The Boats of Nazareth

The boats of Nazareth
rock on a hidden shore
filled with people seeking hope

The trains of Nazareth
rumble frontward on frail rails
taking the passengers to a distant kingdom come

The carts of Nazareth,
pulled by horses out of sight
carry the cost of the burden of those gone

The boats of Nazareth
rock one way to another
Listless floating above water
Those desperate and destitute, all aboard

The trains of Nazareth
climb a tilted hill
with not enough fuel to reach the peak
tumbling down after their final breaths

The carriages of Nazareth
Have all been broken and burnt
The carriages of Nazareth no longer carry death

The boats of Nazareth
sunk yet with no loss of hope
The trains of Nazareth
Fell on themselves, destroying themselves
The boats of Nazareth
Remain at the bottom of the ocean
Hope not undone by the loss.

The boats of Nazareth
The boats of Nazareth
The trains of Nazareth
The trains of Nazareth
The carriages of Nazareth
The carriages of Nazareth

-by A.H. Salem

Darkness at Dawn

An early draft of a novel. MATURE READERS ONLY!

Chapter 1

The question remained whether the man should stay after the deed he committed laid wasted and abandoned on the floor. What a shame it was for his friend to have to die in that lonely place where no one except he could see. It was long ago that the man, the hero of our story, would wonder about how a human can kill another without remorse. He understood those who regretted their actions but not the ones who didn’t.

Standing over the body of his friend, the one that he had loved for so long, he thought about the time before this day when he contemplated that question. He smiled, for he knew now what they had felt. There is only remorse if there was guilt. How could a person feel guilty if an action had been justified? The smile soon turned into a smack of the lips. What was he to do now?

His friend laid there motionless, his face battered beyond recognition. It was strange to see him so. The teeth protruding from bloody gums and the rest of his skull a collage of blood and bones; white pink skin sprinkled here and there like glitter.

The sun would rise in an hour and he needed to be in the dark for awhile longer. He looked around to see where he could dispose the body. The thought didn’t occur to him before he committed the act. It was to be figured out later like all decisions made in the heat of the moment, made in haste. He had no intention of touching it. The thought sent shivers through his body. The friend he used to shake hands with, hug and pat his back. No, he wasn’t going to touch the body.

The sounds of machinery starting up could be heard in the distance. The men and women of the harbor would start their day soon. He had little time to decide what to do. Paralysis soon overcame him. He couldn’t move. His head swirled with images of moments gone past. Moments of pleasure he had shared with the dead man: the dinners, the parties, the traveling; the memories of their travels made their presence the strongest. He had to make a move! The sounds of the machines soon were joined by voices. There was nothing to be done, so he had no other choice but to run. He rejected his subconscious’ attempt to reason with him; that the body was lying in plain sight; that soon the police would be at his doorstep to bring the news, and to investigate. He would be caught even before anyone attempted to catch him. But there was nothing else he could do, and as animals usually do when frightened, he ran. He made his way past the loads stacked up on another. It was a few minutes before he was on a public street and a few more before he opened the door of his car and was on his way home before he realized what he had left behind.

No one had seen him. It was too dark, unusually dark. He had slipped past a yawning forklift operator with coffee in hand. They were all tired; too busy thinking about the tough day ahead than with the possibility of a person sneaking his way past them. There wasn’t even a reason to fear such a thing as the harbor was open to anyone who wanted to visit.

When he got to the door of his apartment he noticed that he could not recall his ride home. He tried to think of the roads he took but recalled nothing. All he could remember was entering his car. He needed to sleep.

—

He woke up in a groggy state. It was still dark. The clock read 11:11 PM, fourteen hours after he had gone to bed. Waking up at night after hours of sleep depressed him; the rotation of the sun and the moon were necessary. The day was for work and the night was for rest. Humans have always woken up at the crack of dawn and worked until the descent of the sun. Then slept until the crack of dawn again; a continuous cycle that never ended, and one that might not end for a long long time, until maybe the Earth explodes because of an asteroid, or the Day of Resurrection falls.

He was surprised at his ambivalence towards the actions of the early morning before. It seemed to him like a dream and he felt like he was drugged. And indeed he was. It was the pills. They were to blame, they made him sleep for a long time, and if he had no intention to wake up then he continued to sleep. Especially after a long day’s work and nothing to do the next day, would cause him to sleep just as now, for more than twelve hours at times. Sometimes it seemed that his life went so fast due to his sleep. He would wake up in a dreamy state and sleep in one too. Twelve to sixteen hours of activity followed by twelve to sixteen hours of sleep. That was his life. He had grown accustomed to it. This would not be the case without the pills but he needed them. They were prescribed to him. Without them he began to lose his mind, losing track of his goals, speaking nonsense and lashing out at the rules in a clumsy manner. No, he needed the pills. And the sleep was something he would have to deal with.

