picked off by delivery vans or logging trucks. Mostly it was kids who took bad routes to and from home to Doggalin Lake or Maytown, which no matter what you did, took you across Carve Road somewhere or other. It was common knowledge that kids never wore reflectors, and every year new tactics were made to ensure that kids started paying attention, but it never changed anything. In addition to the drunks or the generally lost or those whose cars had broken down, two or three kids died every year from hit-and-runs on Carve Road. It was basically a utility road, not ordinarily used by regular people from town but more often by those trying to make it from point A to point B after in as fast a manner as possible. Farmers, loggers, delivery trucks.

So Alyster almost never stepped foot on it unless he had to get across the road on his way from one side of the woods to the other. And he wouldn't be taking it now either, although it might be faster without having to fight his way through the trees and trenches. Much better to be stuck during nightfall in the woods, if one had to be stuck. Whereas the road was like a waiting predator that gains strength during the night, there was nothing really out here in the woods to pose much of a threat except for the occasional insect crawling into your mouth and dying there.

One might see a deer once a season. Or a few birds. But mostly not even that. These were just barren, uninhabited woods.

After another quick look at the setting sun he stepped up his speed, huffing and puffing and even starting to sweat despite the cold. He'd come this way, generally speaking, lots of times. Even with his head down he sort of knew the right direction. The hill started to get steeper and there were more fallen trees than usual, and Alyster stopped walking so fast and concentrated on climbing over stacks of dead ones.

At the other side of the fallen trees he came to a tiny, leave-strewn pocket in the clearing at the base of the hill, where stood a noticeably awkward and very tall man staring directly at him.

The shock of it made Alyster jump, like someone had popped out from behind a tree and yelled, “Boo!”

But no one had yelled anything.

The tall man was completely silent, completely still. If Alyster had not stopped to take a look around the clearing he may have just walked right on past the guy.

But he was awfully strange looking and now Alyster could not take his eyes away at all. The man was not merely large, but twice more than tall. Even from a distance he seemed to be as tall as a small tree. Alyster judged him to be at least fifteen feet from the top of his somewhat bowed head to the bottom of his strangely tilted legs. The boy stood and stared, nobody moving. The tall man was not just titled, but hanging almost, in an uncomfortable position, somewhat hunched over as though the belt of his pants were hooked to a line and tied around some tree behind him, keeping him only just barely upright. His arms dangled limply in front of him. It looked like a man in position leaning over the edge of a skyscraper while a friend held on to the back of his pants, only there seemed to be no one holding him up.

And, disconcertingly, he also looked dead but for the fact he was staring at Alyster so absolutely.

The boy carefully moved slightly closer, then closer still, inching his way through the crackle and crunch of dead leaves. The closing proximity of the boy did nothing to affect the tall man, who just stared and stood, with his head held crooked and his arms, still as any number of the surrounding forest trees. He continued inching closer, half a foot forward, half a foot forward.

All of sudden Alyster stopped cringing, and he felt the chill in his spine start to warm up a little and leave his body in soaked fragments of sweat and embarrassment, because it became obvious the thing was just a simple scarecrow.

The tall man was just a farmer's dummy.

What it was doing here out in the middle of nowhere was anyone's guess. How profound it seemed. Here, in the winter woods. Not a creature to stir. No crops to guard from silent woods. Just this unfashionable, mean looking atrocity of a scarecrow, the arms too long, body too narrow.

Alyster came closer to the scarecrow, and with each step the thing towered even more. Whoever had done this it must have taken a ladder to hoist the thing up.

Disadvantageous physical attributes were not its only peculiar value, either. The thing was not dressed as any regular scarecrow might be; in place of tattered, straw-stuffed old clothes, battered by changes in weather from year to year and looking every bit the part as a scarecrow should, this one was dressed in a normal pair of moderately clean but worn slacks, under a tucked-in long-sleeve dress shirt. Pulled over the feet were not old corroded boots from the back shed of a farmhouse, but modestly scuffed black loafers that Alyster guessed could be pawned in town very easily if they weren't three times as large as any man's foot. Overall, aside from the sheer height of the thing, the scarecrow looked like you could prop it up it in the pew at church and it would fit right in.

Perhaps that's why someone had abandoned it in the woods. This scarecrow looked rather dull and sad, not threatening.

The only very spooky part was that the skin on the scarecrow's face looked oily and pained, with very real scratches born into it. It looked like real skin, in turn making the entire head look real. A small lock of hair hung over its eyes, which Alyster attributed to the thing having sunken over to this awkward leaning position. If standing, he assumed, the lock of hair would settle back into place.

When Alyster walked right up to it to get a better look at the shoes, the scarecrow moved slightly.

Panic shot through Alyster. It really was like someone had just gripped him from behind and yelled, “Boo!”

The boy let out a shrill cry of alarm and jumped back two or three steps. The scarecrow's long dangling arms almost brushed against him and when he noticed that he cried out again, hopping another two or three steps backward. His leg caught on a fallen branch and Alyster screeched at it like something had reached out and tried to kill him. Jesus, he needed to get a grip. He smoothed his jacket out with his mittened hands and tried to laugh, but there was nothing to laugh about.

Especially considering what came next. The scarecrow lifted its head and the lock of hair moved aside. The tall creature looked directly at him. This time Alyster was sure it was looking at him. Too sure, for even though it stared, hard, the thing's eyes had been poked out of its head, yet followed his tiniest move.

Tiny black bubbles of dried blood collected in the two empty pits of its eyes, frozen over crude smears of more blood, also mostly dried.

Alyster started to feel quite sick. And more and more afraid. It didn't seem right to have something like this thing out here in the woods, regardless of why it would be here. He didn't care why, just wanted it to disappear. He wished he could take back the day and not gone to the arcade in Maytown. Or he could have hitchhiked at least; even talkative old farmers—or worse, sinister old salesmen with out-of-state rental plates—were easier to handle than this thing.

“I'm sorry, I didn't expect anyone to be dropping by,” the scarecrow said cordially, opening its arms slightly to motion toward the outer part of the small clearing. It smiled sadly, as if the boy had called at the thing's home unannounced on the morning of a lonely holiday. Alyster jumped back another five steps and almost turned his back right then and ran. His skin bristled with a sharp panic, scaling his entire spine alight with electricity. It reached his brain and pumped it once, hard. It felt like he was a new boy in a strange new world, but not a world he wanted to be in.

It was one where scarecrows talked when you did not want them to. When they just weren't supposed to be, because scarecrows are not alive.

This was so much (terribly) further away from the warmth of his heated home and all the food and the relative comfort of all his shitty cousins.

“I'm sorry. I was only trying to be friendly. But honestly, I was not expecting company, to most extents. But it's nice to have company now. Please don't run away so soon.”

The scarecrow continued to smile awkwardly, sadly. It stared on, blinded, supremely pathetic. Alyster felt suddenly sad for it.

Nevertheless, with fright coursing through his veins in a current of poisoned ice water, some horrified part of him wanted to shake this terrifying shiver off and catch this right . . . suppose it were just a trick? Sure, this was some trick alright, but damnit, he didn't want to be made into such a coward all over again for the fourteen hundredth time. He was so tired of that crap, that ceaseless crap from his dumb brother and even dumber cousins. He simply had to withstand this haunting apparition for just a bit more to make sure it was not a joke somehow. Or else he'd—predictably—end up running home whaling like a baby, and the whole family would be there in the living room by the fire, across from the television and VCR, laughing ceremoniously, with his older brother or some fucking cousin or other, having long beat him back home because they had a car, holding a video camera and a remote control pointed at the TV, and everyone would be watching the tape of Alyster shrieking and turning tail like a frightened cat. They'd be roaring extra hard when they caught sight of the real deal . . . Alyster wet and sweating, cheeks blotchy red, scared out of his mind like a big damned baby.

So he stood his ground in front of the awkward bent-over scarecrow, slowly letting his feet become grounded again and the hair on his head settle back down into a messy mop of fucked-up curls like it usually was.

“I'm so hungry, sir,” the scarecrow said, disarmingly. “Can you help me?”

And although the voice was calm and warm and friendly, and even somehow reasonable, it scared the boy badly that the sound of its words resounded in the woods, bubbling in the air, taking the chill away from winter and whipping it back quick like dozens of rocks pitched from a slingshot, nailing Alyster from every direction. He felt completely trapped in place. If he tried to push his way through the woods it would be like a pantomime placing his flat hands on an invisible mid-air wall.

A very thin fear of crying passed over him and froze the wet skin on his belly and back. Alyster cringed, his eyes squinting and widening at the same horrible time, holding his stomach with his hands and curling one leg up. He resembled a slug with salt all over it, shrinking. If anything in the world had ever made him feel stupid and feeble, this topped it grandly; he looked up at the gray-dark sky, fully expecting there to be sprinkles and peanuts and chocolate candy falling from the clouds, covering him up like he was some kind of spotlighted sundae, perfect for the whole world to dig into with several thousand sharpened spoons.

He wanted to cry but knew he should not. If this was a trick, it was a very horrible one, but he would not be panic-struck and condemned by it. He just couldn't be. He had no choice but to at least try to stand his ground. Putting his arms out in front of him in case he should have to defend himself against . . . something, he circled the scarecrow slowly, looking for the rope that must be holding him up. Or for thin fishing reel puppet-strings which could be descended from the branches of the trees. He looked around for his cousin with a video camera, or anyone, anybody at all hiding in the woods, snickering, laughing.

But there was nothing. Just this massive scarecrow leaning over with its arms dangling lifelessly.

Alyster walked back around to the front of the scarecrow and stood fully ten feet away. “Are you for real,” he asked, his voice small and weak.

The thing smiled weakly, but with a growing warmth, and tried to angle its head so the hair, which had fallen again, would come back away from his eyes. It held its head as straight as could be then it shrugged, as if to apologize for its condition. Alyster could certainly sympathize with that.

“Do I look fake? Yes, I am just as real as you are,” it said. “What's your name?”

“Alyster.”

It smiled wider and spoke in its shockingly reasonable tone. “Ah, Alyster. That is certainly a suitable name for you. It's smart and handsome. A strong name. It carries when you say it out loud. I do believe it's one of my favorites, though I may be biased. Are you going to help me, Alyster?” It talked like a friend, but the boy was weary of this. Friends are not ten foot tall talking puppets in the woods.

He cringed inwardly, holding his hands up almost over his face, unable to mask his revulsion. “Help you what? Are you trapped?”

“Oh, no,” it said. “I'm not trapped at all, just weak. But I am hungry, as well as being weak. Or perhaps I should say weak due to the hunger. I haven't had food in a long time. A very long time. A man could die out here and nobody would know.”

And its face was so friendly—despite the rendered eye sockets—and there was now no doubt about the skin on its face, that it was not a scarecrow at all but a real man. An altogether different kind of man than any Alyster had ever laid eyes on, but nevertheless a real person.

He tried to avoid eye contact because of the lack of eyes, but it was hard. Especially as the tall man looked directly at him as they spoke, even moving his head slightly to the right as Alyster shifted on his feet slightly to his left. The broken visual connection followed the boy's every move as easily as any man could've with the eyes not torn from his head like that.

“What happened to your eyes?” the boy the asked the stranger.

“Well, this was done as a punishment. It is rather gruesome, isn't it? As terrible as it may be I'm afraid I can't do anything about it.”

Punishment. Alyster almost didn't want to ask, but let it linger a while to be sure. After a short amount of seconds ten thousand other things came into mind that he wanted to ask, and this “punishment” was set to the side for the sake of being polite.

“But can you see me anyway?”

“With no eyes, Alyster? That's absurd. No, I can't see you. But, I've been this way for a very long time, and I've grown accustomed. So I've learned to adapt, as anyone should.” It raised it's long arms, motioning around in the air somewhat, in a gangly, puppet sort of way. “To sounds mostly. You can move every which way you'd like, Alyster, and I can tell just what it is you're doing, to every detail. In fact, I think I should say that you can stop cringing if you like. You can stand up very tall and strong and stop being so afraid. You can talk to me just as easily as I am to you. You see, I could hear you coming from some ways off. It's just that I'm very tired and I cannot move so well. From being so hungry. I was hoping you would be coming just this way, so you could help me. And now here you are. This is providence.”

“What's providence?”

The tall man shrugged, waving his elongated arms a bit, but not too much before they sort of slid quietly back into complacency, dangling in front of its bent-over body again. “Well, it's something like a picture puzzle. You cannot complete the picture whole without every piece of the puzzle, correct? And there's just always that very, very stubborn and hard-won important piece of the puzzle to find before much else can be done. The one puzzle piece that, without a model of the finished product to draw upon for reference, like a box top, would make everything tie together, allowing for the rest of the puzzle to simplify itself and drop right into place. My predicament is just like such a puzzle, the one without a box top reference. I can't see very well how to fix my predicament in whole, but I do know that you can help me to better resolve the puzzle. And so you are not just one of the many pieces to fit it, but much more importantly, one of the most essential pieces to the puzzle. And likewise extraordinary, that different from me putting this puzzle together, you did. You found the missing piece, which is you, and you came to me with it, without my asking. That is providence.”

Alyster didn't get it. “I don't have any food,” he said, trying to appease the situation and settle whatever the situation was.

“Of course you do. Look at you, you're a healthy boy. You're not starving. There's no dilapidated bones coming through the skin. You are the product of a well-fed environment. It's in your bones and that heavy stride of yours, like a great animal charging through the woods.”

“I thought you said you couldn't see me.”

“I can't, Alyster. But as I've also said, I've adapted. I may be weak but I can sense you are not. Who is moving about so effortlessly, and who is not? You are moving because you have strength and agility. I can tell that you're very young, rather healthy. You are well fed and you have nothing to lack. You have gray pants on, and a green sweater. You lost your ball cap up the ridge so your hair's all messed up from the wind. You are agile, healthy and in every way able to help me, which will take less strength and motive than finding your missing cap.”

Almost without realizing he was doing it, Alyster reached atop his head and it was true, he'd lost his hat. He looked around, frightened and mystified. Where had he lost his hat? Running? Up the ridge, like the scarecrow said? No, it wasn't a scarecrow. Just a very tall man, thin and too tall and progressively more hypnotizing.

He had to try to shake off some of the confusion and wonder and try to stick to a normal conversation, or he'd be stuck in the woods all night unable to see his way out.

“You look like a scarecrow.”

A gentle, unhardened laugh fell from the man gently, breezily. Alyster could not see his mouth move much but his voice was loud enough, even from so high up above him. He spoke so gingerly, seemingly careful of the fragility of his assaulted face. Judging from the scars, Alyster supposed he had a right to be cautious. What if his whole face fell off? From this position, looking up, if the mashed up face did become unharnessed and slid from the tall man's skull, it would float down and land right on Alyster's face, like a Halloween mask.

The boy shivered. His leg curled up again when he did that. Slugs with salt.

Alyster decided if something so awful happened he'd run no matter how dark it was and not stop, even if he had to charge across Carve Road in front of a drunk farmer's truck. If the tall man was in pain he'd have to stay that way. If his face slid off, Alyster would run.

“Jesus, Alyster, I'm just a hungry man. I'm not a scarecrow, not some creature, not some ghost. You stare up at me as though I might contain the most terrible secrets. But look at me. I hardly contain anything. I could use some food. This is not an altogether odd request. Can you imagine how you'd feel, two days from now, if you hadn't eaten? You'd be cowering on the leaves below me, begging. I dare say you'd be whimpering. Unable to move but to hold out your shaking hand and hope I would fill it with some bread. You may be strong and what have you—and well fed—but you're just a boy. You could not possibly stand it as long as I have without breaking down and crying. It's been a long time since I have eaten anything, a very long time. Look at me, I'm as thin as kite strings. Meanwhile, you've eaten twice today. Couldn't you sympathize? You have everything, you're the man of the hour. Can't you spare?”

But what could Alyster spare? There would be no way to find food for this man before sundown.

And even if he were able to get out of the house in the middle of the night with a package of food and a flashlight to make his way, would he be able to find the man again? Alyster looked around. It was hard enough to try to figure out where he was now—and he still couldn't but hadn't thought about that for a little bit—let alone attempting doing so under the cloak of night. Unfortunately, there was just not any way to help the tall man. It would have to wait until tomorrow morning at the very earliest.

But the tall man was so pressing, and so sad, and he hadn't lost his temper at all. Alyster could not recall a time when someone had spoken to him with as much respect. He could not recall a single moment where someone had spoken to him like a person. Ghostly as the tall man seemed, he was a lot nicer than anyone he'd ever met.

The tall man's face darkened, but softly. Like a sad darkness, one that comes with years of dissatisfaction. Like grandmother's face had when they left her overnight that first time at the new home Alyster's parents had put her in when she started to become unbearable in the house. The tall man sighed; it was clear that time was wasting. But the boy had no answers. He just couldn't do anything to help.

They both sighed. The sound carried in the quietness of the clearing like the end of a symphony. The sounds hummed and bumped against each other and danced and played and lingered, and then died out. It was so silent again.

That thin fear of losing bodily control wormed its way through Alyster's body again. How incredibly awful it felt to be here right now. Now, just as sure as he was that this was no trick harvested by his mean brother or his meaner cousins, he was also as sure that he'd be better off if it were, if it had been a hoax. Alyster was suddenly very sure of this; he would even have preferred it filmed and screened for the whole family at Christmas if only this could be fake, not real.

Here he was as useless as anywhere else. And how could he be sure that out here, with nobody to see it happen, that the man would not take what he needed regardless of it being offered or not. He might steal Alyster's coat and beat him up for all he was able to do about it. Wouldn't anyone be very friendly like that, at first? As the tall man let out a very soft moan that drifted uncomfortably in the frosty air, Alyster considered this might not end very well.

And that led on to fears of something worse happening, and the terror began inching back in again, harsher than the cold.

He let the world spin a little around him, feeling dizzy in his galoshes. He was about to lose both meals the awkward man justly predicted he'd eaten. And it was later in the day, sure, so that wasn't very hard to guess, was it? Breakfast and lunch. Everyone has eaten twice a day by now. But how had he known about the ballcap, that's something think about. And the color of his sweater. Maybe it was time to run, and run fast. Alyster just didn't know what to say. It all suddenly shifted back to maybe it was a trick being played on him after all. It all sounded like a mean trick. The ballcap? Nobody can hear a hat falling off somebody's head from a mile away. But if they did hear the hat fall, how would they know it had been a baseball cap of all things? If you dropped a dunce cap into the leaves, from a mile away it would sound just the same as a baseball cap. Or a mitten. Something was up, it had to be.

The silence stood there in between the two and grew spiderwebs.

Not even the clouds in the sky were roaming now. It was a very typical winter evening. The boy looked around, trying to spot the familiar ridge of trees along Carve Road that would tell him he knew where the hell he was and how to get away if he needed to, but the compass was too hard to find this time. And maybe it was this sudden labyrinthine fright, but the area just didn't look so familiar anymore after all. It didn't just look like a different part of the woods but a different part of the continent. He trained his eyes around him, trying to spot the flash blur of a van or a truck, or the sound of one, which would signify he was still at least somewhat near Carve Road, the only way to tell how deep he was in the woods. He took another step backward, but wavered, feeling something in him trying to stand up for once and not be so afraid of everything. If the man needed help, and he knew how this could be done, hadn't Alyster the obligation to hear him out instead of just leaving him here, stranded in the woods with no food? Thinking he may want to take a few steps in the other direction, back toward the tall man, Alyster straightened up and tried to dash that feeling. Inside he was still frightened, overly confused and starting to fear he may be lost for good all alone in the woods on the verge of nightfall. He looked around again, wishing he could hear something rushing down the fucking Carve Road. But nothing came. Not even the sound of birds.

Or wind rustling the branches.

It was all just complete and utter silence.

“What's your name,” he asked the man cautiously, looking over his shoulder as if splitting the silence might set off a trip-wire bomb somewhere.

But all that happened was that the bent man sighed, and smiled again. It was a large smile, noticeably comforted, very normal and endearing. It looked like what somebody's father ought to look like when smiling as a simple boy loses his fishing reel in the lake early on a Saturday morning in the fog. It was the kind of smile that existed in life to make mistakes okay. And so Alyster felt like he had made a minor mistake in being so frightened. The tall man just kept doing that, smiling warmly, so friendly, standing up to impossible heights in his leaning way, with his arms still dangling limply in front of him. Alyster ruminated on the attack on the tall man's face; his scarred features must surely have been the cause of great pain; the eyes were tight with dried blood; when he turned his face a little to the side, Alyster could hear the dried blood snapping open just a little and in a few places, new drops of fresh blood seeped out from the blackened pits of the sockets. And the tall man winced ever slightly.

It was so pathetic, actually. If the man had been the size of a skyscraper he would be no less pathetic. Look at the pitiful way he stood, like a dummy propped up against a wall. Like he was no more than some kicked over mannequin in the back of a shop warehouse who remained standing only because the feet were on base pegs.

A horrible thought penetrated his thinking: what if the man's feet were rooted beneath the shoe and that's why he didn't move? Perhaps it was not merely weakness, but more punishment? If his eyes had been taken out as punishment, maybe whoever had done it had also driven steel beams through his feet and buried the base weight under the ground so he couldn't walk away?

The tall man stopped smiling endlessly and broke the nasty, fear-inducing silence.

“My name is Alyster,” the tall man said. “Just like yours.”

At first the boy laughed, surprised. But he was only being fooled. He waved it off. “No it's not.”

“I knew you would say that. But it is, my name too, is Alyster. And I've had it longer that you, so for all intentions and purposements, if it should belong to anyone more so than others it would be to be, for I have been around a good deal longer than you have. An actual very good deal.”

“What does that even mean? What's your real name?”

“It's Alyster.”

The boy blushed, momentarily covering up unease. “No it's not.”

“Okay then, it's not.” For a seeping moment the smile faded into a sadness, but was replaced with a crossed version of both looks; a melancholy politeness. “Is this really how we're going to handle this, just standing around all day, arguing? Is my name the same as yours or is it not? Am I lying? I say my name is Alyster too. So? So what if I say you're not a boy?'

Alyster shrugged. “What do you mean? Of course I'm a boy.”

“Sure you are. Your name's Alyster. And so is mine. So what are we arguing about, Alyster?”

The man's long dangling arms were starting to jitter.

The boy shrugged again. This whole situation was impossible to understand. It seemed okay one moment and eerie the next. Fun one moment and dangerous the next. How was he supposed to know what they were arguing about? Alyster could barely understand a thing at this point, including why he didn't leave and go get help. If the man needed food, standing here while the sun made its way further toward the back of the sky was doing nothing but making it worse for the both of them.

He suddenly felt as if his own feet were the ones pegged to the ground. Why hadn't he just turned and run? No matter how big Alyster was, the tall man would be bigger, and given the intricacies of a crowded forest, that was to the elder Alyster's disadvantage, any way you looked at it. In an open desert you could say the tall man had it ruled, but here, amidst densely packed hills, with trees whose branches grew into one another? Alyster (the boy) had the advantage of a mouse, a creature who could fit into any crevice and just escape, no questions asked. So why didn't he just run?

“I don't get it, mister.”

“Oh dear, didn't I just say you can call me Alyster?”

“But I—“

The tall man held up a long spindly finger.

A quick flash of a wider smile, pained but receptive, brushed over the tall man's face and then he lowered his head. A small lock of dark oily hair fell over the cruelly disfigured eyes. For a moment he did nothing, and neither did the boy. They both stood there, facing each other but looking slightly downward. Even looking downward as he was, the man was so tall his face was aimed at the boy's direction anyway. Though with his hair in his face and his shoulders hunched and his arms dangling limply in front of him, it looked like a dead body hung from a tree, about to fall over onto Alyster if not for being held up like he was. Except there were no ropes. No strings. No nothing.

This severely disorganized silence started to hum in Alyster's head. He stood mesmerized, forgetting how to think, trying to look up into the downturned face of the tall, weak, disfigured man and figure out . . . anything.

Then the man raised his head again, and that warm smile once again widened. And he winced while doing so. His face was in great pain and that was apparent. “Please, you can call me Alyster, I said. There's no need to be so formal out here. It's the woods. We can even say FUCK if we want to, Alyster.”

The boy steeled himself.

“Are you going to help me?”

There was no more reason to stay here and be scared. If the man was weak and needed food, Alyster could go and get some. There was no sense in even fucking around talking about it; there was plenty at home. Plenty. Every year his house was packed in like a cattle car during Christmas, with enough food being baked and roasted and fried and ultimately left over in heaps after the holidays to feed a prison camp.

So, the only reasonable thing to do was say so. He'd be the hero, after all. Saving the stranded, dying, hungry, fucked-up carnival show that this guy was.

“I can go home and get some food. It's Christmas vacation. My mom's been making pies all week because our family's all over at the house. The rest of the family, I mean. My dad's brothers and my mom's sisters.” He found that he was spitting out this information almost like he was lying. But it was all more than true, just that those damned missing eyes in the tall man's face kept staring down at him, boring sightless red hot rays through him, scorching his brain with fire, burning away every last foot to stand on comfortably. His felt his head wanted to explode; if it did that his parents could follow the bright orange glare in the night sky surrounding its gloomy, hesitant mushroom cloud and they could find him and take him away from this awful day. “I mean, my cousins and stuff. My aunt and her boyfriend too, and his kids. I mean, there's lots of food everywhere. Everyone's cooking something and it's just sitting around, in the fridge and in the cooler in the garage. I could go back home and get something and nobody would even notice it was gone.”

The tall man cocked his head reprovingly, considering the boy for endless minutes. For the first time, Alyster felt ashamed. He didn't even know why.

“Nobody would notice it's gone, I see. So, you're saying you will go home and steal food for me? Do you think I'm some kind of criminal? Have I broken something, some law? Am I fugitive? Really, Alyster, must this be a secret? You can find a pay telephone and go dial your parents right now and give them my name if you're so worried. But will that get me fed any quicker, all this pussy-footing about like cats stealing bites in pie from an open window on the street? Really, I'm starting to feel like you are lying to me.” The tall man squinted his absence of eyes. The feeling of shame in the boy deepened. “I see how it is now. I'm not going to get you in any trouble, am I? Do you fear punishment? Well I can tell you now, little sir, that punishment is not known to you. I daresay that being grounded is not punishment. You are free to turn your back on me and march forth to your aunt and her boyfriends. And his kids' children. Have a very wonderful life. Pay no attention to turning your back on someone who is dying. Leave an unfortunate man for dead in the cold, or else you might get yourself punished.”

All of this was delivered angrily, but with a certain hint of sadness and dejection in it. It scared Alyster for sure, but he could, after all, sympathize. The tall man had been right about everything. It hurts to be in need and to be offered refusal, it has to. If he were the one stranded in the forest and needed help, no matter how frightening the tall man looked, or appeared to look, would he not be absolutely infuriated if the tall man walked off without helping him?

Reading the changes of heart exploding in the young boy's face, the immense thin man apologized again, his voice whispery. “It's not an easy situation today, I fully comprehend.”

But what could he do for the tall man?

And, broken down completely, confused and bitter toward his older brother for some reason he was too angry to think about, Alyster smiled, though he still kept on his guard. Only just not as much as before. He was broken down. He wanted to help this guy. Outside of the inconsistencies within reason, this confusing, bent-over, fifteen-foot-tall man seemed more normal than his family did to him. He found himself trying to like the tall man over his family, and found that it was easy. In the case of his brother, it was almost a given. Even his own parents. Easy. Cousins, aunts, uncles; easy. He shifted on his feet, his eyes wandering around the clearing without seeing anything. He only really could focus on the scarecrow. That's the only thing that seemed to be making any sense. Furthermore, he felt maybe he'd been wrong all his life. Maybe heading home had been the mistake all along, and the tall man had been sent here to stop him from doing so. Wouldn't he have called that providence? The tall man was exciting. Past the fright, past all that—wasn't it just Alyster being a chicken shit?—the tall man was more interesting than everyone in his house at home, all put together.

“Well, Alyster? Am I going to get you into trouble if you just help me out? Just a little? Is helping a person in need going to get you grounded for Christmas? No plastic toys to play with?”

He thought about it, but only from one side. The one that was pulling.

“I guess not.” And he had an even better idea than food. Those bastards at home would kill to see this. Not only could he help the tall man get better, but he would be the envy of the house. He'd even be the envy at school. All those shitheads that grinded him down day to day, they'd fucking be in awe of this. He'd be the most talked about person in town, and then he would move on and leave that town to wonder. He'd disappear for good, maybe follow the tall man wherever he belonged, and leave town and this would be the start of something new and amazing.

That was it. But he needed help.

“You want me to see if my cousins can help get you down?” he asked upward into the darkening twilight sky. And he was about to go on into an explanation of getting his cousins down with the truck with some ropes, and pulling the tall man off the base pegs under the ground and getting him to a hospital where he'd be fed and rehabilitated, and Alyster would be on the news programs. He'd be an honest to God hero, and when the tall man was healthy, he'd take Alyster back to his land. They'd leave this place in dust. It would rot. And his envious older brother would go on to become, at best, if life was kind, a mechanic.

My tail light's out, Alyster thought to himself, smirking. Or a ditch digger. You want the piping to run perpendicular to the main housing unit?

He was about to lay his plans out when the tall man raised his spindly finger again, silencing him.

“Down?” the tall man asked, blinking his broken sockets. Small beads of dark red poked out from the edges of the freshly disturbed scabs. He leaned in closer to the boy, if that was possible given the already stressful slant of his body. Thin little lines of blood fell down around the tall man's nose, seeping from the cracked scabs in its empty sockets. “But I said I'm not trapped. I'm not stranded or trapped. I'm not hung on a cross. I can walk right out of here on my own two feet if I get some food in me. It's just that simple. It's that very simple. I don't need your cousins, I need you to help me, Alyster.”

“But...”

“I just need food. I am weak and can only barely move my body. What you refer to as hanging, or being trapped, is me weakened and unable to walk like a normal person. Because I am starving. I've only a little energy left and it must be used wisely.” The last few words trailed off a little. “Forget it, Alyster. I don't need pies. Or cookies. Or a hamburger. I need something else today.”

“What do you need?”

“I need to eat something substantial. What I need is something more substantial than pies. Do you have a minute?”

Alyster shrugged, alert but dulled. Being cut off in the middle of fantasizing had brought him back to the facts. He was alone in the woods. He didn't know where he was. The tall man was probably not human. The sun was setting.

His flesh started to crawl, from up the back, to the base of his neck. He felt picked up by a static charge, not for the first time but certainly with a stronger current than before. The whole forest felt electric. In the presence of this tall man almost nothing looked right, and in turn almost everything felt wrong.

All of this pointed downward. Alyster felt like he were being screwed into place just as he assumed the tall man was. Maybe even the other end of the beams driven through his feet were bent back and came though Alyster's feet now too? They'd be stuck like this together forever, bent forward. He felt the ghostly pain of what it might feel like getting his eyes torn out, and the boy grasped his face and cried out.

The tall man shifted just a bit.

Alyster started, “I need to get ho—”

But the tall man reached forward and sunk long, thin fingers into Alyster's shoulder with an encompassing grasp of one enlarged hand. The pressure hurt. Hot needles shot through his chest and raced down his arm, shooting into his fingers and burning up the tips like candle wicks. Without looking in Alyster's direction, the tall man said, “Listen closely, I need you to pay attention to me. I can only just barely move now and this has gone far enough, but I will do as is needed. This goes largely well beyond you and some pies. In fact, you can forget about sweets, or freshly baked breads, or superhero toys waiting for you underneath the Christmas tree. That does not concern me in the least, and so, considering, it no longer concerns you either. Do you understand?”

He didn't want to admit it to himself, but he thought maybe he did actually understand, and so the boy squirmed. The tall man's grip was like a locked door; he flailed then, arms windmilling wildly. The tall man sighed and shook the panicked boy slightly.

“Alyster. Alyster, stop this please.”

The boy flailed even more.

The tall man lifted the boy off his feet. His long arms brought Alyster so high that when he looked down to the dirt and leaves it seemed like a good thousand feet to the ground. He held each of the boy's arms at length and stretched his body wide, holding him up even higher. He pulled the boy's arms so far apart the jacket seams tore in several places and Alyster screamed.

“Alyster, stop this right now and I will put you down. It's that easy. You are hysterical. How can you expect to get through an ordeal in hysterics? Historically, it's just not likely. Factually, it's rather impossible. Either you settle down or something very unpleasant can be expected.”

Alyster thrashed on as if deaf to this. So the tall man stretched harder. Alyster's left shoulder broke. It snapped audibly and in the seconds to follow, the shoulder of his blue winter jacket soaked through darkly.

The mood turned as the tides do. Now the tall man was the world, and Alyster just a speck of dust.

“Can you be convinced now to settle down, or would you like to carry on and maybe hurt yourself more than is needed?”

But the boy felt like he was exploding inside. The broken shoulder had already gone dead. The pain had been like lightning, but once struck, it went away, leaving just a hollow dead feeling. Fear overwhelmed every emotional and physical sense. He kicked out, wishing he could punch and grab and though losing feeling in his body he was not losing enough feeling in his mind, and not being able to move his arms saddened him almost to submissiveness. Nothing landed, no kick would connect. He was helpless. He should have ran. He should never have stopped when he thought this thing was a scarecrow. If somebody puts out a fifteen-foot-tall scarecrow in the middle of the woods it's not for any reason that was Alyster's business and he should never have stopped.

The tall man's limbs were long. They held the boy far in the clear as he kicked and kicked, at open, chilly, darkening air.

“If you settle down I will put you back on your feet. It's very simple. You're hurt, Alyster, but are you dead? Think which is worse. Fight more and see where this gets you. I am hungry and weak and need your help and you're trying to fight me. Should I not defend myself?”

No answer from the boy, who had just begun openly sobbing. “Well I wouldn't have to if you were not attempting your vain assaults on me, don't you think? By the way, they are indeed useless defenses. You're solving no puzzle of your own, I'm afraid. And in doing so, lessening in value my interest in preserving your ultimate help, which harms you more than me. You need to stop this right now.”

Alyster screamed out.

“I promise. Your shrieks are killing me, Alyster.”

Then the hands holding him squeezed tremendously and the boy felt both shoulders equally numbed, and to his horror, his ears were now acquainted to the sound of shattering bone. When the next shoulder went it didn't surprise him. His mind tried to learn from this and grasp a lesson. Fight harder, fight harder, fight harder, his mind said. But the body was scared and not listening. It was pained and stretched literally beyond comparable limits.

The tall man let go of one arm and Alyster swung down hard. His legs swooped and he tried to make his kicks land but he was just a pendulum, doing nothing but swinging. His chest was scorched through with fire. It boiled up into his neck. Pain, pain, pain. The tall man shook him with a single hand and Alyster bobbed out in the air, fabric ripping and flesh tearing and bones breaking. He shook Alyster like a toy doll.

“You are not a very smart boy,” he said tensely but not yelling. With each syllable he shook the boy. YOU – shake – ARE – shake – NOT – shake – A – shake – VERY – shake shake – SMART – shake – BOY – shake shake shake shake.

“And the fact of it should hurt more than this,” and he shook the boy harder. His body bobbed up and down, flesh and muscle singing out into the night, mixed with moans. His brain bumped inside his skull Succumbing by default, Alyster ceased his frantic fish-flopping in the air. He hurt all over. His head throbbed.

“I said to settle down long ago and you did not listen. Why is it that it took to this moment for you to do so? Are you satisfied with your actions? Alyster? Do you want me to put you back down?” He shook the boy a little more. It provoked a pathetic jolt of rage and Alyster swung out with his free fist. The shoulder would no longer comply, so the swing went low of his own hips, and of course, hit upon nothing. The limp fist went wide of everything short of weakly tapping his own thigh. Without moving much, the tall man lowered the boy crudely. Alyster's legs began to scissor sharply, still blindly fighting. He hit the ground so hard that his kicking feet brought up a cloud of leaves and dirt and he toppled, landing on one knee while the other leg bent underneath him and cracked under his own disproportionate weight. Alyster cried out. In some vain attempt at controlling his broken body, he attempted to run. It got him a mere two feet toward the direction of safety but no further than that. The tall man bent ever further and picked him up again, but this time held both legs still at the ankles, with just one hand, raising him back up off the ground.

“I need to eat something right now, Alyster. There is no other choice. I'm just not going to stand here until the dawn of a new decade for you to quit weeping and run off to fetch some pie. I need a bite from your hand.”

Alyster screamed and flailed out, but the tall man squeezed harder and something else in his body that was not already broken decided to pop, killing off the feeling in his legs. Finally he gave up and the tears became a downpour.

The tall man let go of Alyster's legs while grasping instead one of his arms. He pulled one hand closer to his mouth, whispering something small and breathy, something that sounded to Alyster like, “Oh.” With one hand holding an arm now, and the boy ceasing to shake so adamantly anymore, the man picked the boy's mitten off and tossed it far off into the distance. Alyster watched with a drugged haze as his ragged black mitten sailed off as if carried by a strong wind. He thought to himself, Why didn't I run? That question had crossed him so many times it felt like a skipping record. How stupid is instinct if it doesn't work?

Then the man flicked at Alyster's hand with his strong, spindly fingers. The flicks hurt and drew blood, shaving off slivers of skin.

Up close, the tall man's mouth was easily understood as disfigured too, ripped at the corners, as if someone had reached into his mouth with both hands and torn out the jaws. And that is just what appeared to be the case when the man opened his mouth, only it was just one side of both jaws that were missing. That empty side of the mouth was just as gummed up and semi-scabbed over as the eye sockets were. One half of the mouth remained, and it was on this side, with the teeth, that he inserted Alyster's tiny bleeding hand and bit down.

Swallowing the majority of Alyster's hand with only half a mouth, he bit off what he could, leaving just the little finger and the ball of the fist, which wiggled with eccentricity even without the thumb.

Spots of black and gray sprinkled Alyster's vision and his head hummed with numbness, feeling excruciating pain but unable to process it much more than the cold, which too felt excruciating. His voice caught somewhere in his throat and stayed there, making him choke. It became a short fit, but it only lasted the span of a few more angry shakes. Quickly the boy's body was nothing but the gentle squirms of a hacked up snake. Complacently, relieved with the incapacitation of the boy, the tall man opened his mouth again and took off the rest of Alyster's hand below the wrist. But an unpleasantness swelled in his stomach. This feeling was revolt. He'd taken in too many bones, too much of what was not edible. Soon he might start to convulse himself. With alarm, he started to feel as if there was not enough time to get more of the arm out of the tight layers of sleeve so he turned the body over a bit looking for something more available and less dangerous. Unexpectedly, Alyster started to shiver again, in dull convulsions. To stop it the tall man beat at the kid's head to render him gone again. And then the tall man grabbed at a handful of Alyster's shirt and coat and ripped a wide hole in the fabric, exposing chalk white skin, and he lifted the boy higher so that his midsection was for the better part bared, and at once, took a large bite from the boy's side. Thick sheets of muscle and strands of tissue and blood and fat fell out in a downpour, which the tall man tried to drink in as much as possible before it was too late and he became too tired or sick to go any further.

It felt like ages. Like decades had passed. Black spots in existence became kinder. He punched again at the stilled boy's head, cracking the skull and pushing one of the eyes out onto the cheek.

It stopped immediately any further throes the boy would be capable of. Though this was a relief and a surprise to the tall man, it was not something he'd intentioned. Alyster blinked once, then closed his good eye completely, shivered gently again, softly, and was still.

The tall man took hold of one of Alyster's legs and then got a grip on his neck with the other hand, and took a few more bites from the swell of his belly and the soft ring of fat around the plump little body. With only half a mouth of weak, damaged teeth to work with the effort was more exhausting and painful than he had counted on, but he had to keep doing it before he grew too tired to move.

Each little move hurt even more. It sent bolts of anger through his body and so he squeezed Alyster's body until more bones popped and shattered.

Accordingly, as feared, his bites grew more aggravated but less powerful, and it became panic, which was of no help. It was like biting through steel to pull any more out of the boy, and the chewing slowed considerably, and he had to actually spit some of it out of his mouth to swallow just a portion. He let one half of the body fall and tried to grab at the soft matter slipping from the wounds but it fell through his fingers, slippery and too fast for his reflexes. And just like that the man was exhausted. He held very still, holding the wet, torn body, unable to let himself drop it but also convinced he may have to within the next few moments, for the simple lack of strength.

His eyes grew very heavy, and his arms and his head. Soon he would be unconscious again for a long time, a very long time. It would all go nowhere. He would eventually wake again, just as tired, just as weak. And that was, he supposed, the object of punishment.

Anger seized him and with what energy was left in him, the tall man raised the boy's body high and shook it violently. His face became spotted with drops of the falling blood and he spat at the broken and ripped up limbs and in the dead boy's silent, caved-in face. Much too angry to expend his energy instead on eating more, which would theoretically contribute to a return in his health, he shook the boy and thought of weeping.

But as always, anger and rage were stronger than will, and he shook the body in the air and then, holding it by the leg, dashed the boy's head against the ground repeatedly. It swept away most of the surrounding leaves and thumped across the frozen floor of the woods hollowly, spinning wildly off the shoulders of a shattered neck. In one final surge of wakefulness, the tall man pulled his arm back and pitched forward, shooting the boy far off into the distance, much farther than the mitten had gone. A thick rustle in the trees and leaves sounded from far off, and then promptly died away into silence. The tall man sunk forward, his arms dangling very limply in front of him. And slowly, his head too fell forward, as he was much too weak to hold it up any further. A small lock of hair slipped out of place and fell in front of his mangled eyes. The setting sun was now being deeply playful with the ridge of trees up ahead, where Carve Road lay, twenty or so minutes walk into the distance.

In a few more minutes' time the shadows would disappear and there would be only darkness and cold and silence.

No more strength was left, all of the stored energy expended. As little as he'd taken from the boy it would have to sustain him in sleep alone, but whether it would could be anyone's guess, and the tall man closed his eyes, fading out again for a long time.

Yours,
JARET.

Lori carol.

2010-10-10T05:34:00.000-07:00

Lori Carol / a story / 10 October, 2010 - 5:35am

I stared with an emptiness at the work before me. The lifelines in the palms of my hands were both scratched away, and I stared also at this, bewildered but not turned away. The sewer grate's dull round edges took most of the afternoon to grasp any useful hold of. I felt rage not without the bounds of humility. My fingers and hands looked chewed up, by factory machines. They were greasy, smeared with grit from the street, scratched and bleeding from a number of damaged nails and several patches of raw skin. The remaining lines in the palms were filled with dirt.

After too much thought way high up in the clouds and after too much positive attitude cracked apart by the plaintive reality of life being stronger than fate, eventually I worked my way through the lanes of a department store not far from here and came away with a chisel, some hooks and a chain.

I'd washed my hands and put on some band-aids and now I had tools and I would get under the street before twilight descended.

It would take some time yet, but considerably much less of it on account of the hooks and the chain.

And then I'd have the hole chiseled open in the street and I would descend into the part of my life that would consume and eventually defeat me. But I always knew that would have to happen, so I didn't view this as destructive behavior. There was a path set out in life for everyone—from the narrow chasm of the slick widening womb to the dry dust of the narrow ditch and coffin—but just because not everyone sees theirs in a lifetime does not mean it's some difficult or ghostly experience, or some inopportune challenge to discover the right thing to do. Sometimes, when there is nothing to occupy your time, and nobody there to distract you, the path becomes, in fact, almost antagonistic in how clear it is. So, earlier, when I'd spent an hour or whatever it was, scratching at the sewer lid, I wanted to beat my fists against the worn tar street and yell into its vast elongated, gray-black face, and spit and tear at its body until it allowed me to enter. Like, reasoning with it or something. It was only when I'd come to grips with the true physical properties of the matter that I had got up off my knees to secure tools, something which I should have thought of long before coming here.

However, just because I had this idea of how things were going to be, it didn't mean that I had some angelic bright white bulb over my head with the whole thing mapped out and solved.

If I'd had the whole thing solved I wouldn't be so eager right now, sweating, pacing, lost. If anything had been so easy, my shirt would still be tucked in, my hair moderately in place instead of disheveled. I might even have had a flashlight.

But here in the darkness and damp patches of exposed brick and cement and steel bindings, I could see nothing but awkward tunnels leading to indefinite darkness. Two tunnels to one side, stretching off from one another in kind of a similar direction. And then behind me, one larger tunnel, leading . . . behind me.

Three choices. I weighed the matter as if my two simple hands could realistically seize the most of the balance while my mind filled in for the test of the rest of this burden.

Complete silence enveloped the hole. Up above me, the street and a bright eye of sunlight. I wished I had a way of getting that sewer grate back into place up over me without canceling what little light I had left. Even if one of these tunnels went straight into one direction for over a mile I could still look behind me and see the distant little blot of lit cement that would mean the way back to the street, but if I put that sewer grate back into place it would be pure darkness with no direction at all but the feeling of the cement tube wall.

Though if the tunnels turned off after only ten minutes of walking it wouldn't matter anyway.

Already it didn't.

So I left the hole open and ducked into one of the smaller tunnels going off slightly to the left of the other, opposite the larger one behind me. At this point the light then began to recede very rapidly.

I'd counted on my eyes adjusting to the darkness, and that the bulb of sunlight descending from the open manhole in the street behind me would keep with me for at least a little while. But it didn't.

It only took a couple minutes and a few turns and however many steps and I was in darkness as complete as the grave.

Underground. Underneath the street. Chasing a dream.

Yours,
JARET.

Dead Relatives - 14 Portraits By Jaret Ferratusco

2010-09-05T03:59:00.001-07:00

4:05am.

Dead Relatives
14 Portraits by Jaret Ferratusco

The ten former bridesmaids of Pauline Amanda Kelly for her Chicago wedding in 2005 (a ceremony documented by the same photographer) are here reunited for the first time as a whole, in remembrance of her brother Jamie Pastorio, at his 2009 funeral in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Photographed before and after the memorial service at Mill-Home Funeral Chapel, by Jaret Ferratusco.

Opening Reception Wednesday, Sept. 8 | 6pm-10pm.
Showing September 2010

Eastbank Commerce Center
1001 SE Water Ave.
Portland, OR 97214

(Located on the corner of SE Taylor St and SE Water Ave / entrance through back parking lot)

Broken birds.

2010-07-08T04:50:00.000-07:00

All morning it had been like this, a lot of silence, a lot of waiting, no decent sleep. The world was so quiet at this time of the morning, something I could not fully comprehend. With my head buzzing constantly, and the violence of each sigh ringing in my ears like church bells, I could not grasp just how quiet it was around here, feeling confused and out of place.

I stared at my wristwatch, contemplating calling it off, but then realizing it just wasn't my choice to make.

“I'm uncomfortable,” she said, staring vacantly out into the darkness of the early morning street through a partially frosted glass window. She ran her small, weightless little finger through unruly wet paths on the glass made from dew and drew pictures of stick figures and then wiped them away and started again on another part of the glass. In her pale blue coat, buttoned all the way up to the neck, she looked pretty. Her wide eyes shimmered like the moon in their sleepless sockets over crescent smudges of gray. I think she's probably the prettiest girl I know.

Benignly, I felt proud of her for being so pretty, then shook it out of my head forcefully, confused and angry about a lot of things, and I became more than a little sad considering the circumstances; bundled up in her coat, hiding; the nature of being pretty effectively the furthest thing from her mind, whereas it was not so far from the minds of others.

On the other side of the frosted window the glass was partially mirrored, and outside on the walkway two police officers stood taking good looks at their reflections, but not good enough to notice the faint outlines of the two of us looking back out at them, at the freshly steaming cups of coffee balanced on the hood of their cruiser while they straightened their belts in the mirrored window of the waiting room we sat on the other side of. They moved with frightening alacrity, tidying up in the reflection, not seeing us inside the clinic lobby two feet away, watching them look so oddly at themselves, smiling like they had it so good and were making it safer and as good looking as they thought they were. Some kind of weak, pitiful rage welled inside me, thinking these two people on the other side of the window were supposed to be the ones we should be looking to for guidance, or help or whatever. But it takes a lot to see anything in their scarecrow gait but facade and showmanship. They looked the part; scary on the outside to some, friendly to others, just pictures of ideas of safety. They would probably look the part all day, but not willing or able to do anything with it. Just like me, not able to do anything with what I know. Just like me, hardly able to help her, just standing here making sure we're on time.