He turned on the TV to see if his actions had been found. They weren’t. Maybe the death of a young white man in a harbor wasn’t news to some these days. He bit into an apple as he flipped his computer open to continue the search for his crime. Website after website and there was nothing. Not even a word. Maybe they needed more time. It was still Sunday after all.

He flipped the channel to a football game. It was a replay of a game that occurred earlier that afternoon. The New England Patriots were playing: they were his favorite team. They always were his favorite team since he was a young boy when he had seen them play in the Superbowl for the first time. He had a fond admiration for their quarterback; an inspiration who was perhaps the best football player of his decade. He wanted to be that great one day. How awesome would it be to have a skill that people admired so much, and to have people adore you for it?

As always, the quarterback played well. Throwing to receivers who scored touchdowns and handing the ball to running backs who went the distance. What a sight it was to watch a well-oiled machine churn and pump out yard after yard, score after score. The feeling of vicariously winning through someone else increased his heartbeat and elated his mind to the extent that he was high off of the fumes of an imaginary victory. One he was not even responsible for yet the sole proprietor of.

At halftime, he texted numerous girlfriends to see if any would come over. All he needed was one positive response and he got it. She knocked on the door at the start of the third quarter

She liked him. He was glad that she did. He needed her comfort, her solace, and her soft body. They cuddled as the touchdowns piled on the opposing team. What a sight!

While the quarterback took the field for a kneel down, he slid his hands down the girl’s pants and began to rub her gently. He needed her soft body now. After the adrenaline of the morning before and the game just now, came a sudden urge to release an angelic demon within him. A rising fire between his legs that extended through to his heart. He had to please this flight of emotion. So he rubbed and leaned in to kiss. She smiled vaguely and he took it as consent.

The momentum continued and she was now half naked, with him in between the heaven that sprouted in between her legs. The taste in his mouth made his penis erect, bulging, ready to please all involved. She moaned. She was surprised that he went down on her so fast. He must have needed her badly. The game on the screen had moved on to another one. The players were getting ready to kickoff as the announcers went to commercials. She tried to reach for the remote but he took her by the hands and lifted her shirt off. Then came the bra. She was fully naked now. The moon shone through the open window. It gazed at the lovers, shining its embrace on both their bodies. He sucked on her breasts, moving up towards the nape of her neck while his hands were still stroking her insides.

“The key for the Broncos today is converting in the red zone. The last…” The announcers on TV continued in the background. The man loved the fact that all this was happening as he made his way about the girl. He imagined the announcers watching him. Commentating on his every move. “The move right now is to transition this excellent start into a score. I think it’s his call right here but I say he goes for it. What do you think Jim?” “If there’s one thing we learned from last week is that he needs to learn how to finish. That’s the one thing that he needs to work on right now.” Excited by their commentary he pulled down his pants and began the transition. He could hear the crowd all around him. Chanting, booing, holding signs that read “NO BACKDOOR SHENANIGANS”, “FOREPLAY IS THE BEST PLAY”. He was the quarterback: all kinds of time. Dropping back, pass after pass. Thrust after thrust. Score after score. Position after position. Until he stood ready to take the kneel as she knelt by the couch. This was what it all was about. The kneel down. The victory lap. The hail to the chief. The three gun salute! It was done. He had come. And she laid there broken and defeated, basking in the shadow of the victorious man standing in front of her. “What a game! He is clearly the MVP of this first half…” He turned the TV off and went to shower.

She followed him into the bathroom. Sliding the curtain to the bath, she saw him jump at the sight of her in his private sanctum. She got in with him. He enjoyed having her there. It felt normal to bathe with another person of the opposite sex.

They went downstairs to a 24-hour diner and he ate heartily. He told her that she looked tired and should probably go home and rest. She said that she was too tired to go home and wanted to sleep. He felt annoyed, there was much thinking that had to be done but he consented. If she was going to sleep and intrude on him for the night then he might as well take her again. And he did. This time to the sounds of an infomercial about a dishwasher.