Staring at the officers outside, all I could feel was helpless.

For the life of me I could not remove my mind from the two cups of coffee behind the cops, lids steaming from their tiny slits at the lip of the mouthpiece. Perhaps it sprouted an actual, casual, semi-clearheaded idea: it made me want to get her some coffee too. Or some candy.

But then, the receptionist who booked us had stressed no stimulants, because they contribute to overdoing emotions, or something like that. Funny that of all the things I was worth, it struck me as profound that I could spring for a cup of coffee and somehow that would make things just a tiny bit better.

Good idea maybe, but barred. Stupid idea, maybe, because of the weak needless positivity behind it, but possible. A saint I could be, an angel, with a dollar to spare. Afterward, then. I'd get her some breakfast afterward. If she felt like eating.

What else could I do?

And I was uncomfortable too. An abortion clinic is where people come to get themselves out of uncomfortable situations, so in time, we would probably both be comfortable again, but only after the appointment was over.

It felt like we'd been waiting here for half the week already, but the clock read only shortly past six, so in reality we'd been shuffling around in the lobby less than fifteen minutes. Time slowed down, impossibly so. We would have to wait, and wait, with minutes expanding inside of themselves for endless other minutes, waiting and waiting for things to get better. Outside, the morning grew steadily brighter. But inside the lobby it still felt like a thousand long years unfolding. And the two cops out there still haunted me, all blank expressions and the beckoning cups of coffee. Like scarecrows, they gave me the shivers. Looking the part.

And what if I could see myself in a mirror too, what would I look like right now? A frightened boy? A guilty one? I wished we were alone. And definitely not here.

Trying to chase away the dark clouds over the clinic lobby, I asked her, “Do you want to hear a joke?”

Still gazing out the window -- the sidewalk was filling up now with various passersby on the way to work -- she took a prolonged breath and then said, “No I don't.”

With my hands in my pockets I walked in limited circles around the small boxed-in confines of the lobby, visually noting the volumes packed into the bookshelf, but not really paying attention to any of the titles. I think I saw something about disease, or one about skeletal deformations in pre-mature babies. The only thing I could concentrate on was her at the window, but I felt after so long like I was staring, and making it unintentionally worse, so I gazed around the room a little more, not paying attention to details, which drove me crazy. The lady at the reception desk looked like somebody had recently punched her in the face; tight, almost purposefully scrunched up features, blotchy red cheeks and forehead. Oily complexion, an effect from too much make-up. A very manicured scowl, practiced. She had been glaring at me here and there, glancing back and forth from me to the hunched up pretty girl by the window.

If there'd been less to focus on in this office to keep my mind at ease, I would be very surprised.

It would have made me smirk under another occasion, but that I was so nervous it only really made me angry and scared, and so I tried to just forget about it. This wasn't the time to be angry, not now. Perhaps later, when I could vent in relative privacy. But hopefully not even then, not if I knew what was better for me. It was time to let the worst of things dissolve and try to focus on something else entirely.

We could do it together if we tried.

Or maybe not, I don't know. As it was I couldn't speak on her behalf this time. This situation was too different.

Then the doctor came out to greet us. He generally looked to be a younger man. Older than the two of us, and also older than the receptionist, but probably ten years younger than my parents. He was dressed fairly well, and looked pretty put together, but clearly he was hung over.

As it had for too long now, looking at the hungover doctor, it seemed everyone in the world, all the people put here to do something, were not doing it, just scowling, tidying up, playing parts.

I rolled my eyes, wondering if this could get any worse before it would get better. The doctor rubbed his eyes laboriously. For the length of time it took him to focus on anything but rubbing his eyes, it occurred to me he was not merely hung over, but still actually drunk. I could see it in the swimming eyes and the flushed cheeks. He also didn't stand straight up, either, leaning first against the door for support as he took in his surroundings and the two people in the lobby, and then the reception desk as he looked at our forms. When he spoke up, the receptionist glared up at him from her desk. The way she scowled at him was almost the same way she did to me, but somehow even harsher. For whatever reason, it made me feel a little bit relieved thinking that it wasn't just me she had some kind of a problem with.

So, drunk doctor, angry receptionist, cops outside staring blankly at the morning street. I felt surrounded, cornered.

I looked over toward the window, and tears started to well in my eyes a little, but I grinned. This was just the worst. And who could we tell? Surrounded by people who should rightfully be able to help us, who could we really tell? Nobody.

“Are we ready,” the doctor piped up suddenly without even introducing himself, his voice raspy and undisciplined. I fully expected his voice to crack, or for him to hiccup and then maybe fall straight backward. But he cleared his throat with moderate subtlety, then looked at me distrustfully. “You the guy?”

I smirked, uncertain, unimpressed, worried, nervous, trying to hide just how nervous I was, and wanting to knee him fast and hard, I looked over toward the window and to avoid eye contact until I could figure out the best thing to say. Unsure if I wanted to be here anymore, the false grin dried up instantaneously. What a hideous mess.

“So what is it, boss?” the doctor chirped. “You the guy or not?”

Very snidely I reacted with, “Do you mean am I the boyfriend, the father of the baby, is that what you're trying to say?”

“Hey, can the attitude, will you? If you're the reason she's here, then we could all do without your sarcasm.”

“But,” I said, “if it's someone else that's the reason she's here, can I keep the sarcasm?”

The doctor didn't blink, simply turned to the front window, ignoring me. “Is this gentleman the prospective father?”

“No,” my sister replied, nervously, unable to meet his gaze. “He's my brother.”

The doctor glanced at me, then back at her. We both looked down as he scrutinized us. I couldn't help but think we looked guilty. “Well shoot. I was looking forward to telling him that he would have to wait out here so as not to create any more problems in your life for today. But if he's a relative, I suppose I would have to let him come along if that's what you want.”

“You're still drunk, aren't you?” I broke in, accusingly.

The doctor stood perfectly upright for the first time since his appearance, shaking the proof of his hangover or whatever right out of his face. The receptionist had also looked up by now. This time she was not scowling. Apparently the present scene had instilled in her a little hard-earned mirth, for she was actually smiling, scanning each of our faces for the telltale signs of an ensuing uncomfortably comedic performance. She looked just precisely as though it would be amusing to her if the doctor and I started fist fighting right there in the lobby. Dazed, disappointed, I almost forgot what I'd asked when the doctor suddenly advanced on me coolly.

“Why, not at all,” he whispered with an odd quietness, now coming toward me, speaking low and deliberately out of earshot of the receptionist. “But I think you might want to just zip it, yeah? I could stuff my whole leg down your fuckin' throat if I felt like it, and something tells me you couldn't do shit about it. Am I right? Look at you, you're just a kid. You want to tell me right now if your parents know you're here? Huh?" He jerked his thumb over at my sister. "And how old is she really? I bet it's not what the form says at all. I bet the form you filled out doesn't have much factual information on it. Right? You two are still kids.”

Bordering on being sick, I tried standing up straight but failed, paralyzed in a folded up, somewhat cringed position for a second, like he was about to hit me. I realized with a very real physical shock that I was actually afraid of the doctor, and I put my head down. Weakened, I turned to my sister and walked to her, to help her stand. Effortlessly she swept my hands from her shoulders. “Just stop it, Terry,” she whispered viciously.

Under my breath, scared of being overheard because of how weak and helpless to assist her I knew I was, I also whispered, “But . . . he's an asshole. Do you really even want to be here?”

She pushed me away a little harder, growing angry herself but trying not to cause a scene. She leaned in close so nobody else could hear us talking. “No, Terry. I don't want to be here. What the fuck do you think? But you know I can't have this baby. This . . . thing, Terry.” Her hands and shoulders appeared to be shaking, so I held onto her arm. But she wasn't finished. “Give me a break, please, okay? Let's just do this and then we can forget about it and we'll go live with grandpa like we said we would.”

“Okay.”

She was right, after all. The doctor shouldn't matter (should he?). Maybe I had started off on the wrong foot first (did I?). For the moment, for my sister, I felt I ought to apologize to him, just to show I was trying to make it better, to smooth it all over, whether I was really the one who should be apologizing or not. But when I turned back and saw the shitty look on his face and then looked at the shitty receptionist with her sneer, I just couldn't do it. I knew I was beaten. This whole thing had long ago gone astray, and it had already been out of hand before we came here today, so better to just try to get through it. Better to just shut up and let this guy do whatever it is that they do here.

“Can we please do this, doctor?” Her voice pleading. I felt bad enough for her to shut my mouth for good. Not counting how terrible I felt myself. That would have been sufficient already.

The doctor stood still, hands in his pockets, his back to the receptionist, taking his time. No emotion passed across his face, he just stood there. Sometimes his eyes would narrow. Then relax again, placid. Eventually, a thousand years later, he heaved a reluctant sigh, removing his hands cautiously from the pockets, like he were about ready to pull rabbits out, or disappeared cards from past tricks. “Sure, let's go. You think it's okay with your baby brother though?”

Committed to holding my peace, I wrapped my hand reassuringly around my sister's hand. Though, I felt that if he tried to make any more crippling remarks I would have to hold onto her tighter to avoid raising my hands at him. Not that I was very capable of real violence. The doctor was a lot bigger than me, and a lot older. “It's fine,” she said.

An eerie silence drifted between the four of us; me and my sister, the receptionist, the doctor, who stared at my sister with an unwholesomeness I could feel spoiling my insides. “Good then. Let's get this puppet show on the stage.”

I had no clue what the hell the doctor meant by that but it scared and depressed me.

My sister walked in first, escorted by the doctor, who stumbled only slightly and pulled the door half closed behind him, almost smacking me in the face with it, smirking as he did so. My sister turned around to say something but he put his finger up to shush her and the sheer frightfulness of that shut the both of us up.

Fine. I made a mental note to come back later and follow him home. We'd see who's the smart one when I take a cinderblock to his car and put bricks through his house windows in the middle of the night.

A few minutes into his uncomfortably intense study of watching her undress and belatedly handing her a tiny little green gown to wear, I became physically sick for something like the sixteenth time and forgot about ever seeing this guy again if we could just get out of here quietly and without further pain. She positioned herself as he told her to on a table and pulled her legs apart and he sat there sitting on some fancy adjustable stool watching the place where her thighs met like there was a television program on in there. His eyes blinked, he narrowed them into determined slits, then relaxed them again, placid, staring -- horribly, I thought -- with some kind of vague approval. Then he nodded and scratched his chin. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder but couldn't say anything. Nothing I could say would benefit her anyway.

Not that I hadn't already, but each minute, each second in the presence of this man, I felt ever worthless. But I refused to get carried away, and I reminded myself that I was not here to be of any worth to anything or anyone, I was here to protect my sister, whom I loved more than myself or the tidal flood of rage now building in me in the presence of this incredulous doctor.

What were my duties? In dreams I might have lifted him up over my head and thrown him through the tinted picture window in the lobby. But here, in real life, I only cringed, scared for myself every bit as much as I was scared for her.

The procedure was nauseating.

I tried my best not to make noises, but I think I failed to be the reassuring presence I had come here with the intentions of being. The doctor had unraveled me long before the real test was up before us, and when it came I didn't actually stand a chance. My face must have been all swirling and pale with sweat, blotched red and green like a wet Christmas stocking.

It only took twenty minutes.

When it was over, the doctor put his gloved, reddened hand on her knee and told her the same thing for the third time. She needed to rest, have a light dinner later on but nothing too heavy. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't do this and that for 24 hours and all the same. Watch yourself, be responsible, life isn't a toy, these things. After pulling the gloves off slowly, then wiping my sister's knee with a warm towelette, he looked over at me, scratching his mouth with a recently ungloved hand. “You okay, partner? Looks like you've just seen a ghost.”

“Just a little uncomfortable,” I said, trying to keep my stomach from upheaval but responding with a surprisingly non-combative honesty.

“Well, just take care of your sister, okay? You have a car?” The look in his eyes was passive, and blank. I saw my reflection in his eyes, but nothing beyond that. His tone had softened a little at seeing just how uneasy and defeated I was. Also, I think that somewhere in the agonizing twenty minutes with the surgical mask on he'd somehow sobered up a little. I could not tell which version of him might be worse. Before we started or right now, looking at me with mirrors in his face, reflecting my tension and horror.

“Borrowed," I said, coming back to reality. I could have sworn I was being hypnotized. My whole head felt violated, swarming with foul insects. "But, yeah, I have a car. It's . . . outside. We're gonna go get a . . . hotel, for a while.”

The doctor stood. From where I sat in a small chair by the inclined procedure table, he kind of towered over me. I looked up at him as though he were some mystical giant, in one of the fairy tales where I'm a side-character going to be smashed flat as a lesson to someone who comes along later in the same story to learn a valuable moral truth.

“Are you sure you're not the father,” he asked, scrutinizing me but no longer combative. I didn't want to speak to him anymore, I just wanted to get her out of here and forget these people and everyone else in our past.

But I said, “I'm sure. I'm her brother. I'm here to help her.”

“Then why the hotel? Why don't you two go home?”

“We can't go home." Then, reclaiming some small stature of self, "It's none of your business.”

And just like that, after having (slightly) stood up for myself, I was completely brushed off. Now resigning quite easily, the doctor dropped it then and there, escorting us out to the lobby with his hand around my sisters hip, and he put us in the care of the receptionist to sign whatever we needed to sign. He told me once again to take care of her, and I said I would. Then I paid the receptionist with some money I stole from our father's safe in the basement.

Before we'd left this morning I'd taken care to empty the house of anything I felt would be valuable to us. All stuff that belonged to our dad, essentially. His money, his car, and his gun.

Looking at my sister, into her wet, swollen eyes, feeling intensely sad, wishing I could go back in time and stop this from ever happening, I held her by the hand and we walked out onto the sidewalk and left the clinic.

It would be different one day. Someday it wouldn't be like this. But outside the clinic, I still could feel no real relief. I knew it was over for now, this part was over. Although it screamed through my head louder than jet engines, that things were still horrible and they might have to be for a long time still, I tried to convince myself to believe it would not always be like this. We'll grow up, she'll get married and I will too, and we will have kids and we won't think of this anymore, and nobody will ever know. Her husband won't, my wife won't. We'll have different lives, removed from this day. When we're older.

I felt I wanted to shoot our father in his head for doing this to her. Empty the whole gun into his head.

But first things first, I reasoned. If I went to jail -- and how could I hope to get away with actually killing somebody? -- she'd be alone. Our grandfather wasn't a safe place to run to. I had no idea yet where we were actually headed, but we couldn't get to grandpa's in a stolen car. I'd only told her that to keep her from worrying about it today.

So, a hotel. And some rest. I'd sign us in together as (young) newlyweds. If we can get an abortion we can rent a room. Nobody would care. Nobody has yet and nobody probably will. We'd have some time later to think about what we should do. I gripped the gun in my pocket almost as hard as I squeezed my sister's hand when I led her from the clinic. I just didn't have any idea of what the future would hold after this. I didn't know how to react just yet.

Sitting my sister into the passenger seat, I kissed her on the forehead. Her skin was hot, nearly boiling.

“I think I need to lay down, Terry.”

“Okay,” I assured her, patting her arm. I got into the car and we started off for the highway. I figured we'd drive for a while and then get a motel somewhere outside of town.

Yours,
JARET.

Only dust and rain / March 2010.

2010-03-02T02:53:00.000-08:00

3:01am.

ONLY DUST AND RAIN
28 b/w portraits by Jaret Ferratusco

Showing March 2010:
- Opens March 4, FIRST THURSDAY. 6pm-10pm.
- Reading from Jaret's new book I Grew Up In Amaltherey Hill @ 9pm
- Special performance by Joey Casio (K Records) @ 9.30pm

Galerie Salome
625 NW Everett St #101
Portland, Or 97209
(Everett Lofts, NW 6th & Everett)

(open FIRST THURSDAYS 6pm-10pm, and SATURDAYS 1pm-5pm)

Yours,
JARET.

Is everything okay?

2010-01-11T01:41:00.000-08:00

11 January, 2010 / 1:46am.

SALE: Corpse On Pumpkin books/prints

Yours,
JARET.

I said some nice things.

2009-12-25T16:44:00.000-08:00

At a diner somewhere off the highway, the four of us sat around each other in a tiny, stained yellow booth. The few tables surrounding us were empty. I sat facing the bar. A few other customers sat up at the bar, drinking coffee mostly. An old man off to my left ate quietly from his plate of bacon, biscuits and bubbling yellow eggs threatening to burst and flood the table. The light from the bulbs up above us were yellow. Everything around us looked stained and old.

We'd only been on the road a matter of days, but already it had taken its toll on the four of us. The waiting, the driving around and searching.

It was so quiet I could hear the other three breathing. No sounds in the diner but us breathing, and the old guy with the knives and fork scraping mildly against each other. At this time of night, not even other cars were stirring along the interstate.

The girl looked at me and nodded to me, the nod meaning nothing really, but just looking pained. She was just newly pregnant with triplets. There were three tiny little things forming inside here, but they wouldn't be so big right now. When she stood up it was hardly noticeable underneath the layers of shirt, sweater and jacket. With her shirt off, there was only the slight hint of a swell, looking no more than if she'd just been getting a bit heavier for the winter.

We'd been to so many places on this trip that it didn't matter where we were, or why. All we wanted to know was when. One of the other two got up to make sure the restroom was private. When it was, she got up to use the restroom, like always. We watched her until the door closed behind her. The other two looked very grim. Nobody wanted to order anything, but I got a water. The waitress was an old woman with a face like clay. Pocked with dark indentations like she'd been used as an ashtray. She wouldn't let us stay if we didn't order. I said that we were tired. She said she didn't care. So I ordered a few baskets of fries to share, and a bottle of soda.

She said, “Are you all going to share that one soda, you mean?”

I ordered one more bottle. She said okay.

The girl came out of the restroom, her face pale and clammy. When she sat down across from me I knew that something of significance had finally happened. The other two noticed as well, but they put their heads down. The way she took a few moments to raise her head and look at me was enough. I got up and headed to the ladies room.

It was brighter in here, I thought. It always is in ladies rooms. The mens rooms are always, without fail, grimier than anywhere on the planet that's not a restroom, but the ladies rooms are bright and more often that not, mostly clean. I tend to feel both better about myself when I can use one of these without being hassled, and at the same time worthless. I feel worthless knowing that there's one place better in the world than out there, and it's a restroom. Private and horrible, publicly private places.

The triplets were to be put into water immediately upon emerging from the body. We tried doing it near bodies of water, like a river or a lake, but animals could sense her, and they tried to attack the creatures in her womb. The first time we got chased back to the car. The three of us learned our lesson only after the second time, when we had to beat a fox in the head with a tire iron. It had chewed up her leg a little, but nothing we had to admit her into a hospital for. This would all be over soon, and if somebody wanted to get to a hospital when that time came, then they were free to. She wanted this over with as soon as possible.

In public restaurants there would be no wild animals scenting her out, and she would be around people if the creature itself attacked. That was her reasoning, anyway, and who were we to argue? In a public restroom she could flush it if it moved, even. None of us knew what they would do. These triplets.

They were in her body and we had to keep her calm, so this is the way it went. City to city around the whole state in these filthy places on the side of the interstate until they were ready to be still-birthed.

There were three stalls. The one furthest from where I stood, furthest from everything else, the door was closed. But there were no legs underneath. I didn't ask if somebody was in there, I just walked in. The door swung inward.

It was cleaner in here than most of the other places we'd been.

So it was getting better in little ways as it got a little worse in others. What I saw in the clean white bowl was what I expected to see. But not how I expected it to look.

There it was, after all this waiting. All this grim time on the road, and it was finally starting. In the bowl was a child formation, dark purplish skin, bald little head. Curled up, still fetal. It did not float, but rested at the bottom of the bowl. There was nothing in there but water, and the child. I wadded up some tissue paper and covered the child so it would not startle someone into a scream if it was found after we left. I said a few things over the sleeping thing.

I backed up, and the girl was standing behind me, startling me for a moment. I realized I was a bundle of nerves. It was so quiet in the ladies room that I could hear her breathing over my shoulder. When I turned around, she stammered a little, then came closer, still holding her belly. She staggered a little. She looked queasy.

“Are you bleeding?” I asked.

“There was no blood,” she said. “Nothing but that.”

Pointing to the open door of the stall but not close enough to see inside of it, she stopped. “What does it look like,” she asked.

“A normal person. A fetus. Just like in pregnancy diagrams.”

She came a little closer, but stopped again, unable to look inside. “What should we do,” she asked.

“I don't know. I said the words and covered it up. I think we keep moving now. Complete the triangle.”

“Do we...”

“I don't know. Let's just leave. If we have to ask each other about it, it means none of us are capable of making the right decision unless by accident. Do you want to have any accidents?”

“No,” she said, looking downward, patting her strained stomach.

Neither of the other two would be able to answer either. They were along for the ride because they had to be. Because we all had to be where we were, but her and I were the ones making all the decisions. I was a driver, but that's about all, as far as I was concerned. I could get us anywhere because I had a set of keys and because the roads connected to one another. That was how important I was.

We walked out of the ladies room and came up to the table as the lady waitress with the ashtray face slammed down two baskets of fries and the open pop bottles. Both bottles fizzed up and sloshed over with the force of her slamming them down on the table.

She'd watched us both come out of the ladies room together.

“You guys aren't sick, are you?” she asked us.

“No,” I said. “I think we're actually all fine now.” I looked at the other two, who had both raised their heads and were now staring at me questioningly. “Gentlemen, I guess we're on the way now.”

–

The following night, miles away, more north, in the same state but in another city, we stopped off the highway at a small, very cold little diner with only four tables and a walk-up counter. I ordered the same thing, a few baskets of fries and some pop. The other two wanted coffee so they could stay awake. I ordered them coffee.

One of the other two walked over to the ladies room and peeked inside to make sure it was private. The clerk at the counter gave him a look that was not kind.

By the time I was finished ordering and sat down, it was just us three again while the girl was off in the restroom trying to miscarry a second triplet. The restroom. Our legacy is a comprehensive knowledge of ladies rooms. I sat down, sipping from one of the other guys' coffee, feeling tense in my body but pretty clear of mind. They were not shaking, but the other two were not alright. None of us were, but I think me and the girl were able to compose ourselves better than they. Like twins, they'd both stopped tucking their shirts in or combing their hair. This morning at the hotel, I noticed neither of them stopped long enough in the routines of the morning to shower or brush their teeth. I'd done all of those things. I was tired from all the driving we'd been doing, and all the searching, but I still knew to be on my toes.

If the other two were not going to last, we might have to leave them. But only afterward. We need them. If something bad happens. After it was all over, I'd be okay leaving them at some hotel in the middle of nowhere. I could put sleeping aids in their drinks and me and the girl could slip out in the night and never see either of them again. I didn't know if that would screw anything up, but I was willing to take the chance that once this was all done with, there'd be nothing left for us to really take care of. Just a bunch of pawns. A guy with a car, a girl with a womb and two sets of helping hands.

By the time I noticed it, I'd sipped the whole cup of coffee down to the end. The other guy didn't mind much. He seemed to have forgotten about the coffee. The fries came, but nobody was eating but me. The girl was taking longer than the night before. Maybe there was a problem.

I thought we were down to the last three days.

Maybe we would have to drive around more.

Half a basket of fries later, my mouth salty and sick from the grease and the worry and the low grade floor-scooped quality of the fries burning at my stomach, the girl came out. Her face was wet. She'd washed her face. She was holding her stomach, shaking.

As I did the night before, I went to the ladies room, directly to it right in front of the girl at the counter, who gave me the eye. But I didn't have time for the eye, not if the second triplet was out and we needed to be out of here quick. So I walked right into the restroom. This one was a single person room, right next to the counter. I was only in there for about ten seconds when the male cook kicks open the door.

“Find something you need in here?” the male cook asks.

I did. I found what I needed to see in the bowl behind me. So I nodded to the male cook.

He looked like he was about to hit me. “Why don't you and your friends get the fuck out of here,” he said nonchalantly.

I wiped my hands with a paper towel and threw it over the miscarried triplet, said a few things I needed to say, and we left. We left the small, still forming child behind us, purplish and stringy, curled up in the water. It was the size of a softball, this one, with kind of a hunched back. It looked sick and old. But it was new, and in the end it would be strong. When I helped the girl into the car I put my hand on her stomach. Two of the triplets were gone now, but her belly felt larger. She pulled the seat belt strap across her chest, over my hand, looking at me.

One more night, I guessed. The other two were in the back, not saying anything. They wouldn't shower or brush their teeth tonight. They wouldn't change clothes or even bring their bags into the room. I would sleep in the bed with the girl and they would sleep on the floor without blankets or pillows. They didn't care anymore. Just along for the ride now, and then when it was done, if it came to that—which it would—they would be gone, and we would never hear or see of them again.

At the hotel, I put the girl in the tub and helped her wash her hair. Her arms were not strong anymore. Her whole body was weakened with the strain of the triplets. She needed rest, both mentally and physically. I ordered some food from a delivery service. They came about two hours after she'd already been put to bed. I paid for the food and left it for the morning in case anybody was hungry.

Surprisingly enough, the other two got up early and ate all of it. That made me feel a little better. It was getting too grim in the car with them saying and doing nothing. They both took showers, shaved and put on fresh clothes, like wind-up toys suddenly sprung into action. Their clothing packs had not been washed in a week, but the clothes were fresher than the past few days of what they'd been wearing. I felt better about getting into the car.

Tonight would probably be the last night.

At some diner even further north in another city—but in the same state, to make some kind of a triangle within a certain said boundary—we sat around the table in a bigger diner than the past couple of nights. This one was attached to a convenience mart and an auto station. There were lots of people everywhere. She could slip into any one of the many stalls even with people coming and going, and I could even be in there with her probably and nobody would get in our face like the last place with the security guard-ish cook.

The lady needs help, I'd say. Sorry. I have to be in here with her, you're welcome to leave until she's finished...

I bet no one would care, though. Everyone here was either hustling to get done and back on the road toward their destinations, or they were beat and shuffling around aimlessly from snack counter to magazine rack, not giving much of a shit whether the sky were raining frogs or knives.

This was perfect. Surrounded by people who didn't care about anything but themselves and their own long nights was the way to end this. Ghosts in and ghosts out.

But the girl sat in the stall for almost an hour. It became more difficult to remain unnoticed. These things need some alone time to incubate quietly, I think. No kind of fuss needs to be made, especially like last night. But last night went better than this could turn out to be if we stayed here much longer. Of course, I'm only guessing. We really don't know what's supposed to happen. We just are guessing at what will. There's just certain rules we have to follow and it'll all be done with.

Then she came out. I was waiting by the door. I'd been standing there, shifting from foot to foot for a bit before walking off to get a chair to sit in and wait. Countless women had come and gone, a lot of them stopping to glare at me. But nobody asked me questions. I was just a guy sitting in a chair outside of a ladies room.

The girl came out after what felt like half the night.

“Not here,” she said.

I packed her into the car fast, motioned toward the other guys to follow. They didn't need me to say it twice, and we got back onto the highway. When we saw something in the distance I pointed at it and asked her, “Can we go there?”

She shrugged, then nodded.

–

It was a welcoming center, not a diner. The lights were on, but nobody was around. The doors were locked. I looked at the girl and she was sweating, leaning on the car. The other two just stood there. No help offered to the girl. I didn't blame them for not wanting to touch her. She didn't even want to touch herself, but she was in such pain she kept gripping her stomach.

I pulled my sweater off, wrapped up my whole forearm and punched through the glass door of the welcoming center. It went right through, and nothing happened. No alarms. Barely even a ruckus. Just some broken glass, and I reached in, pulled the lock and we all walked in behind the girl, who went straight for the restroom.

I tried to punch through the candy vending machine to get some peanuts, but it wasn't so easy as the front door had been, so I picked up a heavy stapler from the front desk and smashed open the candy machine. Glass and peanuts fell out in equal measure, and I didn't really lose my appetite, but there was nothing I could do about the glass everywhere.

The girl came rushing out of the restroom.

“I didn't make it,” she said.

Great. We would have to keep doing this all night. I don't even know how much longer the other two would be holding up.

But then she filled in a better part of the void. “I didn't make it,” she repeated. “It's on the floor.”

That sounded a lot better. I went to go check on the miscarriage. Probably I could leave it here and I didn't have to check on it, but I needed to see it with my own eyes just to make sure we could really get out of here and never turn back. The other two apparently didn't feel the same way because they didn't wait for me or for her, they just ran for the door, as if on cue.

“Is it in that room?” I asked. “Are you sure!?”

“Yes,” she spat, rushing toward the smashed front door. They all hopped in the car, bleating the horn as I was still on the way to double check the restroom. They were panicked.

“No,” she pleaded from the car. “Let's just get out of here.”

But I had to see it. They would leave me if I didn't go now, but I had to be certain. If we were wrong, this would not be to our benefit to have fled so fast. If it's still inside her, in that car, and if it happens in that car, none of us will ever see the outside of that car again. I couldn't say for sure, but at the same time, I was sure of it. There could be no other outcome. It had to be in this restroom right now, and I would close the door and we would all get the fuck out of here.

I pulled open the door.

“Let's get the fuck out of here already!”

“Come on!”

“Come the fuck on!”

Voices from the car. All mixed up in my ears. When I opened the door it was in the middle of the room, balanced at the middle of a single tile, standing upright on its tiny, shiny little muscle-colored legs. The voices from outside lost all relevance to me. The child was standing in the middle of the floor, a trail of some thick clear fluid following behind it. It stood on both feet, facing me, its arms down.

The size of a coconut. Barely developed. Wet, slightly pulsating.

A little grayish too. In some places white kind of, or pink. If you pulled a snail from its shell and it writhed around in some kind of death throe but then stopped, it would look like this fetus of the child, somehow plucked out of its own skin. But it stood on its two feet, facing me, unfazed. Then its tiny little bulbous eyes opened, black and beady, and looked up at me.

I could never in my life describe a situation like this the way it feels. How does anyone feel in view of a miracle? You have to doubt yourself, and say to yourself, “Is this real? Am I dreaming?” Or am I scared, not processing this the right way. Of course I was scared. But I don't think I could have misrepresented this. I'd already seen the first two. That was clearly enough time to get over it. What does somebody do when faced with a miracle? I can't run. I should, but my body wasn't letting me. What if the things people call demons are just part of nature? Nature can be hideous too. It's not that hard. I had every right to stand here in awe. This thing had made some kind of pilgrimage. From spoken words in a basement, to the womb, through the birth canal, into this welcoming center. What better place?

I said the words. But I said them nicer, somehow, like I was trying to be nice about it.

It took a tiny step forward, seemingly to keep its balance. It didn't blink. Just stared up at me. In its eyes I could see nothing. Just blackness. This child was so much smarter than me, I could tell right off the bat. Even nature can be miraculous, look at the human circulatory system. This thing had purpose. Something I fully could not comprehend, and for that I was glad.

Only I'd had some kind of job to perform. And look. I did it, I was part of something big.

The triangle was complete. We'd done it the right way.

It took another step closer to me. This step seemed more deliberate.

Very quietly, I closed the restroom door, and I took two steps backward, still facing the door in awe. Miracles were happening there, and I had been part of it. Mother nature or whatever, it just gave birth again. New ideas popped into my head. I could comprehend none of them. Time to leave the triangle. Expecting to see the handle on the door moving, I kept my face toward the door, stepping carefully backward so as not to trip over myself. I don't even know if I could still hear the car horn outside. Maybe they'd given up and left. In fear. Fine by me.

I just kept my eyes on the door, fearfully too. Ridiculous. The thing wasn't even tall enough to reach my knees. It couldn't get to the handle of the door. But maybe I wasn't fearful of that, in particular. I had no clue what I was supposed to be scared of, or what was coming. But it was coming through that door, and it would get out. That's why we'd done all this. So they could get out.

I wondered what it would look like when it happened. How it would get out. This triplet.

Maybe it could do anything.

Yours,
JARET.

5:30pm / Christmas day.

You'll have to leave.

2009-10-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

5:38am.

I could only suspect this storm was a gift. And so gifted was the burning sea of lost goods and services before me that I stood there with every bit of molten steel and fixtures speckled with light, bounced off my poor fucking retinas like the frenetic pulsating show from a disco ball. It was good to know that the strongest do not survive. Look at this place. It would not survive. It made me feel a lot less small in the grand context of the rest of the neighborhood.

What about the families of people in this building? Those gorgeous wrecks were next. They'd become shells. Former families.

Whoever set this fire, whether they’d done it knowingly or if it had been an accident, it didn’t matter at this point. Look at this place. Nothing could help this place survive. It could only be put out of its misery. Think of how much money it was going to take to fix this. People were probably dying here in the market right now. If this was an accident, then this was what horror really was.

But I couldn’t hear any screaming.

I could just barely contain the confusion it caused in me that it was so quiet here. The fire storm was loud, I guess. But in the absence of screams it was almost like a muted television in here.

Waves of orange light rose in crescendos, fell to this ember empire. Among the piles of rubble and burning trash, therein I discovered a small stone box I could not have figured would have been a product here. It must have fallen from the rubble, been trapped once between floors or in a wall and now freed. Affixed to the back of the lid were rusted, ancient, now unfortunately charred steel hinges, and at the front, a tiny padlock, the kind a schoolkid might have to keep his/her diary sealed from the world. It was a wonderful sight, but a poor one. Because it was beautiful, because it was ugly which made it beautiful in this end of the day wreck. Even before the fire burned it, who would have bought this? It was just so different. If it was not so impossible to cry in this heat and this chaos, I would cry.

But there was everything in here, and in the face of everything, one did not back down and just cry. Providence and precious pain had met and become golden here in the fiery building. So many words to say and not enough time to say or even think them if somebody wanted to get out without burning to death.

The stone box was hot and the steel hinges were unbearable, but the tiny lock, it was just gifted metal to not have become hot liquid right away. Simply done, with hardly a threat minded, it was no match for the rubble upon which I bashed it open. The lock flew off into the smoke in pieces and disappeared.

As the sleeves of my shirt caught fire and were simultaneously put down by the streams of water coming through from burst pipes poking up from out of the grounds, I was momentarily lost in a haze of damp smoke that filled up the capacities of my mouth and blinded me in the poor eyes. But with the blackened, flesh-fused sleeves of my wet arm I wiped the smoke out of my eyes, and I spit out fistfuls of heavy ash and smoke, heaving, gasping, and focused once more—completely—on the small stone box.

Now free and pried open, I pulled the lid up, and inside the box was a tiny, filthy fist-sized plush koala bear with wooden button eyes and scattered tufts of springy, stormcloud-colored dirty stuffing coming from the side of its miniature tummy. With the burnt tip of my printless index finger I pushed the body stuffing back inside the belly, then closed the wooden box and made a run for it before the entire dying building could give up and rain down upon me in huge monuments of steel and floor tiles.

Within minutes the shopping center was a quarter of a mile behind me.

Your friend,
JARET.

Windswept front yard.

2009-10-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

4:42am.

I started to realize how unclean the neighborhood looked only when faced with the opportunity to leave it behind forever.

Before the sirens could be heard a mile off, before they got close enough where you could make out the squeal of rubber tires on the boiling summer asphalt, and before the better part of the neighborhood had all showed up to watch this happening, I stood there alone in the drive port without shoes on, glancing nervously across the yard and up the street and then up at the house—my house—shivering like a dirty little weed in the breeze. Still holding a worn out Number 2 pencil. Paper pages blew across the lawn, sticking against trees like bulletins. My feet itched on the gravel and glass of the driveway cement.

I looked underneath my feet; the soiled shadow soaked into the skin there was not just from the cement and dirt and dust from outside, it was from walking barefoot on the carpet in the house all morning.

Everything was a mess.

When the house first started to collapse, I was the closest to the front door, sitting on the sofa doing summer school homework. The numbers on the page in front of me were crawling around each other, pressing up against each other and doing somersaults. Sixes pretended to be nines; the pages laughed at me, and word problems spoke little conundrums that aimed to confound me.

I could practically hear the Music-teacher-filling-in-as-Geometry-teacher-for-a-summer-job failing me, and doing it with pride.

In the middle of a problem I could not get past but was half there to giving up on it entirely, the whole house squealed and then seemed to moan like a thousand hurt dogs, and I looked up from my homework to see the living room was now filled in with rafters and clouds of plaster dust, and from inside all of that I heard one of my sisters crying in the rubble. And so I ran out of the house, coughing, feeling good that I made the right choice, that I solved this problem in real life when the shocking decisiveness of the words in the summer course manual only looked like age-old mysteries nobody needed to bother about.

Whatever happened in there, I got out before it happened to me. If the A stood for this, and the B stood for that, the C it equaled was safety.

As a mathematic equation, this held little to no reality. But the summer course book was inside, after all, so what did it matter? Under heaps of plaster dust. Under the bones of my sisters and the neighbors.

And those guys . . . a couple wide-shouldered, perfect-faced neighbors from across the street had come outside almost instantly because I guess it was so loud you could hear it everywhere. Total impressive-faced heroes, they’d dropped their beer cans and ran inside to try to get my sisters out, but they haven't come back out yet and more of the house has since collapsed.

The whole house looked like a failed sandpit fort. Or a broken tree house in the woods grown over with the dust clouds of its passing.

Pretty soon the whole block will be filled with people and fire engines. Police cars will turn the wide front lawn into a frantic, brightly lit parking lot. Eventually I'll be pulled out into the street to make way for a wrecker or something. Someone will put a blanket over my shoulders when the sun starts to set. Maybe Mandy will come from down the street and hang out with me. It’s a Sunday night; she’ll be just out of Youth Group soon.

I might never have to do homework again. Or see this town again. If my parents are dead in there I could be shipped off to my aunt’s place in Harlen. With nobody to take care of me here, this homework scattered across the ebbing afternoon sunlight of the lawn will become obsolete.

Inside the house, there's still screaming, but it sounds so far away.

Yours,
JARET.

In our sleep and in our absences.

2009-09-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

2:22am / Now showing in Portland:

In Our Sleep and In Our Absences
22 Ethereal Nudes by JARET FERRATUSCO

SHOWING Sept. 1st - 28th
RECEPTION First Thursday Sept. 3rd | 6pm-8pm
Live music by Cinema/Minimal

Portland Coffee House
603 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97205
(503) 243-6374
Mon/Thurs 6am-9pm
Fri/Sat 6am-10pm
Sun 7am-9pm

In an effort to appear calm and collected, it’s an ordinary thing to cover up fears and worries both rational and irrational. This is what we show to other people. But there is an undisclosed place inside the body that will be of some distant unclear dimension, possessing a cruel quality to expand. It is a shapeless thing perpetually overpopulating the inner contours of quietly shapeless thoughts. It’s where all of the lonely, abandoned things live, in private, and grow. What if our fears and our worries were to stop sleeping away in that unknown place in everybody you know, and it took on a much more physical form, bigger than that secret place inside the mind and body, and it turned us inside out? IN OUR SLEEP AND IN OUR ABSENCES concerns a small, hollow place in between, where it’s difficult to imagine what can happen and when.

Photographed entirely on b/w film.

- Corpse On Pumpkin Photography
- Patient, Folded Hands Publishing

Thank you! New book out in Fall 2009. New tour with UNWED SAILOR in December.

An echo passes faintly through the room.

2009-06-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

2:06pm.

Our footfalls failed to echo, where the mightiest sounds of the house settling were the faintest of all sounds available. Pressed against the wall, attempting to avoid going further, we chose each room as if we would find our deaths in there. Anxiously we pushed doors open, but filled the room with only the nothingness I began to suspect were our fibers. Our combined weight equaled nothing. Our presences were memories here. We could see that now.

Yours,
JARET.

We do not cast shadows.

2009-05-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

8:44pm.

You've helped me across the floorboards, with your hand extended even when I could not feel it. You waited for me. It did feel like an age, but not physically. It felt like forever in memory. Our helplessness had begun to contaminate the limitlessness. With a doubtful sigh, we held our hands together and made the great leap from the threshold of a single empty and dust-filled room, on to the hall. And then we walked through the house.

Yours,
JARET.

Our fingerprints since dusted from the blinds.

2009-04-30T00:34:00.000-07:00

12:35am.

The windowsill and the carpets are musty. But our skin will not collect the same dust. Far beyond the hall there are bedrooms we don't remember. And while we shake the curtains and watch the dust clouds rise, it's easy to remember feeling good, but we look at each other like it will always be just a memory.

Yours,
JARET.

Quietly in the house we wait.

2009-04-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

2:58pm.

Something a little like what panic used to be creeps into our arms and eyes, but it's not panic at all. The truth is, we haven't been stirred so much lately. In what seems like an age.

Yours,
JARET.

Ant terrarium.

2009-03-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

7:20am.

Your friend,
JARET.

In single file line.

2009-03-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

7:35am.

Yours,
JARET.

The awful participants.

2009-03-09T03:27:00.000-07:00

3:28am.

Yours,
JARET.

Hands pressed in the ant colony.

2009-03-02T02:07:00.000-08:00

4:43am.

Good-night,
JARET.

A comment on travel.

2009-02-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

The three photographs here were taken inside the Space Needle in Seattle, WA sometime in early October during a meeting of Seattle artists and musicians working together to keep the city proper clean and safe, or something like that. The conference didn't need any two cents from me because I was only an invited guest of my friend Luke Randall from the Rapin' Revolvers and I don't live in Seattle. So wandering around with a drink in my hand, I guess, was my official place in the afternoon. At the refreshments table while filling up a glass of wine, it was a keen surprise to bump into an old friend named Carla Boche, who I had first met in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at Public Salon years ago while on tour with Unwed Sailor. Being that she was an out-of-towner guest like myself, both of us were compelled to commit ourselves to the diligent role of wallflowers, which ended up being a lot of fun.

During a break in the conference, I skipped out of the room with Luke and Carla and her friend Jonathan Poneman from Sub Pop Records, and Carla and I did this very short shoot, which lasted the length of the song 'Tears of Rage' by The Band, which Johnathan was playing on his iPod. A journalist acquaintance of mine named Kyle Larry was composing an article on the conference and liked the photographs; they were subsequently run in The Stranger in the article, so it was a lot of fun and I really love going to Seattle because something interesting happens every time.

I do wish that I could get up to the city more often. The people I meet there are interesting to photograph, and I miss Luke Randall a lot.

Good-night,
JARET.

All I could do was lose faith in it.

2009-02-16T05:11:00.000-08:00

6:49am.

Good-night,
JARET.

When you want to, please tell me.

2009-02-10T02:25:00.001-08:00

3:20am.

Perfume was all I could think of, with roses and lilies.

The way she looked when our grandfather was here after his stroke, when we milled around by the soda machine in the waiting room for half the day, thumbing through childrens books and newspapers.

I could still smell the perfume on her, mixing with the stale air and the chemicals on the walls and floor. That dark orange dress with the white flowers sewn into the hem. Running faster than me. Beating me to the whatever it was -- the everything, of anything there ever was. A part of me loved that, but the real version of me that I believed in detested that I had been such a simple fool.

The shock was still working against the hard parts of my muscle and my body just wouldn't work right, tensing up at the most inconvenient of turns, but I carried all my stuff and shuffled past the reception desk at the front entrance of the floor and made a perfectly respectable exit from the hall, down the elevator and into the lobby. To either side of me in the vast room at the bottom of the building there shone the possibility of a different life, spilling in from the glass doors, waiting for me outside. In here was a death hall, and all of these guests only haunted the lobby ahead of the ghosts waiting in line upstairs, filling the building. The doors shone brighter. Tellingly, but almost fantastical anyway, because of the floor to ceiling glass, it was angelically bright with the sun, and glowing as a healing wound to the stifled murky air of the lobby. I could sense the very importance of it, staring at the doors and how close I was to getting out. A tinkling of bells sounded in my head, tiny and wintry like chimes over the threshold of a door, leading me outside regardless of what was waiting for me.

The skin on my arms and belly crawled underneath the suit. I pulled at the knot in my tie, slow and curious and unable to get a hold of myself, and I undid the top button. All while walking briskly out of the building at an embarrassing, awkward pace, sighing, carrying a box of clothes and a few manila files with hospital reports that looked more like selfishly assumed pencil sketches of people who had survived car accidents but wouldn't ever be considered truly human anymore.

They were blueprints for my sister's new body.

What was waiting for me outside was uneventful -- a hot, muggy afternoon, laced with distant chatter and the sounds of cars circling in the crowded lot. I felt drab and cheated. Nothing interested me and I felt free. What a cheat. What did I escape?

Objectively, I was unaware of most everything in my life. The hospital somehow exemplified some kind of possessive, insistent pull at me that had always seemed to reel itself before my eyes but never formed into something I could grasp. The hospital itself felt like it had always been there in my heart, sitting over the hill like that, sucking up nutrients from the ground as it grew more ancient and total. It had been there my whole life, changing shape as the years shifted around, showing itself now in the form of the building. If I'd been unaware before, I was now seeing things more clearly. Before the doctor could even really make me understand what had happened to my little sister, I'd torn loose from the room as if I'd just been let out of an unjust jail sentence, and though I did not seek safety or being free as I ran, I was nonetheless searching for something.

In the parking lot, behind the wheel of my car, I gazed out over the hot steam rising from the hoods of the long line of vehicles that led up to the hospital.

Structurally, it loomed above, high up into the dome of the city sky. The windows were mostly white with drawn curtains, pierced here and there by black dots with opened windows that looked inward like unhealthy pores in the dirty concrete body. My sister was in there, behind one of those white spots. The nurses would have their hands on her by now and the doctors would have their hands sticking into her. Her skin would smell sour and her hair would be brittle and sweaty. She wouldn't have that pretty smile, and her body would be separating under the knives that would make her fit for life only in a wheelchair.

Somewhere there in the building was a doctor in mid-sentence, whom I'd escaped before he could do this to me. Whatever it was his words had meant, I'd escaped it fair and square. Shrugging his shoulders, he would now be watching my sister in her lapsed sleep. In the building, in one of those rooms, her insides were being pressed and pulled. The legs she used to run with -- and which would beat me to wherever we used to be going -- were on a metal table away from the bed.

Yours,
JARET.

Corpse On Pumpkin Photography show.

2009-01-29T11:23:00.000-08:00

Hello. I will be able to resume more regular blogging in February, but in the meantime, here is what I have been working on that's kept me away from most stuff:

CALLING OUR SKELETONS HOME
14 Art Nudes by JARET FERRATUSCO

Portraits of isolation and loneliness, sedate emptiness of surrounding and the solemn grace of the female body to create something both quiet and not too emtionally near. Shot on black and white film by Portland photographer Jaret Ferratusco, hand printed and framed.

OPENING RECEPTION on Sunday, Feb. 1st -- 6pm to 9pm
Showing the entire month of February.

Opposable Thumb Gallery + Café
3312 SE Belmont St
Portland, OR 97214 / 503.235.0146

Ladies, gentlemen, lonely people, housewives and gamblers encouraged to attend, in formal attire if possible.

Thank you.

Divided section of body, draped across the hospital bed.

2008-12-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

11:09pm.

There were ashes on my cuffs and the hem of her skirt when we left the Community Center, and a dusting of traffic in the road preceding the interstate. When a small boy on a bicycle brushed past on the sidewalk, I gave him a light, untellable push against the shoulder and betwixt that and the child's velocity, his momentum brought him downward and toward the street. I shut out the sounds of the traffic and the shuffling tick-tick-tick of my wife's heels, and listened in the event I might hear a bone in the boy's tiny body shatter. But before the child could collapse upon the street and break something, the bicycle connected instead with a small tree planted just over the lip of the curb, and he was caught in the branches, falling easily to the grassy dirt amidst a tangle of weak wooden limbs and leaves.

My wife held her face in her hands as I helped the boy up to his feet. His expression was simple; confusion creased his brow, under which embarrassment painted the cheeks red.

He thanked me for my assistance, and I told him that one ought to be more careful.

My wife cried as I held the automobile door open and she slipped inside. The hem of her skirt fluttered momentarily in the breeze as she bent. I pushed the door closed, quite softly, letting up once the nearly silent click of the locks coming into place sounded under the blanket hum of cars whirring past on the interstate, and the faint cries of children playing in the meadow across from the Community Center.

On the way to our dinner reservation, I placed my hand on her knee and smiled to her. She smiled back at me, with dried streams of tears sparkling orange and brown on her cheeks in the late afternoon sunlight.

For just a moment she reminded me of her mother.

I squeezed her knee just a touch and smiled again. And as before, she returned the smile, closing one hand over mine as we drove past the bland white boxy structure of the Sheriff's Station, its unassuming deadpan twin the town laundromat, and after that, still squeezing my wife's knee, we passed a small crowd of people cheering wildly as they fought for a better view, assembled like a steaming cloud of brutal glistening and jabbing fists and wide white teeth and flowing spit and shouts on a street corner viewing two ruffians at physical bouts with one another.

The wake had been solemn, and without much emotional bloodletting. People had said hello, then said good-bye, and the womb that had birthed my wife would be interred and that would be that. I pasted a cut-out of her mother's casket face in my mind, propped up alongside a cut-out of my wife as she was now sitting beside me, and they were virtually identical. A shudder creased my body and if not for the steering wheel to get in the way, I might have doubled over inside the drivers seat. My wife, in time, would come to look like her mother. This I pondered, while sifting through the day's events. I had spent the better part of two decades beside this woman. Listening to sobs and watching tears, watching the sun set day after day. And I pictured her on her death bed, repelling me with her bared teeth and bitter words. Blaming me for her sicknesses.

And how I would always remember our first date, so long, long ago. When I took her to the mill after the parade and we kissed in the moonlight without so much as knowing each other's last names.

Good-night,
JARET.

With bad eyes you can see just a little.

2008-11-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

9:45am.

At some curse, or some speed, I pulled the door wide and almost tumbled into the elevator, crumbling up a small lady with a cane. I righted myself soberly, tossing off the indifference I truly felt with a fake smile that I did genuinely believe might have been worth a thousand dollars if not for the terror of the shock of the end of life's lessons that had weighed heavily on the sagging skins of this terrible old birdlike little lady. She gasped and swung the cane at me, pricking my shins like a lithe little thorny branch in the wind. I was momentarily astounded at the look on her face, which told awkwardly and so assuredly of mistrust and misgivings in spectacular abundance, and then I smirked, ready, so completely ready, to just let go and give her the hardest punch I could muster, right in the mouth. She had no right to hit me with her cane, I reasoned; crazy or old or whatever, she simply hadn't the right to inflict this upon me.

But the urge to strike her was only a passing fancy, as most violence surely is, and I smirked again as she huffed and pressed the same button for the ground floor once and again and over and over. Like singing along to a pleasant old tune drifting out across the room from a small transistor radio, I hummed along to her angry sighs and bobbed my head, entirely unsure about myself but somehow properly composed nevertheless.

When we hit the ground floor and the elevator began to settle, she filled up the doorway of the elevator with her spindly little bone-body and pressed the cane length-wise into the frame like she were expecting a tide of attackers once the door finally opened. But she wasn't meaning to prevent any such entrance. It was my exiting before her that she guarded the doorway against. The rage in me felt hotter than the awful need to let it slide. And so I narrowed my eyes toward the back of her witchy scarecrow head.

The sheer nerve of this son of a bitch old little mummy, I thought.

I could have struck her in the back of the head. Almost - I did feel the fucking urge - I almost spoke into the back of her wiry gray head, "Are you a widow? Are you lonely now that your husband has left you for a much better place than in your old, fractured arms? You are alone, old lady. Alone."

But of course she was. Old fucks like this always were, weren't they? Widows, lonesome crazy widows. Of course they were.

But I let the bell sound, and I stood back while she carried her fragile dusty body out into the lobby of the hotel. And she sure did shuffle slowly. If I doubted for a second the intention in that aged, crippled march, then I was a fool when she turned her head and sneered at me. The nerve. How calculated is the heart when it turns to such mockery of civility?

Suddenly I wished her husband would come back from the dead and hit her in the eye. I wished he would crawl into the lobby, smelling of his grave, and strangle her in front of me and then drag her out to the gutter and let the leaves in the wind cover her.

But I said nothing, only held the dry scentless flower in my hand that I'd plucked from the bedstand and I whisked past her as if she were no more than just another potted plant along the corridor, and I paid the morning's due at the counter.

Carolyn was at the counter. Dressed smartly in her purple hotel blouse, with her name stitched in pink over her small, purposeful breast, igniting in me some kind of minuscule reluctance. Her effortless beauty seemed to sink me. She smiled and typed in my information, accepted the cash and peeled the bills away with fingers so exacting that it was like a spider wrapping up a fly in silk, and once the bills were in the right slots, she smiled approvingly to the open cash drawer and snapped it closed, then looked up and thanked me.

I took my eyes away from her hands, and the name over the breast on her blouse, and the thin, painted lips of her pressed smile, and never felt as cold in my life as I did then, when I realized the barrier of client and hostess would never be crossed.

Behind my back, I stuffed the colorless ill-attended flower into my back pocket where she could never know that it had ever existed, hearing it crumple in dry cracks and raspy scratches.

"Thank you, Carolyn," I muttered, staring blankly into her eyes, filling no void in the ensuing silence. And I stood there for a bit, unalarmed at all, feeling my body lose heat and pressure while my head in turn expanded like a balloon. I closed my eyes for a bit and pictured that decrepit old lady from the elevator and how I prayed for her pain in a hospital bed to be unlike anything another human being had ever suffered, and I passed gently over a thought as to what her dead husband must have been like in his prime, and I pictured him making love to the old lady when she had been in her prime, too, and the motions they would set underneath the brittle, starched woolen coverlet of the hotel bed, like young snakes awaking from womb of the serpent mother.

I smiled to myself, forgiving the old lady her trespasses. Age was awful lonely, after all.

All things must end. So too would I. And Carolyn would be dead one day as well. And the mortician would pop open the buttons of her blouse, take the shirt down past her shoulders and remove the bra, then insert a scalpel blade vertically down her middle and witness the bones of her and the stillborn heart and he would never know the desire that I once had in my little life for this speechless hotel counter girl.

When I opened my eyes, Carolyn was staring at me with distress and confusion, and when she asked very politely, with a properly somber concern, if I was feeling ill today, of course I said yes, and that it was just a mild head cold, but enough to leave me a bit out of sorts of course, and I smiled nervously at her and pretended every bit of the way that it was just a cold. Only a passing cold.

But it's not just a cold. It's a cold life, but not just an affliction that will be passing any time soon. I might stay at the hotel indefinitely. And in sleep might I dream of being the perpetual mortician, and would I too dream of her tonight, on the steel bed, lit up by hard fluorescent lights, saddled dreamily with the task of preparing this beautiful girl for the sleep of eternity.

My cold, loveless hands on her cold, lifeless stomach.

Yours,
JARET.

Just your promises and love only.

2008-11-23T04:20:00.000-08:00

6:08am.

Not quite naked, I waded out past a thick patch of lily pads. My shoes and socks looked hollow and untouched in a benign clump under a thicket of branches and trash and thorns. The only people out here would have been lost or losing, yet I hid my shoes and the socks because it would not be very safe walking back to the highway barefoot. Brambles and microscopic granules of glass and larger pieces of glass from cracked abandoned bottles would get the best of the wanderer in situations as unlucky as this. Someone fishing might find the shoes and make off with them and that would set off the domino effect and I would lose a leg from the poison barb of a plant, or the appropriated fisherman might land a hook into my skin and I would yelp just as helplessly as a hound.

The water splashed lightly and softly against the lilies and the oasis of the skin ahead of me and I realized my fears were just projections, though. For who would waste time out here on a still autumn night like this? Highway strips aren't prime social spots. Only it's just that I wanted to be here so much that it became impossible not to materialize others feeling the same. I could practically feel some bastard's eyes roving from the road down to the water and wanting to stop, come out to the edge and fish, smoke a cigarette or drink a beer. I could feel them, but they weren't there.

Just projections from dizziness and desire.

Lonely little coves like this are trafficked seldom, actually.

Broken bottles and pieces of steel and sharp slices of plastic were haphazardly strewn about everywhere on account to the water's proximity to the highway. A bridge over un-compromised water is very hard not to toss trash into, and I could testify to that a thousandfold. Shit that shot out from destiny and flight and drive, it littered the horizon from my view here at the edge of the cold, cold water. Forgotten, uncared for crap built up around me in mindless little rot cities. All of this shit and weeds and mud, and my shoes and socks bundled up under some branches, and my sick stomach from the way the flies dug in through my nostrils and stuck to the inside of my throat.

Up to the collar of my shirt in the dark blue water, I began to float out toward her, and then I was paddling lightly, not swimming but just coasting slowly toward the body. Even as slowly as I moved, the motion of my arms and legs caused the surface of the water to ripple, shattering the steel facade of the lilies, lapping against the floating girl's shoulders and breasts and upturned face.

Small tides washed into her mouth and then receded. Surges of fine blue chalky water pumped in and out from between her gaping black well mouth and blue velvet lips.

When I was next to her my heart was pounding, and my breathing acting up exponentially. The water felt frigid, no doubt responding to the cold pulses from the heat of the beautiful corpse. She was a snow volcano, boiling in frost and set to rupture in an ecstasy of cold, lifeless, ex-explosion. I wanted to climb her and look into the mouth of that volcano, into pumped water and the fly nests and the squiggly amoeba or tadpoles and minnows and see down into her black throat and kiss the tissue before it could decompose and become unkissable.

This close, still wading, I could see below the surface of the water, as shimmering reflections of her breasts slid from tiny wave to tiny wave, curling along ripples, overlapping other images of her breasts over and over again as the tiny waves danced across the surface of the water, with the permanent ragged peaks of her nipples hardened like the channel of a stone canyon. Duly, in time, this flesh would too erode and become an expanding canyon. The water would nip at her fibers until it carved rivers through her, and in time she would become tatters of fabric and ruined tangles of algae, weeds and a watery windchime of moldy green bones.

But her eyes.

Awake to the afternoon more so than mine, her eyes sparkled. I could make out soft hues of sky blue, mossy strands of green and shattered fragments of velvet red furiously splintered in her irises. There was a life in her eyes that was alien to me. I swam to her; daunting cave mouth, egg host and fish nest, arctic nipples and blank bloodless bulging eyes.

I held her floating carcass, which collapsed in my arms with the accordion note of a music that was so much like the sigh of a large animal dying that I looked around me, shuddering at the thought of a whale that would now swallow us. Heat and gasses escaped her mouth when I squeezed her tight, disintegrating in the fly-nests and the choked weeds she was caught in. I breathed in but felt no extra desire at sharing her breath; the deterioration in her cells moved my stomach to hitch, but within moments I was accustomed. Because I had to. I could begin to understand this because I felt like I had no choice.

Had she been hit? Had some bastard knocked the life right out of her in a hit-and-run? I pushed her body to the surface and it floated easily. I turned her around, my fingers exploring her cold body, but there were no marks to make an understanding of, no crushed bones. No gashes on the four intact limbs. Where did you go wrong, beautiful? I want to go wrong there too, but back in time, with her, but maybe survive it. Or at least get knocked into the water with my hands on her body, gasping timid little fucked-up stupid breaths, just trying to understand that I was dying with her, certainly not alone, touching her body under the water as we tried to float to safety even as we died.

A lot of garbage. I bet she flailed. She didn't try to save herself, probably. Just probably she bobbed up and down, gasping for lack of breath instead of for fight. Maybe she was dead before she hit the water. Out here, in the middle of nowhere? She might not have been so seemingly walking along after all. Probably someone put her here and that she was long dead. Or maybe she was killed here. No marks on her body that I can see, though.

Mysterious dead angel. Naked as the day she was born.

Suddenly I felt wrong to be so clothed so I took open the buttons of my shirt and undressed underwater as best I could without drowning.

I rested my cheek to hers. Who knows how long she'd been dead and floating here, but she was still soft to the touch. Fate had positioned her here. Some awful fate. There was no joy in her eyes but I wanted to find it for the both of us, if possible in this infested water.

Maybe I would stay with her. I could fall asleep on the raft of her body, and maybe in sleep I would fall under the surface of the water and perish too but never know it was happening. God, I hope not. I couldn't take my eyes from her, but I didn't want to die for her, or die here with her. But then again I didn't know what I needed either. Maybe I needed something right now but did not know it or understand the signs. Such an easy thought, but as an action? Futile. Even if I started to drown I'd wake up for sure, and swim to safety in the twilight. I'd be dry on land before sunlight. But far away from her. I knew I wouldn't have the guts to swim back out after catching my breath. Not while the sun was down.

You can't win, ever. You can't have what you want.

I just wanted to know who she was and why she was floating in the water off the highway. Who hated her so much that they'd do this to her?

Or who loved her enough to? That was an eerie thought indeed. I shuddered under the water, naked as the day I was brought into this world. This poor girl. Her fish house chest, probably swimming with the lives of untold water creatures too small to see in this dimming light. Maybe even spiders had swum into her ears and were spinning nests to lay water eggs and they would grow fat and powerful inside her head while the rest of her body just fell apart under the water. Fishes would nibble at her thighs, breasts and stomach. She'd be food belly and eaten legs, fat food bloated and thick. Birds would take her eyes before the sun could rot them out. All I wanted was to know her a little better.

Who was she and why had she snatched up my heart like this?

In my small life I'd never find an answer. I could kiss her cold lips, but the thought of sharing her mouth with parasites hitched my stomach up again. Unwilling to accept this as plausible, I kissed her anyway, against all odds and parasites. Then, I pushed myself away from her body after kissing her, feeling content, and I floated in front of her with my legs tangled in hers and we both floated on our backs and watched the sky change colors. She was anchored somewhat by a tangle of weeds, so we didn't coast along into deeper water, where the creatures were probably bigger too and more dangerous still. I bet when she was alive she had never done something like this with another person, alive or dead, lazy in the water just looking up and watching the sky. Looking back on it, I hadn't ever done it myself either. Unburdened, floating in the highway run-off of trash and water, I swam with her and watched the sky burn away from orange to gray.

But there was no joy in it. Because I was forcing her dead body to experience this. In a way, forcing myself too. But the fact that she couldn't swim away was a small and cuddled comfort and it was easy to watch the sunset, even though my arms began to hurt and the way the water surrounding her smelled was making me blue in the face. Very cautiously, while still on my back, I lowered my mouth into the water and sipped from it, and swallowed water in sour little soundless gulps, seeing us reflected in the shapes of the clouds. Only up there we looked like doves soaring and not two people floating in the weeds and minnows beside the rush of the highway, one person being dead and the other working harder and harder to support their combined weight on the surface of the water.

Yours,
JARET.

With the lights on or off.

2008-11-14T07:02:00.000-08:00

7:52am.

I dreamed that I had a thousand hands. Nothing could be taken from me, and nothing could get past me. I had everything. Thin tentacles streamed from my body, puckered with tiny little hands. They grasped and groped, feeling everything in sight with a strength wholly unimaginable. The sensation of this expanded realm of touch pitched my thoughts in every last direction but straight ahead, and I knew that this was what beauty meant after all. Neither smile nor flower meant anything compared to this. Blue skies were shit compared to the thousand hands, feeling everything in sight. More: having everything available but touching nothing significant. There! Perfection.

I groped for hard, flat surfaces, dusts in the air, granules in the floor and the heights of ceilings. To do nothing with everything became the the most worthless and antagonistically real goal I ever threw myself into. In my dream I twisted away from this perfect gift and with one thousand hands failed to touch a single significant surface. I triumphed in the act of avoiding stuff, with the world in my hands six dozen hundred times the hell over.

But then the dream came to a similar conclusion as others. It showed itself as only a dream. No surprises at all.

The regular world was closing in on me and I knew it, could sense it. At the same time I backed away from it, the sheer horror of having to leave the dream drilled into me cold and hard as a nail driven underneath my eyes, trying to pry the lids open forever and keep them open.

Exactly like I thought I might be in real life, I grimaced and pulled faces until the scene before me became a total nightmare. Everyone had their attention on me when at last I opened my eyes. It's not a new scene; this has happened before. Awfully enough, it has. But I still couldn't get used to this shit with people crowding around me. What the fuck, I'm not a circus oddity. Was I glowing? Had I materialized suddenly from thin air? The expressions on these douche bag faces could almost convince me they were seeing some horrific magic trick, complete with a girl sawed in half but then re-assembled; all round eyes, oh-shaped mouths, timid gasps. They were watching me re-assemble, only I wasn't re-assembling. You couldn't tell by these shitty faces, though. I'd really done it this time, I guess.

Everyone in the office stood above me, crowded, gawking at me. When I came to my senses, casting off the disorientation quite unwillingly, I found that I was balled up on the floor by the punchclock. Fetal position, soaked in sweat, nerves shot. This feels worse than the other times, and I have an awful feeling that I'd made quite a spectacle of myself while out cold. Did I talk out loud? Scream? Cry? Who the fuck knows. I wouldn't get any answers from this bunch, that's for sure. It would not be polite. Better to let me deal with it alone. Lord knows I need any more alone-time in my life.

The eyes in these faces bulged fat like reptilian eyes, mouths pursed. Not a smooth face in the throng. I had made a scene, and I would pay for it. Sure as shit, I'd fucked up bad this time.

Gavin was the first to extend a hand, and he stared at that hand -- his own hand -- like the gesture was an act of defiance committed against himself. The fingers splayed weakly at first, unsure, and the palm turned upward, tensely. I pressed my palm into his and the fingers suctioned over mine, tight and clammy and quick, robotic. Gavin pulled me up with no time to spare and I let my body rise with this uncomfortable haste.

Once on my two feet, however, the world seemed a much more harmful place. That's why, I know now, curling into a ball on the floor is that instinctual. The bad parts are justifying themselves to the good parts, and the two talk it over; meanwhile, I'm not being told what's happening, my body's coming to an agreement with my mind that's completely private, excluding me entirely, and I wake up in the middle of the floor at work.

My co-workers attempted to disband, but people were still staring at me, unable to pull themselves away from this. I might have been one of these people too if I weren't so damned stuck in me. Gavin walked me back to my desk, with Lucille taking a portion of the weight of my other side, one hand on my hip and the other at my elbow. Lucille was old enough to be my mother. She looked at me with an expression bordering on speechlessness. Her gray hair suddenly seemed malicious. The wrinkles in her face and the motherly attention paid to seeing me to safety now felt like a hammer. I looked then to Gavin, and he seemed to be taking on the same role. Their help seemed to me like harm. Just softer ways of kicking me in the spine until I cracked and doubled over.

The funny thing is, I know that's a fucking lot of shit. They were good people. They are good people. At least as far as I am concerned. It's my mind that's causing the harm. Not me. My mind. Making its own decisions.

"You're getting worse, Alan," Lucille said to me, very quietly.

"No shit, Alan," Gavin agreed. "You're gonna lose your job if you do this in front of Bralen."

No shit, Gavin, I said to myself without saying a word. But my job was already fucked and I knew it and those gawking faces knew that I knew it. Everyone knew it. Things were getting worse and there apparently was not a thing in the world that I could do to stop it. The only fucking secret here was what the hell was happening to me.

"Joe Bralen's not a bad man but he won't have this, Alan," Lucille said.

No shit, Lucille. No shit.

Back at my desk, I spent the rest of the work day pondering. My job can be replaced. They can replace me, and I can replace the job. But what I can't replace is my sense of self. What the hell is happening to me? I could remember, if vaguely, curling up right in the middle of the goddamned hall. With who knows how many people watching. Curling up into a ball and going to sleep. To nightmare.

Something inside my head is breaking. I'm so lonely I can't take it anymore. When I was younger I could stand being disembodied and I could withstand the trauma of perhaps even hallucinating a little. Back then I could actually skip my medication and I'd feel sick a lot, smash neighborhood items like car windows and mailboxes, and then I would feel a little better. But I no longer have these things. I just have my apartment, and this job. These people.

I'll lose my job and even if I can get another one the very next day, so what? What's that going to do for me? I'm so lonely I can't take it. And my head is on strike; it's defecting. It doesn't want to be sunk with the ship of my body. Smart brain, stupid me.

When I leave work I exit through the back hall and press my fingers into the buttons on the confection machine. Candy bar, chocolate muffin, potato chips, candy bar, spiced almonds, barbecued almonds, barbecued peanuts, more chocolate, a ham salad sandwich. It's like a maze. A rat maze.

I'm not meant to get out, perhaps. Lucille would be gone by now so I can't count on her. Gavin's a good guy but he wouldn't be seen helping me home if a vice presidency in the company were pitched to him for it. Things just got very dangerous. More so because I need this job to keep me regular. I need normalcy, steady hours and steady people. Without Lucille or Gavin or Kilby or Cane or even stout, bitchy Joe Bralen, I might go over the end worse.

My mind is fracturing. Nobody knows the extent of what being lonely can do, not even those who are being done to. It's a mystery door, and you only get to see the prize when you have to. When I have to claim the prize there will not be a room behind me anymore. Didn't I see this happening when I couldn't fucking figure out what I was doing this morning, patting the other end of the mattress like I was looking for someone's leg to hold onto, or an arm or a shoulder? My empty bed is stretching out, growing the way deserts do, only faster, and more visible to the naked eye.

Gavin and Lucille have probably talked about this to the others by now. It's not their fault, it's mine. I'm all alone, you know? Just going out of my mind. I bet it doesn't hurt so badly when you can't see it happening. Or maybe it does. I don't even know how to get home right now, let alone perfect a synopsis for this terrible equation. I can actually feel my body writhing along the floor like an earthworm. It doesn't matter that I'm physically leaning against the soda machine, still as a rooted tree. It doesn't matter because I can feel myself burrowing into the floor because some kind of picture is developing in my head that's pretty far fetched from what's legitimately going on.

It would not surprise me if I don't make it home tonight alive.

Good-night,
JARET.

The way your teeth strike me.

2008-11-02T01:50:00.000-07:00

1:52am.

On a rare day like this, the dirty carpets and the mold on the base of the couch and underneath its cushions meant nothing. I pressed my face flat against the mites and the weave and smelled the carpet at its worst this summer, and it was not just dirt and bugs and the filth of unchecked growth, it was also anger and resentment and refusal. What I'd always despised then appeared to me fresh and blameless. I could stand the roaches and the mold and the dirty bedsheets. The carpet and the awful smell of dirt and rot and sweat and hell was then cloudlike, atmospheric and lordly. Where my body moved it felt there, right there, there was a niche for me. And then another another, and another, until the whole of my existence seemed to fit. And it grew mightily there, becoming easy and I was fluent with it so suddenly.

What's more, the godliness of this desolation dissipated too, and I was left with a nothingness. An evaporated sense of existence that beamed brighter than the sun.

I could understand a whole lot about my life by the state of the carpet. The mold growing on the couch had its own place in my heart. It was a place that I regularly had kept locked up and shunned. But not now. I practically had it in my mouth, shoving the lower part of my face underneath the couch, my arm slithering below in the crack beneath the carpet and the underside of the couch. But I had to be quiet, because there was someone sitting on the couch watching television.

Within an inch of overwhelming disappointment I found the two dollars. At this time I clenched my fist and took note of the greasy bills in my dark hand under the couch and willed myself never to say never. Nobody would ever dare to move this couch, so I knew the cash would still have been there. Didn't even have to touch cockroach eggs either. This was providence. Dead animal providence. The future of providence.

I pulled my arm out, clutching the cash and stood up quietly and left for the garage, picking up my father's axe and slipping out the back door of the garage. Then I went back into the woods and to the animal I had earlier stumbled across, still there breathing a ragged body through, almost dead.

I didn't care what its ailment was, only that it could not run away. And I don't know where the feeling came from, but it was strong. Upon closer inspection, now that I needn't have a worry in the world that it would be gone and that I would not get my chance, I found that it was a deer.

This was grace, I felt. It must be.

It heaved and sucked at the air and its eyes darted fretfully, antagonized and bewildered by my presence. I did not care about the deer, I did not care about saving its life, I did not care about putting it to an easy death to erase its present suffering, I did not care about the implications of my impending actions, I did not care about what it would mean to me afterward, I did not care about my life, I did not care about my death, I did not care about this city, I do not care about sleep or rest or the beads of sweat on my face. I do not believe in fate. I did not even think I could die.

I raised the axe and the deer shook and I started hacking at its body with vigor and relentlessness. I hacked at the deer and tore it to pieces, collecting beads of blood on me to swim with the sweat.

Seasons seemed to pass and then I was hacking at blood pools, bone and earth. The flesh was like muddy oatmeal. The deer was pulp, my shirt soaked with sweat, and the I let the axe fall into the mess before me and I breathed for the first time in my life, and knew truly that this was not a joke, that I was alive and that the world was real. The euphoric charge in me was second to nothing, and my life was second to nothing, and I existed by myself in this world.

I would not bother to clean the axe and return it to my father's tools. I simply would not bother with anything anymore.

That night I slept soundly. The two dollars from under the sofa that I'd stashed for a "rainy day" had paid for candy and soda and a new paperback from the corner store.

I can't fucking wait for tomorrow.

Good-night,
JARET.

Will you wait for me to get there?

2008-11-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

4:57am.

Vivienne hangs her hand over the counter and sighs, and I pull the paper cup my way, intending to fill it with water. I'll probably have more than six cups of water before I leave. Vivienne's eyes look like shovels and I can already feel them digging into me. I haven't even had a chance to try to figure out how to erase this night from my memory yet. But I'm just so hungry. Before school this morning I pulled a paper plate out of the trash bag in the kitchen because I knew there was dried cheddar cheese and maybe some dried out sausages left on it from a microwave meal I couldn't finish because my father was throwing shit like chairs and lamps around the house again and that meant we all had to go to bed. At seven in the morning it tasted just fine, the plasticine cheese and the hard sausage bits. Even through the minty toothpaste taste in my mouth, it was good.

And now I owe Vivienne something. I hate owing people. It takes the whole lunch hour to raise money for a bag of chips by being silly and pretending like asking for change is just a fun thing to do for a soda while waiting for the school bus. The truth was, the school bus could never come late enough. Being at school at the bus port was easy. Being at home with that fucking tornado tossing my whole family around was what was really hard.

"Thanks, Vivienne," I say, honestly grateful for the food I'm taking but embarrassed beyond measure. Without her I wouldn't be able to find food tonight. It makes me mad.

At the other side of the counter the greasy kid with his shirt half-way untucked hands me a packed bag full of enough burgers and fries to last me for days, and he winks. It's not just food enough for tonight, but enough to give to my brothers back home. This could last me for days if I keep it to myself. Blankly, I accept the bag of food and nod, but I'm not responding to him in the way he thinks I am. When he nods back and smiles I know he's fallen for it, and in my heart I sincerely wish for his death.

I look over at Vivienne and wish she were dead too.

The to-go bag is so heavy with food that it brings tears to my eyes and I resent being so poor that this shit food can change my life. A hamburger and some fries. But it does change my life, and I want to kill everyone here for letting this be so easy. I look over at Vivienne, who hasn't taken her eyes off me for a second. What is she thinking? Her father bought her a new car, and as long as she maintains this braindead job, he'll continue to pay for the insurance on it too.

I look down at this bag of food and I feel like there's some kind of great canyon in my life that needs to be filled with something tangible right now before I eat all this food out in the parking lot so that I don't come back in and kill all of these fucking people.

Good-night,
JARET.

If you don't, or can't.

2008-10-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

2:59am.

My arm didn’t fit so well into the sink because the basin was small and cramped, so even bunched up and standing on a stool, it was giving me cramps to hold myself in that position to let the water run over the cut in my skin. It would have been a lot easier to do this in the bathtub, but the tub was broken and the water which poured from the nozzle was pinkish in color and I wouldn’t want that anywhere near an open wound.

If I didn’t get cleaned up soon, I’d get found out and I’d have to explain away something that didn’t happen in the better interest of avoiding talking about what really happened, which would land me in a pretty bad situation, especially in that it could get us in trouble with the landlord again and they might kick us out for good instead of just threatening it.

Someone would be asking questions regardless of how well I avoided the subject, but I just needed to get cleaned up and I hoped I didn’t bleed everywhere in the apartment across the hall. It was the first time I had tried climbing in through the window, and in my haste I cracked my elbow pretty good and sliced my arm open recoiling from it and then fell headlong through the kitchen window and into the bushes outside, one floor down.

My pants were fucked up, my ankle twisted and my arm looked like it might need stitches. The pants could be thrown out and no one would notice. My ankle would get better. But the cut looked bad. I was so scared that I could just barely register the actual pain of it, but I know it looked bad. It wasn’t bleeding too much, though. It was hard to look at it.

If I needed stitches there would be nothing that I could do about this, they would find out, and I would place all of my allowance on it that we would be kicked out of the apartment.

The next morning when I passed by Mrs. Jakob’s door, I could hear them talking inside, her and Mr. Jakob. I heard the word ‘police’ and I ran to school. I think they thought it was a burglar. By the time school was out, their broken kitchen window was replaced, and it was quiet in the complex.

In my bed, I stared at the stains on the ceiling. The apartment above ours had probably been leaking since before I was born. Any day now, some part of the apartment above might fall into mine, right through that ceiling. It might even happen while I slept in my bed, in the night, and I’d never know it happened; the ceiling would finally give way, and the softened plaster and beams or whatever would fail underneath the weight of whatever was in the room above and it would come crashing down and crush me and kill me.

I stared at the stains and thought of Mrs. Jakob.

During the day she cries sometimes, when her husband is out at work. I slid in through the kitchen window to watch her this time, and she had no idea I was there until the little alarm went off on my wristwatch and I panicked and ran. Mrs. Jakob probably didn’t hear my watch go off, because she was in the next room and because the sound of the little alarm was so faint it couldn’t possibly work to wake anyone up from sleep. It was probably better suited as a reminder to a fully-awake person, like if they had something in the oven and were reading a book while dinner was baking.

My arm throbbed and I could barely move it all day, so I held a plastic shopping bag partly filled with ice against it. And just stared at the ceiling, thinking of Mrs. Jakob. She looked really sad to me all the time. Sometimes she winked at me, slowly, smiling a little, like she had some shameful secret and I was supposed to know what it was, or that I did know what it was. It made me feel a little shady, that strange look, and a little afraid, but also a little neat too, in some way I couldn’t know. I certainly wouldn’t mind knowing a secret with her, but I didn’t know one. She just winked at me and every time she did that I grew red in the face.

Part of me knew that I liked her, but the other part of me—the one that always made more sense out of things—would just laugh inside my head and tell me what an idiot I was being. I thought sometimes that maybe she winked at me because she liked me too. But I was in the third grade, that other part of me would say, antagonizing and shrill.

I liked to look at Mrs. Jakob whenever I could. And I did too, through her kitchen window sometimes after school, when she was sitting in the small dining room, crying very softly to herself. It was only just that one time that I went any further and crawled into the house to watch her cry.

Out in the hall, the large gray hound that belonged to another neighbor slinked past me, nosing at Mrs. Jakob’s door, and then it turned around and eyed me suspiciously. I had lately grown very nervous about the dog, and thought that maybe it knew I had broke into Mrs. Jakob’s house and that it knew I was the one who broke the window. We’d get kicked out of the apartment complex if the dog told anyone. I already broke the dryer in the basement and got caught, and I spilled bleach all over another neighbor’s television set during an Easter Egg hunt and the television blinked out and killed the power in the complex for one whole night. My parents had been so embarrassed that we hadn’t been invited to the next party that they have only just barely spoken to me since.

The gray dog sniffed at Mrs. Jakob’s door and eyed me again.

If the dog really knew what I had done then I had to get rid of the dog.

I called this kid Menden over from down the street and offered him five dollars to kill the dog. He said he would do it, though I kind of feared he’d just steal my money. But I had no choice. I gave him the money at school so the dog wouldn’t know it happened, and I told him to come over on a Sunday morning before noon when most of the people in the complex were either sleeping or at church, and I watched out from a crack in the blinds as the kid snuck into the hallway and then, a couple minutes later, snuck back out. At school he told me he hadn’t seen the dog anywhere but I told him that dog isn’t allowed inside the apartments so he’s always roaming the halls if he’s not sleeping in the sunny spots of the fenced-in yard. So Menden came back the next Sunday—at a loss of three more dollars on my part—and since that Sunday morning no one has seen the gray dog anywhere. There are badly-lit pictures of him on half-assed but seemingly earnest photocopied sheets of paper over a telephone number to call if anyone sees him, and these sheets are stapled to telephone poles across the next two streets over. I also gave Menden my lunch at school if he promised not to tell me what he did with the dog or if the dog knew that I had paid for its death.

“It is dead, right, Menden?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know, smartass,” he says to me, eating my lunch.

“That’s right. Forget it, I don’t want to know. The dog’s not coming back, though, seriously?”

The kid looked at me and smiled and told me it might be worth my money just to make sure, and so two weeks later when I could save up another five dollars I gave that to him too.

Within that time my arm got infected and I had to go to the hospital and my father told me that he was going to kill me if I didn’t shape up, and I figured that meant he might send me away to live in a boy’s home, which is how he threatened me every here and there when I acted up or broke something or got caught trying to break something. This time he didn’t even ask me how it happened. He just told me I was in for it if I didn’t wise up. The doctor asked him how I did it, though, and my father said, “Who the fuck knows? The kid’s a goddamned idiot.” I got really scared for a second that they would think my father had done it to me, and the grief that would cause could get us kicked out of the apartment complex for sure; if they thought for a second that my father was beating me up they’d kick him and us out. The doctor told my father to calm down and after they left the room and talked where I couldn’t hear them, I tried to come up with an excuse. My arm wasn’t just cut, it was sliced open. And infected. I couldn’t move my arm so well or the shoulder either. I pictured myself with one arm, like if they had to cut it off. But they only had to clean it and gives me stitches, and I said I broke a window, but didn’t finish with the where or how, and my father squinted his eyes at me and I could see his face getting red, and I knew he wouldn’t hit me, but I also knew that he didn’t like me. And that this was going to get a lot worse at home, and that nobody would ask me what window, or where, because they knew already.

But no one ever said anything. About the window, my arm . . . or anything else.

Mrs. Jakob was sitting down in the basement one afternoon, reading a magazine while waiting for laundry to dry. The new dryer was faster than the old one, which I had broke one day playing inside of it. Somehow I broke it for good and it wouldn’t spin. The landlord told my parents I wasn’t allowed down there anymore. But I went down because I had followed Mrs. Jakob down there, and when I walked in, she winked at me, and I could swear she thought I knew about some kind of secret that she did.

I watched her patiently, for about half an hour, while she sat in a small plastic chair and read from the magazine, turning the pages leisurely, looking up at me every couple of minutes or so, but she didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything back.

Yours,
JARET.

Get-even spiders and wall insects of Mollimore.

2008-10-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

4:45am.

In the livingroom. Steven and his sister, and the rifle from their father's bedroom. They only speak to each other when friends are over. At night the wind cuts through sore spots of the screens on the window in Steven's room and sounds like a soft little echo of a siren. His sister's room is cold and the lights are dim because she never changes the bulb. His sister's eyes are closed and her dress is hiked up so she can sit on the couch with her legs crossed. The music from the video game start screen is familiar. They played it earlier. At dinner she put the video game start screen back on after they'd already played it enough, and they both went to the table and they could hear it from the dining room. Their father was always polite, with his shirt tucked in, and he answered the front door with what could maybe have been a sigh of relief most times. His way of speaking had no audible sense of really being there, but he spoke better than most fathers. It wasn't a chore. By turns, his reception could be utterly surprised, or blatantly resigned. There was no authority in it at all. He'd probably invite you in at four in the morning if you just knocked on the door and asked if Steve was home.

Lonesomeness and solitude and complacent isolation has a rather disgusting grace with it if it can settle just underneath the skin and float there in the feeling of thickness in the morning that will always accompany awkward bruises and disorganized remembrances of pulling off shoes and placing them neatly by the side of the bed like they belonged there under regular circumstances. With a magazine open to game clues and some records no one listens to, and a dish of hard candy no one eats but the kid from the spider-infested place three houses down who probably views this as fantastical. A cloud of forgiveness always crawls toward the center of the room when lunch is finally decided upon, or drinks decided upon. Being lonely is like wearing a nice suit because everybody notices it when it comes into the room but they don’t really think about what’s underneath it because it usually doesn’t matter if the suit’s nice enough to subtract from the awkward places of silence in between the jerks singing and the ears pricking. It just doesn’t hardly matter what’s underneath. And it’s great, as is the diameter of a continent. Lonesomeness keeps the body afloat. It looms above the top of the horizon, inking a delicate sky with colorless dark smudges. Thick and uncompromised, somewhat threatening but actionless, not bothering to tell as much, until it wants to descend, closing in the night with a cape that blots out the sunlight but doesn’t keep anything actually hidden. From inside it's all the same, just with a twilight about it that means it didn't matter today either.

Then it breaks up into rain or just drops like a curtain and it’s time for bed. And if the bed’s warm or the blankets just comfortable enough to put a smile across the mouth, that’s just fine as a hug.

She stares at the television screen and he stares at the remote control and the laughter from the program fills the room. He hasn't showered in a week. She pulls his blanket over her knees and watches the shadow of the sunset gradually move from the midsection of the wall, down toward the floor molding. Steve thinks to go outside into the driveway, and his sister might follow. If there's a commotion outside at eleven at night. And in the moonlight, with his shirt off and her dress partially unbuttoned, out on the driveway, it's anybody's guess how long summer really is.

All the world’s beautiful things are like this.

Yours,
JARET.

The staples and the cuts in your arm.

2008-10-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

2:19pm.

I cleared the desk of everything, even the lamp, and set before me a square telephone in the center of the desk, then sat down and pulled the telephone toward me, very cautiously, into my lap. And I called the hospital. They hadn't admitted a girl with no hands.

It was all very curious, and so I dialed for the Sheriff's Station. Similarly, they had not received any reports of a girl found with no hands.

But I saw the girl with my own eyes, spread out calmly, longways on the sidewalk, with her arms placed at either side. In the dark it had looked as if the girl's hands were simply buried in her jeans pockets, and that she were passed out, but the closer I came to her, I could see that if the hands were buried anywhere, they weren't around here, and the girl was not sleeping or passed out, she was bleeding profusely. The supermarket towered over this side of the street in either direction for a block. Across the street, in the empty lot of the closed strip mall, there was nothing, and nobody. There were no hands lying around, bleeding on the concrete.

But the frayed end of her wrists were bleeding everywhere, pooled in the cracks of the sidewalk underneath her, creating stained splotches at the bottom of her t-shirt and the thighs of her jeans.

Nervously, I plunged my own hands deep within the comforting warmth of my dress pants and held my head low, walking away from the girl on the sidewalk.

I stopped in at the all-night bakery for some orange juice and toast, sitting in the corner booth, listening to an older gentleman ruffling the hem of a newspaper at the bar. Steam curled up in delicate dreamy clouds over his cup of coffee. On a small white glass plate next to the cup of coffee was a fork and what looked like crumbles of soft cake, with a little frosting scraped off onto the side of the plate. The two ladies behind the counter of the bakery were actually knitting. From my corner booth by the window I could almost make out the supermarket down the road, but it was kind of blurred by the darkness and the trees that blocked the streetlamps from lighting this view.

It took me nearly an hour to finally go home. When I did, I showered and I thought about the girl with no hands, about bathing her in this bathtub and singeing the ends of her wrists to cauterize them so that she wouldn't be drained of all her blood before the autopsy could be performed. I wondered what the pathologist would make of this situation. I should maybe have tried to talk to her. There could have been a last word on her breath, waiting to be expelled if I just pushed down on her belly a little and parted her lips at the same time. She could have tried to say good-bye, or she could have tried to say no, a failed defensive statement that never quite got out because her body, in shock, had given up too quickly.

And I thought how brave the paramedics would have to be, to wrap her up without crying. They would likely be thinking of the girl's mother; or both her parents, for that matter, and if they were together still, or divorced. They would be thinking of whom in their circle would be responsible for breaking the news to the parents, if either of them could be tracked down at all. Or if they were even still alive.

After a shower I dressed for bed, in a pair of black slacks and a nice shirt that wouldn't look too terribly disheveled in the morning if I were to be tossing about fitfully in sleep, wondering if I should get back up and telephone the hospital, or the Sheriff, to find out if -- or ask when -- someone finally reported (or would report) the dead girl.

Yours,
JARET.

The lines in my hand don't go anywhere.

2008-10-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

2:27am.

At the end of the dock road there is a vast horizon of flat sea with an overbearing sky lying prone above it with a sexlessness that confounds me. There is no penetration; it's just the sky above and the sea below, pressed against one another without thought, and it goes on forever in either direction. I look out there and wonder about a couple of things that have lately been weighing heavy on my mind. There's not been work for the past three days since our crew finished early up. The faster and the better you get at things, the money's still the same, so you end up with more free time than you know what to do with.

But I don't get bored. There is too much to look at in this town. Next to the motel there's a graveyard. It's not very expansive, but I felt it would have been rather easy to become lost in the people buried out there if I'd taken the time to read each of their headstones and then really took a moment to think of what it was like when these people were still alive. Some of them I judged by their weak names, while others' names I held in regard for how they rolled off my tongue with a sort of dignity that I didn't enjoy myself when sounding out my own name. I wondered how many of these people I'd not have gotten along too well with, and too, which ones were better than me, or had been anyway. Which of those I might have actually looked up to, admired or even shared of life of friendship with.

By their epitaphs alone to go by, it was impossible to deduct which of these buried sort had grown up minor criminals, or minor peacemakers or unforgivable fuck-ups or unaccountable fuck-ups or humorous, gentle and reliable people. In death they always died too soon, yet gave so much while they were around.

On the other side of the motel was the sea.

I took a mile walk up the coast and down the dock road to where the furthest you can get to sea is paved outward in beams and boards and I nearly lost my balance a few times because the open space was like nothing I had ever experienced back home. The world is so much larger than the town I grew up in. It stretches out into the abyss, like this sea does.

At the very end of the dock I sit at the edge of the wooden rails and hang my legs out over the waves, which are too far below me to touch. People die all the time out there. They sink to the bottom like whales do. Or they float back ashore like whales do, sometimes. I don't know, it's a big place out there. Trying to take it all in without moving my eyes along the horizon from left to right is nearly impossible. I can't even begin to conceive its true volume as a whole from the edge of this little dock, which if cast into the waves would be like a fraction of a splinter stuck into to the skin of the sea.

It's just water, though. I know that. The edge of the world too, maybe. I could drown out there if I started swimming straight out.

Yours,
JARET.

All we ever did was hide.

2008-10-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

4 October, 1977 / 5:49pm.

In an effort to control the flow of blood from becoming a problem, I raced across the back lawn behind the church with one hand pressed uncomfortably down the front of my pants so that I could hold a wet kitchen rag against the wound without getting getting my pants damp enough for anyone to notice the spot.

Because of the strain this put on my movement, it looked like I was crippled. A crippled kid charging by the birdbath and small fountain where I could have stopped a bit to rinse out the rag if I'd felt that I had time enough.

It took a bit more energy to hop the fence without ripping my suit or getting it dirty. But once off church property, I kept my hand out from my pants, took off the jacket and button-up so that I wore only the thin white undershirt now and I ran for the market over on the other side of the ravine. Despite the dress shoes, I crossed the moldy log without a problem. If I'd have slipped and fell into the shallow mud of the ravine, that might have been an excuse not to attend the funeral, but it would not have kept me out of trouble, and probably might make it worse. So I was persuaded to do the only thing I possibly could to preserve some kind of anonymity for the next couple hours, and I ducked into the market, swept swiftly through the aisles until I had a small black dish towel, some black thread and a needle, and I stuffed it all into my pocket and just ran for dear life out the the way I came in, through the front door.

I didn't hear a word of protest, though at least five people probably saw me running. They would have no way of knowing what I'd lifted unless they caught me, but I had no intentions of being caught. I only hoped that no one from the church had been there to spot me out.

At an even thousand miles per hour, I doubled around the corner, flew down the sidewalk bordering the store, toward the back lot. Into the small thicket of woods and toward the stump where the bundle of my overclothes were waiting. Without re-dressing I made it back across the log (again, without a single slip), paced unevenly across the lawn again.

But this time I hid in the tall circle of bushes that surrounded all but the entrance of the fountain. There, I pulled my pants off, wiped the sweat from my face with the stolen black dish rag and then tied it around the knife wound on my thigh. Satisfied that I would not be bleeding during the funeral, I then set to mending the hole in my pants where the knife had slid through and ripped it up. I'd never sewn anything up before, so this took the longest. Actually, getting the black thread through the pinhole of the needle took the longest. I pricked my finger a couple dozen times in the process.

By the time I showed up at the chapel, people were just beginning to take their seats. My face felt itchy under the quick rinsing job I'd done in the fountain, probably because of how dirty the water was and the fact that a cat or something had pissed in it.

But I looked clean, well-dressed and I'd caught my breath again.

I knew that the older kids wouldn't saying anything about the fight, at least not during the funeral, and this would all pass slowly and my leg would hurt really bad, but eventually it had to be over and I would be able to go home, put on some jeans and then pretend to go out to play, and I could come home bleeding, finally, and I could say I'd cut myself while playing and then my parents would take me to the hospital and I wouldn't be forced into ratting out the older kids.

And maybe if or when I got a little older, I would get them back later. But probably not. I'd slashed their bike tires last week for no good reason at all and although I think turning the knife on me was a little extreme, I had deserved some of it, and anyway, it could have been a lot worse if I hadn't ran. In fact, when I tried to run in the first place was how I got cut, so maybe it could or couldn't have been worse. They might not have wanted to do anything but scare me and maybe fuck up my suit. It's over now, anyway.

I only hoped that I could get through the damned funeral without anyone noticing. Or before I passed out. My leg throbbed badly by the time I took a seat at the back of the church and curled up in the pew and agonized over the pain while everyone else looked forward and cried for the dead kid in the open casket. His sisters and parents were surrounded by people and they were all being hugged and kissed and paid attention to in ways that made me feel pretty left out.

I'll see you later,
JARET.

Shedding skin before leaving the house.

2008-10-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

5:05am.

Called to the table once again, this time with more of an emphasis paid to urgency, I picked my way carefully through the barbs of the living room and stole a moment by the mantle. The dampness of the air hurt my lungs tremendously, making me hunch down as I walked, so that I was just skulking around like the other animals. I was called to dinner again and the banshee wail of the voices in the dining area stabbed at my head, clawing its way inside my ears. Another syllable more from within the dining room and I would cave in, I know it. They no longer sounded like people, but now more like flutes and horns that were out of tune. This had been the worst week yet. There'd been no water until last night, when the hill burst open and a small creek formed to bore its way through the back part of the house, and our clothes were beginning to smell like dirt because we had all stood in the water and let it clean us.

But the water was infected too, and where it had soaked us the most, our skin had turned yellow or greenish-pink. Without a second's caution I lifted a small framed portrait of the family from off the mantle and tucked it into my sweater, then made my way through the nettles, toward the kitchen, through to the dining table.

It had been especially cold inside the house since the shudder in the ground had cracked it open and the vines and weeds and the chill had had a chance to grow in through the house. The entire bottom floor was like a forest, and because of this I spent most of my days in the attic, peering through the smeared, smudged lens of a telescope, waiting to be rescued by people not affected by the quake. Heroes, angels, marauders even; anyone. To do something, and hopefully take us out of here before the fact of decay became too normal. I didn't want to become so soft that my flesh would smear away on the chipped wood of the knob on the bathroom door. I could still feel my muscles wanting to work.

I'd had something small, with matted fur, crossing over my legs earlier today, in the dark, and I've decided not to venture through the house anymore without wearing a thick pair of pants, to keep this from ever happening again.

In my mind, at night just before bed, the touch of an unseen animal is like the clutch of a corpse, coming for your skin because it had lost its own. The matted hair could be fungus. Could be the mold that creeps over human skin before maggots appear. Somewhere in the unplumbed rubble, our Grandfather lay buried. We lost him in his desperate search for Grandmother, whom we'd heard screaming as best her tired body could. I don't want to know that his hand is searching through the dark, to clasp an embrace around my ankle.

I would almost rather eat some of the dead raccoons we found underneath a pile of bricks in what's left of the basement. Hungry and badly scared, I'd tasted one of the babies. It was cold and my stomach turned. That's the taste of everything now. And I don't want dinner anymore, anyway.

The thorns were the worst part, though, somehow sharper than the shattered windows. At night, in the dark, it was useless to try using the bathroom. Better to hold it in and squirm through the night than get cut up and fall prey to the insects that waited patiently for the slightest spray of blood on the kitchen tiles or the dusty floorboards where the bearskin rug had become a small home for ants and snakes. One of the sisters fell ill from a rattlesnake bite. We never caught the culprit, and she never woke from her fever. We're all going to die here unless help comes. We'll be eaten before the ghosts of everyone can even find their ways here from the other side. I won't have to worry over the unseeing hands of a corpse, because the night vision of some malevolent thing with small sharp teeth and a thick, dry fur and a skitter and a squeak will get me first if I don't keep to the attic.

I entered the the dining room and every last sick, yellowed eye fell upon me. All of their mouths were turned down into frowns, steam billowing from the two open pots at the center of the table. What would we be eating now? Tonight, when everything safe was rotted. Prepared in the fire built in the collapsed stove, what sick animal were we to eat tonight?

It was Christmas. The last Christmas in the house, if the local stories could be understood to be correct. We would all perish in the forming snowstorm if animals did not eat us first.

Father could not be moved to board up the cracks in the house; not since the accident and the loss of his spirit. He built this house before I was born, and it was not strong enough to help us, but strong enough indeed to crush some of us. It cracked open like an egg and it fell down upon us in a rain and crushed some of us. My brothers could be trusted with nothing. Likewise, neither could I. I was useless to repair a thing. And everyone else was either a girl, or old. The girls laughed and played with dolls made from the splintered floorboards that shot up in a well of burst wood. The surviving elders were almost dust in their late-historied age.

We were helpless.

The sisters all sat in a bubble of cackling heads at one end of the table, pulling the balance off with their noise in the relative silence of the room, pointing their brittle, discolored fingers at me and wagging the sharp fingernails with sincere distaste for my delayed arrival. They began to sing, sounding as if wind were just passing through their hollow heads instead of their voices being created like that from within; until Mother hushed them I was transfixed, and, dropping my head, I was beckoned to dinner by someone. To sit down. And eat. The closer I got to the steaming pots, the more I felt I would be sick. I shot a glance down into my open palms, at the portrait of our family taken before this happened, before the earth opened up and spilled this all over us.

Probably this was better after all. The smartly dressed family in the tiny little portrait was already dead. Saving anything sitting alive at that table would be to raise monsters in the privacy of a mass grave.

My skin was turning a very pale green. In broad daylight, lately I looked like the belly of a frog. Underneath the thin, nearly transparent skin of my chest, my blue heart beat weakly. Sliding bones to the side with the heel of my hand, I pressed my fingers a little too hard and they sank into the flesh and I touched my own heart. The dim lamplight from the bulb over the table cast a shadow inside my chest so dark that for a second the blue heart virtually disappeared. The cold I felt at this was somehow forgiving in its severity. The brothers pulled my breastplate back to the center of my chest and made me promise I wouldn't stick my hands underneath again. Mother looked at me with contempt, not trusting me at all.

Yours,
JARET.

Present an excuse that will stick to the sky's wall.

2008-09-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

4:39am.

That girl at the front of the line, behind the register, the one with the same haircut hanging over her head like a halo, the same haircut she's had since I spotted her two years ago: it hangs down in these effortless locks that are so short they might not even be referred to as 'bangs' depending on who you're discussing it with. I'm pretty alone, though; discussion concerning just about anything is a long shot. I might as well be lowered onto a tight rope suspended between two cliff faces. Wearing a dozen water-soaked blankets balanced like clumps of rubble on my shoulders. I might as well dream it up, my day.

Walking into that store and saying Hi. She says Hi back.

Dreams. Fucking dreams.

That girl with the white supermarket button-up, the nametag I still haven't honed in on. Her two year smile. That girl's been hovering about the front entrance at the cash registers since I came here first. She never has looked a day older than that first glance. As for me, I must be as unrecognizable as shadows in a dark room. I found that fairly telling. Also, reality too. I found reality awful telling. A boy can be pretty stupid sometimes. Pretty awful fucking stupid.

What does it take, really, for that to happen in one's life? Some kind of miracle? You'd fucking die if you saw her, I say, to no one, in the frozen foods section, while I ponder the individual prices of microwaveable pizza versus a bulk purchase that will fuck me over in no time flat come midnight when my tapeworm belly growls out the chorus of a pack of wolves. My body will yawn and I'll eat bricks and mortar, suck up the tiles in the kitchen and the spots of tomato sauce spattered on fragments of crumpled foil. I'll kiss the mere scent of toast that may have still been lingering from the morning's breakfast. I will dig graves and fill them with my big plans. And I'll eat dinner made of plastic cups, shitty pizza from the microwave and droplets of dew from the morning-wet ears of the demon John who crawls from the carpet just like the sun crawls into the horizon and stains it orange with that really very particular swagger of a slightly drunk worker preparing for a full day's work and the all-too-near eventuality of sobriety.

I fucking stare at that girl at the market and pick at the bubblegum on the aisle rack. I pick at the options and put down some batteries, a tight little pocket-sized fucking book of crossword puzzles, two chocolate-covered cherries and a car-key light and a packet of fresh-breath tablets and two copies of the same gossip magazine.

It doesn't matter what you buy. She still smiles and laughs. She doesn't care at all, and I am so drawn to that. Her smirks posit the banner of "a life," and I know she has that in abundance the moment she clocks out at shift's end and disappears into the town. Leaving me in line forever and ever, in my stupid head.

I want to say stuff like, "Oh fine, things are great," in response to a general question. And then ask, "How are you?" I just want to hear her say FINE, ignoring any semblance of real conversation. FINE. Who is ever fine? I deserve so much less than that response, but I crave it. I fucking crave it.

But I've never heard her voice up close. Not once. Just from a distance. Certainly not speaking to me. I couldn't just stand there and have her ask me about my bank card. I'd sound as stupid as could be. Like the time I caught that kid's kite from crashing to the park grasses before it was demolished and his mother practically shoved her eyes into mine, and that goddamned grin, and how I said "no problem" and how I know she used her kid to just crawl onto to some guy in the park, out of loneliness or whatever, and how much I didn't care. I understand a lot when I don't care.

But when I do care, I don't understand a frigging thing.

And I could not bear to prod the cattle of my scared wandering thoughts into such a conversation with the girl at the register. Fuck no could I stand that.

Eternal cashieress, I'll just hope I always see you. That's what I will do. I can't ever talk to you. And it's not because I feel that you would not care. But seriously, my parents both died when I was yet a teenager, and my first sexual experience was with a blind girl in a hospital flower garden. She called me by my full name, like she was sounding out words in braille. It felt like that game where you enter a closet with some girl whose name was picked from a hat, and everybody waits outside the closet door and listens to just how much isn't going on behind the racks of coats.

I spent three years in the county jail for assaulting a bank teller. In the parking lot of a downtown bank, after closing hours. I spent two years on the payroll at St. Gibbons as a caretaker, but I was really just an assistant to the maintenance crew who knew more about buildings and upkeep than I did. I spent three years tracing my fingers in the obituaries, trying to feel something for people who knew so many people who saw fit to feel something when they'd passed.

That girl in the supermarket makes me wish I could finally kill myself and get it overwith.

Yours,
JARET.

For if the creature had not.

2008-09-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

1:18pm.

An interesting thing happened mid-way through the proceedings, and I raised my head slightly at that, but it blew over.

Considering that everything could only become a matter of course, in due time, and that here in the back benches of the court where no one mattered, time itself was our every hope. But the proceedings had just dragged along, and on and on. At times I'd nodded off, propped up at the end of the bench, uncomfortable and also irritable.

But the trial was an important one, and so I waited. Along with everybody else.

At night I took the train home, and the stillness and the unvaried silences of the packed-in bodies seemed to scream at me some kind of a warning. The train sped me home with muted bodies that only differentiated themselves from those in the courthouse by the fatigued drain of their complexions -- the incredible sense of relief to be, just like me, going home.

It was a warning, all right. As much as the softness and warmth of my bed was a pleading.

My home was pleading innocent of all charges, and it wanted me back. The lights turned on without flickering, washing the blank white walls with a pure light, revealing the etched wood, the tiny little loops of the carpet's weave, and a small white spider that crawled aimlessly up at the corner ceiling in the foyer. The fruit and cut-up strips of meat in the refrigerator were fresh, pulsating with the need and the desire to become part of my body. And the water from the tap in the kitchen was cold, invigorating and somehow sweetly reminiscent of lemonade. As I climbed the stairs to retire for the evening, the plush white steps began to push me up along my way without my having to climb so hard on these weak, overworked legs. In the bathroom, the shower head spoke a gentle rain to the skin of my back.

All of this was my home in the process of pleading innocent by reason of neglect. It wanted me to stay home, for good.

And I felt for it.

I fell for everything and I apologized and sympathized, out loud in the blank white kitchen and in the well-lit hallway and the bedroom, and to the bed I caressed an apology, deep strokes of care and understanding into the fabric of the white linen and the thick white comforter.

But in the morning I snapped on the light. Bright and early, to catch the early train back to the court house.

The light in the bedroom had dimmed yellow. The house became puppy dog eyes. The shower head wept onto me, and the bristles of my tooth brush almost refused to scrape my teeth clean they were so weak and lifeless. Down in the kitchen, in the dim yellow of the rising sun that was cutting through the white strips of the window blinds, the knives seemed less sharp. With a dull meat-cutting knife I smeared butter and a pale jelly over an unwelcoming stale bagel from the back of the pantry (like it had been hiding from me), and I slipped it into a dish in the microwave, but the machine had to be prompted for almost six whole minutes before it would comply and heat up my small little breakfast.

I sympathized, out loud, and asked forgiveness, but that I had a task, and a responsibility to be there, at the courthouse. It would end soon, I reasoned. There would be a culmination, and a verdict.

The little light in the refrigerator snapped off, with a tight sound of grief, and the carpeting fell dead underneath my feet, and would not offer to escort me to the front closet to get my coat. Indeed, the knob on the closet door seemed as if it might ultimately refuse my grip, but at last it turned, and the other white coats did not want to be near the one I had been wearing of late, to the trial. It hung there, lonesome, without another coat's shoulder to rely on. When I pulled it out, it was cold, as if it had slept alone.

On the way there, in the train, I felt such stress in my body. But I had to steel myself for the long process of the proceedings. Hopefully things might wind down, and I would see a miracle.

There had been no crying yet. No heated arguments. No jibes or barbs. Hopefully, yet, I would see a miracle.

Your friend,
JARET.

Your hollow chest, and that winsome heart murmur.

2008-09-11T03:49:00.000-07:00

3:52am.

With the sleeve of my shirt I managed to cover the portion of sheet paper onto which I'd copied all of my codes and the locations of each locker. There were long halls abound and dozens upon the hundreds of lockers, and I knew everything, every last second it took to pace the hall, all by heart. It was not dumb luck, and it was not persistence; I carried everything of measure inside my heart like a hole might be called empty.

I gave it my all.

My seven hundred and sixty six seconds of sweat beaded at the forehead only just as rightly as the tick-tick-tick of the wall clock might just about count me off. You could stare at the son of a bitch. You could fucking wind it up to fraudulently gain half an hour. But you couldn't touch the fucking swift switch of the hand when I passed a scalpel from one pocket to the other.

True, it could tumble from the pants and knock against the side of the door closest to my doubled over body, but no one notices these things. And I take it to the great mouth of the White 300 Hall, and, virtuously, I dive the fuck into the mess and the shit and the cloud of the heads and the necks and the shoulders and body of the fucking sea of the pedestrian crowd.

These hunched fucks are too cold to notice.

But give them time. Like I have time for that.

The paper onto which I've scrawled the numbers is already looking old. The corners of the sheet are still crisp and unhandled, and it makes me cringe. It moves me to shudder. I am fundamentally set with jaws agape. There is no reason to carry on without further note. So I bury the bodily curve of the scalpel's tip into the fabric overlapping a soft thigh. In the bustle of the hallway, what's to become of such cries as might be heard?

Search and identify.

If you can pick through the sea of jerks.

The curt scrapes and smears of blood that just barely line the fine invisible silence and deadly cull of the scalpel's blade only look so red to me. Against the washed white walls and the peach hue of growing faces, I see strawberry orchards or lipstick smiles. I smile back, widely, at the shit painting my scalpel's blade. Oh I'd wish you might run. Fat fucking chance, I guess.

You have to dig a whole lot deeper if you want something to take back home with you. But if you smile nicely and don't see me at all, there's so much to gather from what you can scrape off the clouds of mold that are growing inside you. I'm touched, really. I could reach out and touch the underside of the roof of your mouth for that.

When I round the corner and the screams have died down and I have sliced rather uniquely down the left side of spinal column bisecting the exposed back of dear m'lady of the back entrance to the hall, I do notice with a distaste that rushing to one's means do not equal the perfections of the quiet or the wholesome backdrop upon the blank walls of the adequately retained. I am displeased.

There is crying of course.

But, too, there are options.

The basic facts stand alone herein:

a) Sliced peers at the opposite end of the Hall have begged great attention.
b) Attention here at the L-shaped back exit are skimpy, like the bathing suits of oceanside ladies.
c) Weeping means nothing but sound that can be turned down. And our scalpel might still be as sharp as the day is young.

Another fine swipe and the wind is expelled from throughout the slash in that smooth, unlined throat. That hole could expel unswallowed kisses, I note. Or it could whistle, sounding off lunch for the Hell that might be called Discovery.

"Of course," someone'll say when one point is brought out to amplify the previous unlauded remarks. They just know when the right time to say Yeah is. They know how to nod their heads Yeah.

Have you ever seen someone swing a scalpel through the air in a crowded hall? Could you point it out if the blade was buried in your side while brushing past strangers? Or people you fucking knew?

I know all of this is small stuff.

But if you'll also appreciate it, I also know how to pull the shades down over practicality, over eventuality and over the basis of decency.

What I really don't know is how to react. So I keep a couple of dead lockers with living padlocks, none of which are assigned to me but all of which are employed by me. But, fingerprints are like teeth; they match the hollows from whence they have been ripped to hide the great tell-all. And I suppose that's where you'll get them in the end. All of them. All of us. So it's a good thing your body is just skin.

Pretty skin, too, you beautiful painting, you.

Love,
JARET.

A comment on travel.

2008-09-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

4:12pm.

The following photographs were shot during the morning of the 8th of June, 2008 in the city of Denton, Texas. This is from the book tour, with Unwed Sailor and Sybris. The night's show had been a couple hours previous, on the 7th; those in attendance will recall Richard's mother buying rounds of beer and spirits for the entire bar. And some angry guy trying alternately to offer humorous barbs (that really sounded like bedridden-jock childspeak more than passable humor) or to pick fights with the bands or anyone who was dancing. I didn't actually see evidence of a subculture in Denton; the band listings all kind of looked safe and radio friendly. And I asked around if there were any local punk bands, to which I received various versions of the answer No, some of which were phrased as Probably Not. The drink situation was fab, but the setting, after nightfall hit and we couldn't venture off too far beyond the confines of the club, seemed drab. As most clubs will. It's worse when it's slow, the conversation isn't very interesting AND the drink situation is bad. But directly after last call we'd been led to some stranger's house for a party, and things changed.

What actually ensued was much more than a party, to be sure. It was almost like a long, never-ending shift at work, if your day job was to drink as much as possible but still stay awake and somewhat cohesive and then go swimming for the seventh time of the night and then drink some more but still be able to sing along to whatever song is playing. A block of nine whole hours filled with noise, dancing, smashed furniture, smashed bottles, ridiculous food (bacon wrapped party dogs?), some guy ramming his head into the sliding glass doors, against the fence and even eating a shattered crystal pint glass. People yelling at each other, small groups breaking off. Everything floating in the pool at some point, even stuff that's not waterproof. And unholy amounts of liquor.

This party did not end until 11am, following a slightly confused but genuinely hilarious altercation that drew a quiet stillness to the (by now late) morning and to those few not yet passed out in the yard.

By sunrise, the attempted composition of mixed drinks had definitely degenerated into splashes and spilled cups, and so with little effort, as the sunbeams began to fill up with heat and burn away the coolness of the morning air, the domino effect took place, where every person had their own bottle and just drank from it straight:

And by the time sleep finally did fall over even the sturdiest of the crowd, I'm pretty sure that Eric had jumped into the pool wearing just about every dry article of clothing in his suitcase:

Eric is the type of person who can tell you a story about his childhood, and it'll last for about half an hour, and instead of walking away feeling like someone had just talked about themselves for an hour, you kind of get the feeling that you understand your own childhood a little better. The way Eric can tell a story makes a person feel reflective. Every once in a while you meet a person like that, at work or in a bar after work, at school. Even sometimes you can meet a person like that in somebody's band, but it's not an everyday occurrence.

Eric's a lot like Keith Moon, only not as destructive to himself or inanimate objects.

At some points during the party, it seemed like things were dying down. Drinks would become less sipped and sort of just held. But then something would come crashing down the stairs, or you'd hear another piece of furniture break, or you'd see Eric in mid-air, holding a shovel, or a lawn chair, diving into the pool wearing another set of dry clothes.

And then it would go haywire again and people would be pulled from slow motion. It just took one more bottle to get opened and then everyone was doing it. This happened like five or six times throughout the night. People were in zombie mode. Break stuff mode. A lot of the time I sat back and watched it happen. I like watching people climb out of themselves and start headlong into doing things they won't remember come morning but will be apologizing for nevertheless. It's fun watching people explode.

This here is Johnathon, myself and Angela, during one of those short three-minute lulls between confusion and noise where it looked like the night would be winding down:

But of course, it didn't.

I started to see things flying through the air, landing in the pool. Empty bottles, broken chairs, various articles of trash, Eric, lawn equipment, weight-lifting equipment. A flagstone. Somebody's shoes. And then, whatever Shawn had decided to do with his shirt in the background here, it got even spookier in just a short few minutes:

After the irony of three Red Hot Chili Peppers songs in a row had worn entirely thin, I'd snuck into the phantom ipod that must have belonged to somebody who lived at the house, and I tried to pick out a song that might bum out the party. I was looking for something long and drawn-out, but not danceable. What I'd found was Metallica's 'One'. But it didn't bum out the party. Not at all. No, somehow this happened:

Shawn's actually standing up on a picnic table, leading the people:

This is a long song. And this lasted from verse one, until the very end.

And then some of us spent the "night" by the side of the road and tried to prepare for the drive to Norman, Oklahoma that would be taking place in about three hours:

But I have to be going now.

Yours,
JARET.

"You should never try to mold people in your image. Just maybe, one of them will snap out of it, and rightly try to break that mold, to bring it, and you, to pieces. Good luck taking it back, in that case."
- Travis Cambridge.

"I remember when I was 18, I wanted to fuck on the floor and break shit. When I was 25 I wanted to fuck on the floor and break shit. When I was 35, I wanted to fuck on the floor and break shit. Now I'm 40, and I want to fuck on the floor and break shit."
- Henry Rollins.

Forgetting near toward everything.

2008-09-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

4:48am.

Initially it was so cold that I switched on all three of the overheads, climbed up onto the sink and removed the glass lamps over the bulbs so I could be nearer the bright white heat coming from them. One or two of the bulbs seemed to be dimming, but I pulled my knees up into my shirt, splitting a few seems in the process, and I couldn't care about the bulbs so much or the shirt much more or less than that, and then I sucked my arms into the shirt too, somehow, and just rocked there on the sink, gathering heat in a tired, wounded little ball.

Time seemed to pass quietly. The house stayed moderately quiet; a few pops here and there as the beams settled after all the running and the shapeshifting. I was not surprised in the least that it was easy to set aside the temperature of my body. Things had progressed from confusing to outright unending, in only a matter of seconds. There were arms sticking up from the deep-pile carpeting in the den, like palm fronds. The blood let loose from my surprised body had caked somewhat at the shoulder, suppressing the wound even though I kept ripping it open again and again as I ran and climbed the stairs with both fists and feet clenching the steps and clawing at them to just get up and as far away from her as possible.

The cool bathroom mirror turned frosty against the side of my face that leaned against it, making me wince. Out of the corner of my eye, the front of the sink, the door, the handle, the light switch, all of it was smeared dark violet. As thin as my blood was, it dried fast, and didn't run so much.

This helped my arm from seeping half the life out of me after the first plunge from the knife my sister kept sinking into me turned into several quick stabs. She got me pretty good. I'd never have thought she could be so fast.

Our father lay in a tiny pool of his own blood, down in the cellar on the shag carpet. He was probably as stuck to it now as houseflies to paper traps. I could bet he went out like a light, that guy. I'd got it pretty easy compared to him, who took the first unchallenged wound right to the throat. Mine was belly and arm, strictly. Bad enough, but not as bad, respectively.

He probably never had much of chance, but I didn't see what really happened to him, actually. All I knew was that the walls inside the house were changing shape, and the stairs slithered out from under my feet, so that I had to dive down half a flight to topple down like some discarded heap of clothes at the foot of the staircase. And my sister, her eyes were closed the whole time. When she put the knife into our mother's chest, ripping through her bathrobe to get at the breastplate, the whole table closed up like a thick wooden book and swallowed her as if it were some kind of carnivorous plant or a steel bear-trap. My sister stepped back and fled the room with her eyes still closed and the doubled-up table, for all I could tell, was actually eating our mother's dead body.

The knife she had in her hand was one I had used many times myself, but for purposes of eating food at lunch and dinner, and stuff like that. Not for attacking anybody. There were spiders just about everywhere. They were crawling all over my sister's face when she stabbed me in the belly.

That's the one wound I'm trying not to think about. I can't even feel it right now, which may be worse than if I did; speaking in terms of the long run, that is. In fact, now that I've been curled up on the sink in the upstairs bathroom, trying my best to stay warm under the three bathroom bulbs, I realize that I can't feel my legs at all anymore, and that I've since stopped rocking. Because I can't move my legs or hips.

I'm pretty sure the mirror is whispering into the ear that's rested against it, but I reach forward with great pain in my chest to shut the lights off regardless of how cold I feel, because I hear the carpet shifting outside the bathroom, tearing itself up and possibly climbing the outside of the door.

Yours,
JARET.

Without the benefit of an octopus.

2008-08-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

10:33pm.

Removed from the wallpaper existence of near anonymity for the first time since basic introductions before those I did not fully know so well here at the dinner party, I motioned slightly, with my glass, toward the speaker at the head of the table, and it was regarded well enough as an appropriate enough response to whatever question or statement had either been asked of me, or made of me. In truth I hadn't heard a word of it, only I knew that the conversation had ebbed my way and that the eyes of all in attendance awaited some sort of reply. So I raised my glass, and it did follow that the entire table concluded with the same, and smiles appeared both warm and with grave sincerity. Those seconds were sparks of joy to me. But such dark sparks. My gesture was taken in amiably, with curt nods and moments' glances. And just like that, the attention flowed back in the direction of the head of the table. Such fast, dark sparks of fleeting light.

Sipping very lightly from the pint glass, wishing I could just find it in me to make use of this night and drink with the effortlessness of celebration, I lowered my head. To either side of me sat dozens of guests. It was a rather longish table, probably the largest in the house. This dining area was one flight up from a smaller one, the usual one; the one I remember from years now past. Apparently the way things had been going, since my abrupt departure so long ago, were indeed fine. How poorly thought of me to have put myself into the position I had. In every respect, I held my eyes closed for a bit, still not quite comprehending the cheerful words that filled the air, but just breathing easily of the aroma of food that had not been prepared inside of a large, filthy tin vat.

With little delight I stared at my plate. How remote this blessed plate looked to me, how much of a teasing glance every minute seemed as it ticked away. Dinner, the food itself, I mean, would be only moments away now from over. In such freedom, and such ease, people did not take care to eat slowly, but filled themselves with a rival energy just sort of haste, in due preparation for the drinks that would inevitably follow so hotly on these aromatic heels. Then would come the hours and hours of drink. I craved it, but feared it all the same, as it would signify the succession of time. At this table, yes, we'd all still be sitting for another few hours yet. If all went well.

Murmurs arose suddenly, and then a crickets' hymn of applause, so gentle that it might not have been heard if one were positioned in the next room over with a pint glass held between the ear and the wall. And then the sounds of knives and forks and soup spoons took hold. There was a glorious attempt at restraint, but it lasted the snap of a finger, and then it was over with, and mouths were filled with the luxuries sent from the angel employed here as a chef. All the while I sensed a great dread in me.

As soon as dinner was officially over, I reminded myself, there may be police waiting for me, to replace the act of sleep with that of arrest. Dear God, it might even happen before this dinner could conclude. The very thought seized my stomach so as to prevent me from enjoying the provisions set before me. It would be horrible; I would be searched, stripped of my possessions and shoved into the heartless gray cell from which I'd sprung just days previous. Or worse, perhaps . . . into a worse cell yet, some damp hovel ever filthier. In the reflection from the pint glass, my silhouette seemed so harmless. I could not place myself into a position of acceptance. Not yet. I had to do something.

If I'd have known three years ago what I do now, I don't believe I'd have mixed myself up in the business that I once did. There is something to be said about a comfortable suit that actually fits you, the feel of the room abuzz not with the harrowed moans of the disquieted but with the spirited glow of enchantment, and of course, a quiet, respectful dinner, void of tears and admonishments. I raised my glass again, without thinking, and others cheered too.

My only thought was of my eventual return -- the very certain final return -- to that bitter house of Hell that I'd sneaked out of by sheer force of bribery and, with even more force when it came to such things, the use of knives.

Nobody stays out for long, though, do they? I raised my glass a third time, and it was received with questioning looks on the faces of both those who knew me and those who did not. But of course, this was a celebration, so mouthfuls were swallowed, glasses were raised for the third time at my behest, and the room clinked glasses. Cheers.

Yours,
JARET.

Just for tonight, only.

2008-08-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

12:18am.

I want to get to know you better. If you raised your eyes from the glowing sidewalk, and if your gaze didn't drift back toward the sight of the house in flames, and if you'd have turned and looked behind you, across the street instead, seeing me, I would have looked into your eyes without blinking, until the heat from the blaze started to hurt me.

I just want to get to know you better. Someone pulled you away from the overhanging garage as it caught, lighting up the darkness under the awning through the holes worn through it with rust and bad weather. You started to back away as the flames worsened. In your heels, and that smart little dress.

I stared at you, almost even through you. Your whole body was on fire, with the lightness that only angels have in them.

I watched your house crumble, wood exploding and popping, and you cringed and cried. Everyone across the street was crying. I just wanted you to turn around and see me. I wanted you to see through me the way I saw through you. My eyes were burning almost as badly as your house was.

Thank you,
JARET.

Everything could just disappear.

2008-08-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

3:59am.

It's so early, but something is eating at me from the inside. It's been going on for a little while, but every here and there the indifference parts like a curtain, and the cast of characters inside me just stand there and blankly stare out, naked and unable, effortlessly apparently vague and questionless, limitless but without depth. Until the inevitable time where everything closes again and it dawns on me that bottling it up feels a whole lot better.

It used to be that I just didn't feel I had honest human blood in me; that somewhere inside my veins coursed the lineage of something distinctly inhuman. Kids, right? What a silly lot. Somewhere along the line that turned into a faded portrait of just some regular guy who didn't care. And people will say it's harder to frown than to smile, but motor responses are more dignified than to lay everything out on the line because you think you're smart enough to know the difference between the way most people in your neighborhood seem to be growing up, and the basic reality of grasp of concept. Especially if you don't have anything in life to lose, what's more indignant than posing as somebody who gets it? If I were to present a perfect case of very purely bland basic facts: No friends? Dumb job? No desire? Not even any expectations anymore? That composes a smile way more honest than the one you get when you give somebody a birthday gift, because a smile that means nothing means more than one that does.

So for a time I coasted along. So empty of anything moderately meaningful that you'd have counted me among the happiest people you'd have known. After all, it's easier to smile than to frown, if you listen along with those people who tell you stuff but don't know what they're talking about because they have husbands, wives and children they got saddled with too young in life to take it back and so really they're just kind of projecting.

So I coasted along. I got a car. I bought a couple CDs and listened to them at night in my car alone.

Then there came the years of trying to understand and reach back. But empty sand buckets are only so reminiscent of the vast beach it once tried to contain, and eventually that beach isn't so magical anymore, so you lose interest. I tend to fade away and just let the tide carry me further and further, against its own tide, into something less like the open sea and more like some front hall closet full of dusty jackets that only get taken out once a year.

Thank Christ that your twenties are just a constantly overlapping perspective of things, otherwise I'd have been stuck thinking like I did, in all those coils of interchanging lack of belief systems. It's not fun just coasting along unless you like it. I bet if you're rich, that you like it. Not to break the subject, but I bet if you're rich, it has to be pretty fun.

But.

At some point I grew a little faith, I think. And it was not faith in miracles, or in humanity, or in opportunity, or in passion or people or anything like that. Far from it, in fact, as it was a faith in nothing. Very literally, I grew to adore nothing. There is something in absence that can be felt more profoundly than love from another person. It wipes away desire, it takes the tenseness and worms out of the belly, until sickness simply doesn't exist anymore. Ailment may humble you, but sickness is just a frame of mind. And it doesn't have to exist in some respects. A sane man can eradicate sickness. A pair of crutches is no match for something eddying inside your head that'll give your nerves repeated punch-ups until the dawn of your death.

Lately I think I've lost faith in nothingness. I see myself in the mirror more than I used to. It used to be that I'd button my shirt up and comb my hair and be nondescript and presentable. Now, I start to see that there's an actual body in the mirror that does exist. I can't feel more lonely than that, really. Just being there to see me back and not having faith enough in nothing to understand that it's just a reflection. But it's not just a reflection. I've clocked into work enough times now to know it's not just a reflection -- there really is this walking person that does the things I do, and who resents doing it. I resent saying Yes when someone asks me a question. I resent saying No if I don't want to answer. Not because it means anything, but because I'm just plain tired of myself. Of hearing my voice, of being part of a conversation, of being around. I'm coming up with a shyness lately that's so thick I feel like it's smothering me. Getting stuck having to rely on your motor responses to get you through is like a sort of idiot prison. Feeling on the bottom of humanity's floor is a weight off one's shoulders, but you feel the pressure of all those strides and jaunts across your person, surely, as life just carries you on, and on, and on, until you're so riddled with disease and infirmity that you beg to be let back into that emotional prison and feel those ambitious others just rolling right the hell over you. Maybe that'll happen to me.

It's just stupid and lonely seeing yourself in a mirror and finally realizing you're really there when all your life it didn't quite seem like that and you'd already learned to live with it. So you have to learn to not exist within the you that does exist, regardless of how grudgingly that may be. I shouldn't be surprised that I have to do this over and over again. I blame it on faith.

When I dream, I don't exist. I am curled up on the floor and frowned upon, or being chased, hunted or pushed out. When I dream I don't exist, I am closer to me than I am when I am awake.

A blessing fell over me when I discovered the therapy of photography. That beautiful [silent] world of structures and hope and being. Something exists within that quiet frame, something that above all, I want. I'll always feel indebted to the guy who invented the camera. It's a world in eight days, or seven, or how many days or other it took to make this one. It's one of those.

There's nobody home when you talk to me, just so you know. I don't mind it, but I wish I didn't understand it so well. The things you do don't matter, I tell myself, and I believe myself. I believe in myself.

Yours truly,
JARET.

You sure do remind me.

2008-08-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

4:09am.

Eventful Day / Paint A Pretty Picture / Gave My Best Try.

This morning when I woke, it was later than I'd intended. That's no fair fucking surprise, since I'm pretty sure I didn't see sleep until sun-up (again). It's not what I'd intentioned, but with the best of every gesture there can only reasonably be expected very appropriate failure to follow hot on the heels.

However, what I remember and what I don't are things that are outweighed heavily with the latter presuming its spot foremost. When did I ever become this lad who stood at the bottom of the stairwell that leads to wonder, only to pass out before taking the first step?

Thank goodness by body runs on instinct and motor response, otherwise I just might fall the fuck down on the ground and pretty much fucking stay right there. Oh buddy.

When I did happen to crawl out of bed and have a few glasses of water, I set to cleaning up and preparing the house for a photoshoot with Catriona. And it wasn't until after the shoot that I realized I haven't shot with her since Christmas Eve of 2007. Time has been slipping by at a very fast rate for me this past year; that's over half a year since shooting with somebody who I would regularly think as one of my favorite people to photograph.

Here are some photographs from that time, the afternoon before Christmas, last year:

Catriona boarded a transit bus and disappeared back to her side of town, after which I went out with my good friend Angela to attend a photography exhibit presented by the very talented and intriguing staff of Blue Moon Camera & Machine. This is a shop run by Jake Shivery and houses under one roof some of the finest photographers in Portland, inclusive of the inimitable Zeb Andrews and the aforementioned fine gentleman Jake Shivery.

Spending time with Angela is a great joy, and having drinks with her is just about heavenly:

After two bars and some wine at the art show, Angela promptly deposited my person back home, whereupon I had a short conversation with my friend Shane, who happens to be an exceptional chef who lives in the house that I do:

At which point I was picked up by my friend Jill:

We drove to my favorite bar in Portland. Tim was bartending. The chef dropped a bottle of Corona next to our table and I got doused in it. I love that shit! It was a beautiful day off.

Yours,
JARET.

Preoccupied little koala boer.

2008-08-15T03:55:00.000-07:00

3:55am.

Sometimes I'd like my life to just stop.

Usually it's the drink talking, but I don't think it must have to take a wizard to pick out those hidden little pockets of truth. Emotional barbed wire is silly and often times more of a hindrance than something you can hold and mold. It feels good, I admit, to just coast by with a blank stare, but this sort of shit is paid with a price. Try banking on it. See the stocks plummet. See the ocean floor and all those kooky little gorgeous unknowable specters making a life out of the bottom. It's just a circle, revolving over and over again, and with each hundred or so revolutions, the same old stuff starts to look a little embarrassing. If you can call wake-up calls embarrassing. Ever felt that funny moment where-n-when you realize, all of a sudden, that it just doesn't really matter?

Good-mornings and good-nights starting to ring a long running, very hollow bell? God I need a hug.

Have you ever woken up suddenly, bright as the explosions in pitfires, wide awake as the moment you are slapped right in the face on a street corner, to find you're standing outside of the world . . . but right in its belly too? Oh tapdances, you're so pretty.

I don't matter.

Love,
JARET.

Here's some photographs...

...it's your destiny to become something outside of the regular range of availability, I say to myself. Of course, it's only your stupid dreams talking.

...what else have you got to do but not become?

If you forget to be there for me sometimes.

2008-08-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

5:54am.

I must have passed out sometime around 10pm last night. Which would have had me in bed by the Witching Hour, which would probably be the first time it's happened to me like that since the mysterious flu epidemic that rendered half of Portland incapacitated and bedridden earlier this year.

By the looks of things (bundled up t-shirt for a pillow, a pile of unfolded laundry tucked into the far corner, the freshly cleaned sheet tossed halfway across the mattress instead of fixed to it properly), I must have been awful tired. During the afternoon, while working on photographs, I'd started drinking with a Mickey's, which is not the usual for me in any respect, but rather something introduced to me by friends who had recently spent the better part of July staying with me at my house. Following upon the wildly galloping hooves of this mischievous intoxicant there flowed a steady but regular stream of other things. But I think that again, the sheer mystery and deviousness of the Mickey's provoked in me an unstoppable end to sleep deprivation; exactly as the first time, in July, I woke up in a disordered bed, not having been aware of any attempt made to sleep -- the next day, no less -- properly refreshed. I do feel as if I can run a mile. But I can't of course, as my lungs are no longer the picture of health. Until the oxygen in the open air is supplanted with Albuterol, there will be no more jogging in my lifetime.

Yours,
JARET.

Here are some photographs:

Already made it to the bottom of that well.

2008-08-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

6:46am.

Hey.

The church was so silent at times that I could hear the soft, very soft hum of an air conditioning vent somewhere near the pew I sat in. For a moment it overwhelmed me and when I sighed it seemed to be in melody with the hush of cold music from the air conditioning vent, wherever it was. I thought maybe they might have been placed underneath the long wooden benches, but I couldn't just get down upon my hands and knees and go looking for them, and I leaned back, tilting my head, looking up at the rafters; pretending the vast beams and shadows of the ceiling up above were an ocean -- and I about to fall from the sky, into it -- I closed my eyes and let the words of the Pastor seep in.

Up to this point, the funeral had been a complete letdown. I hadn't come here to feel even lower, about myself or anyone else, but hearing these words, and looking around me, at everyone here who were all somehow connected to each each other in one way or the other through the young gentleman up front in the casket, the only thing that could come to my mind was a complete and utter submersion of this church and its present attendance, down into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean that no one alive could possibly still know about, if ever anyone did. I pictured the bubbles escaping from the dozens of breaths, and the light from up above fading until it was just a pinhole.

So I stared up at the ceiling, wondering how long it would be before, after the trails of years finally sputtered out, each of us here would be in our own graves. A hundred years from now, maybe. There's a lot of life left in some of them, I can smell that on the clouds of perfume and aftershave. Still tilting my head back, listening to the solemnity of the sweet words running around the open acoustics of the chapel house but not really hearing what its intentions were attempting to dig into the virulent sadness and silence of those gathered here today, I didn't smile or frown. I just pictured the ocean swallowing everything.

And I tuned out.

Good-night,
JARET.

As if the rain fell only upon you.

2008-08-07T03:13:00.000-07:00

3:14am.

With an exception paid to showers and lunch and frequent trips to the corner store for Sparks, I've spent the better seamlessness of two days sitting here at my desk working on photographs. This afternoon I did have a short nap, though, on the floorboards half underneath the glass coffee table and with my head rested on a pillow below the likewise sleeping creature Lazerbeam:

Later in the evening there appeared a window of opportunity in which to have pints of beer and tequila with my friend Judith:

Most of last night I worked on a short presentation of the small amount of work I have been able to print from my recent tour with Unwed Sailor:

From the city of Austin, Texas:

From somewhere near the ocean in Florida:

From somewhere on the highway in Texas:

>

From the Colonel's empty mansion in Texas:

When finally my weekend came to an end and I reached home again, I found Courtney and Tony on the dual sofa machines, discussing what I gathered may either have been plague rites or steps to relinquish the hold drug addiction has on one's life. Tony's only been here for a few days but I wish he'd stay for longer, because even though I don't know him, he seems really funny, and Courtney likes him a lot and I like when Courtney's happy. But then they shut the lights out and so I came up here to say good-night.

Good-night,
JARET.

Brilliant mice, let us alone.

2008-08-05T04:25:00.000-07:00

4:26am.

It's impossible, I think, to get to bed at a reasonable hour. This past week I set the tired side of my face against a pillow before 1am and pulled myself onto my own two feet before the noon bell from the church could toll. It felt nice to get to work before the rest of the world had its lunch hour, and to actually get enough work done by early afternoon to sufficiently feel decent about a nap instead of avoiding it like it's going to set me behind another sixteen hours.

But, I really don't think things like that are meant to last. It's almost 5am and I've an appointment to (yeah) keep by 9am. Back to the ways things always are. It's not a bad situation by any means. However, I do wish that I could maybe someday demonstrate a keener sense of control over myself and my actions. Specifically where it relates to time; I'm almost guaranteed to screw tomorrow up pretty good.

In recent mornings the sound of the fan comes to me like a warning. I've been waking with details of dreams still lingering, without their running off back into my head before I can grasp why it is that I feel so awkward there in my bed. And of course I always give the clock a few seconds' consideration before heading back off into unconsciousness, and upon waking for the final time, I've been remembering my dreams for a few hours apiece before they fade. I'd like to say that I took notes, to jog my memory some. And maybe to sort it out later, because it's an interesting study to consider what's happening in your head without your forward consent.

But no, I didn't.

Did I mention that the Devil can hug a person so warmly that affection takes on a whole different world? Sometimes? I want to go to bed feeling that it'll be better in my dreams. But, I can't manipulate where I land so much. Once I'm there, sometimes I can make my way around things, but, well, I think the alcohol in my bloodstream acts as kind of a barrier between facts and control. And so the dreams carry on with themselves.

Here are some photographs from the recent tour I took across the country with UNWED SAILOR and SYBRIS:

Johnathon, during the late afternoon in West Palm Beach, Florida.

And then Shannon, slightly before last call in Austin, Texas.

These are two people I care care for a good deal, despite the fact that some might wish to argue that I don't feel affection for people the right way. Oh lovely. Good-night.

Yours,
JARET.

You couldn't ask a king.

2008-07-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

3:00am.

Yesterday I started taking to thinking a lot on the nature of bad dreams. In different ways they could be nightmares, and in another way they could be rotted aspirations. Or, they're both all the time. Depending on who you are.

I've known a lot of people who have bad dreams in different directions. There's a lot that can happen in sleep, besides passing the time. Do you remember the time I hung from that swingset in the sky, watching the sea in the distance intentedly while whales flipped in and out of the waves, splashing the rolling meadows, and then how I swung to the highest arc and then jumped out of the seat? Do you remember the time I broke everything into splinters until all the world around me was just empty black space and I fell, and then the time I figured out how to destroy the human skeleton from inside the locked human body, without saying a word? And that time with the telephone call, the forgiveness that would not come, and then waking up and getting dressed and going to work with my head down. And how it all happened outside of sleep. The relief cut. That dumb early morning sigh.

Before getting into bed I came over to write this. Before coming over to write this I took a swig of rum, then a swig of NyQuil, then another of rum. Right now I'm going to head downstairs to have another of both, then I'll brush my teeth and see you later.

Yours,
JARET.

Ants gathering at the foot of the bed.

2008-07-22T02:42:00.001-07:00

2:43am.

I suppose it's finally time for bed. It's been twelve days of 24-hour Mickey's and Sparks and Terminal Gravity. Now I feel like I know these drinks like people. People I can trust and people that don't always say thank you but, in the bottom gulps of their pooling hearts, still actually don't resent the open arms they're always showered with. We dropped Julie and Sean off at the airport tonight after dinner at the hands of Shane, our resident chef. After taking in a film with Courtney and Clint, I crawled into the attic to work on some photographs. Tonight I finished arranging forty of them and that's just good enough to be able to resume crawling, this time into the bed. Lately my blood alcohol level has been the exact level of blood. So I've been shivering, and frowning when I have to get out of bed. Tomorrow morning I have another photoshoot in North Portland, so I need to rise somewhat early to catch an appropriate bus.

More than likely tomorrow I will also have the first prints from my recent tour with Unwed Sailor. I'm keeping the thought I have in my head of the Devil's fingers, crossed. After a month-long trip, seeing first prints is a quiet little horror that is always somewhat welcome, but creates a nervous sensation that's not unlike anxiety or stress. And a few beers before coming home, I'll have that too. It will compliment the rum and soda I plan on having before getting on the bus.

Also, I posted the rough draft of a new story here, at Please Don't Leave Me's profile on MySpace. I was pretty surprised that with all the recent goings-on I could actually find the time alone to get a new story done, so I had a pleasant rest that night despite the four Sparks in my system that truly almost had my head squeezed dry of moisture. I think I drank a gallon of water the following morning because I couldn't feel enough moisture in my body to make it to the bus stop under the haze of the afternoon sun without recuperating.

I own a mule?

Good-night, sailor.
JARET.

A caustic decree. A caustic decree.

2008-07-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

2:37pm.

When the shower is running on warm and your nose is bleeding and way the light filters into the room and the small droplets of blood splash in the water that divides around your feet as it runs, and you look like two rocks or trees or nameless pillars in a white water stream, and the red blood splashes everywhere, it looks pretty.

As a small tyke and even in my early teen years, my nose used to be a constant fountain of blood. It proved a splendid recourse from class, as I could only just be excused to the Boys Room, where I didn't have to do anything but stand there and pretend I was hurt instead of remaining in class letting life drain through me like wind eddying through canyons and wiping away centuries of stone.

I liked blood a lot, and I always figured girls were into cuts and scars, but girls aren't into nosebleeds, let me say for sure. You don't get pretty, batting eyelashes when your nose is bleeding in school because it looks like some bigger kid just beat you up. And girls don't like a loser.

I wish I'd had chronic stigmata instead of nosebleeds. I bet girls would have been into that. And maybe I could have even been on a television talk show and answered questions about it.

"Yeah, I miss school. I miss being home. But with this stigmata, I just don't have the time for that kind of stuff anymore."

The bleeding's stopped now. Maybe I should start taking vitamins. This late in life, I don't know if I can erase the damage done from a lifetime of malnutrition and then the extra addition of a hobby like alcohol consumption. But maybe vitamins aren't so bad anymway. I'm covered in a lot of little bruises all over my body, by the way. From shooting photographs or falling down, I can't say where their origins were developed. Mickey's is a powerful drink. Thanks, Coffey/McDermott.

Julie's still here at the house, so to speak. We've been shooting for a few days. I think Andrew Kaiser is downstairs in the house. He's taking Julie and Sean out for photographs. Andrew is a wonderful photographer who lives here in Portland too. She's been writing about it in her travel blog.

I have to get going now. The hospital staff is starting to panic and my telephone keeps ringing and it's doctors, and I'm supposed to be picking up a shipment of camera film in the hospital reception area in the sea and I'm late.

Yours,
JARET.

Your stomach will have flowers sprout from the lining.

2008-07-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

10:38 pm / my attic.

Tonight is the first of a series of twelve, whereupon I am being visited from across the countryside by my friends Julie Coffey, a model and somewhat of a snowstorm unto herself, and Sean Monistat, a musician and an oar to soothe such tempestuous waters.

You know what?

My favorite drink, I believe, since I can't afford to drink margaritas all day, is Sparks. But these people brought the green-bottled Mickey's into my household today. And I used to tend bar at a place in a Southeastern United State, and we did serve Mickey's, and I knew people would lose their minds on this drink, but it never occurred to me to try it myself. Because, maybe, it's a green-bottled drink, and most drinks in a green bottle are not worth paying for, nor are they suited for personally decent drinking even if they're offered to you for free.

Well, I just woke from a late afternoon nap after a five hour photography shoot and a quick dinner with Julie, and I woke up in a puddle of Sparks in my bed. Wet shirt, wet sheets, wet blanket, wet pants. I was covered in fucking Sparks.

Upon investigation by the local sheriff and a detective from the Precinct and some people with medical/law degrees, forensics analysis came up with these salient facts:

1. The table down in the kitchen presents five emptied 40 ounce bottles of Mickey's lined up, and the trash receptacle will offer you the remains of two Sparks and some other local energy drink with an eight percent alcohol level on the easy side of that.

2. I am wide awake.

So, you know, I fall asleep with a can or bottle of beer in my hand all the time. It's fairly natural for me, and a common end to nights. But I balance it pretty well in sleep, and I never have problems. I don't ever spill drinks in sleep. This drink Mickey's turned me inside the devil and out. Now I'm spilling drinks in my sleep. I love it.

I just put everything in the washer; Sean and Julie are asleep downstairs in the guest room at my house in Portland. I believe they are trying to keep a running blog of this week. So I'll have a link to it when I find out where in the Hell it's located, or if it's being done. It's going to be a really fun next eleven fucking days.

"Let's do this" / "see you in the pit" - Jason Hamacher.

Yours,
JARET.