She slept immediately after and he laid there naked thinking. It seemed to him strange that there was no news of what had happened almost twenty-four hours earlier. There was absolutely nothing, not even a call from the cops. He contemplated going back to the scene to see if the body was still there. That would be crazy, he thought. Somethings are just better left to fate and not acts of stupidity. He decided to get up and go to the gym near the complex; it was almost 5 AM. Working out after having sex didn’t feel right, as his muscles were soft and his grip was weak, but he went anyway. He needed to occupy the vast spinning windmills in his mind: the sleep, the game, the sex, food, and now the gym. This was the life that was worth living. He felt a sinking anxiety that his friend was somewhere dead and not able to feel these kinds of emotions anymore.

Death had always been a mystery to him. What separates the dead and the living? How could such a barrier, if there was a barrier, exist if there was no breathing, no thinking, no brain to process the thoughts that he currently had. Without the brain, there would be no inner conscious, no regret, no dreams. So how is it that when a person dies that he continues to live in the memories of the living? His first encounter with death was a bird that had flown smack into his father’s car when he was a child. He had taken the bird and studied it. There was no blood. The wounds probably were all internal. He took it, rested it inside a box and buried it in a grave he thought was deep enough. It rained heavily the day after and he saw the box and the decaying bird by a gutter. He had felt guilty that he had botched the burial of his first lifeless victim.

There were other encounters with death. Once again as a child, he was on an outing with his family in the woods where he heard the hustle and screams of men and women. Somebody had fallen off a canoe and into the lake and couldn’t be found. He remembered wading into the water, seeing from afar a jumble of men trying to search the lake for the body. There was this innate fear mixed with the excitement of plunging in after them but he was afraid, not of drowning, but of a monster or dead body grabbing his legs as he swam in the murky lake. He decided against it, turned back around and went to one of the picnic tables near the cabins. There were kids there too, with mothers trying to comfort them. He had not wanted to cry. There was no sadness in his heart when the news came that the man had drowned when the canoe capsized and he had hit his head on a rock, knocking him unconscious as he descended in the ocean. It had taken them awhile to find and fish out his body, it being too late to resuscitate.  The man’s kids were crying their eyes out and to show support, he thought that he should cry too. So he started crying with them. Out of pure show and support. That’s why he had done it, he did not have to: he was always in control of his emotions.

The session at the gym was great. He lifted heavily and ran conditionally. He saw a dwarf getting out of the pool on his way to the sauna. He laughed to himself, wishing that he had seen the dwarf swim. He followed him to the sauna and sat there glancing every two or three seconds at his wide features as sweat poured out his body like a condescended glass. After a couple of minutes, the dwarf left and he laughed again – alone in the sauna, the dizzying heat confused him and elevated him to a high that was no longer thermal. Rising without a thought, he opened the wooden door and almost fainted as the cool air of the gym hit him in the face. He saw the dwarf showering, nude, he wanted to laugh again but he was too dizzy. He had never killed a midget. And he never wanted so bad as to do it now. But he knew it wouldn’t be justified. He no longer was a virgin to humanity’s second sin.

Some say that the words of an artist are never heeded except in a play on words. That was the analogy he read in the magazine outside in the lobby of the gym. Gulping down on his protein shake, the young man kept reading about the writer’s dilemma of action and the rising verb met the sinking adjective and all was well in the grammatical sense. It was however not all well in any of his senses because in his heart he had a deep regretful pain. A pain devoid of emotion, yet full of it, that would creep up at any moment; and a heart scarred on every part of its surface.

In this state, a large hand grabbed him by the shoulders and turning around, a tall looking fellow, over six feet and a half, towered over him. It was his gym buddy, Randall Cunningham. They laughed at the surprise and the gimmick. Each heading the opposite way, talked about the current emotions of the other and departed with smiles.

That Randall Cunningham was an interesting fellow. He had been a wrestler back in his prime. Now he was just a weight lifting hero who lifted heavily to the dropped jaws of the men and women around him. Age was a funny thing. Once it’s gone you never get it back. Those who lose it remain at loss for how they lost it. But he, the hero of the story, never gave any thought to what needed no thinking. That was his ardent philosophy. And that’s how he had tackled life day and night. Morning and evening. There would be no justice in love and war. All is fair. All was imminent.

He bid farewell to the gym and headed east towards his apartment. There were dark shadows now from the street lights. Long shadows of his, as they marked the sidewalks with his size and shape. Moving forward and backward, slanting, bending until the spine would have seemed to break. The bones being too well to sweep under what remained of the dark sky.

When he got to the apartment, his girlfriend was still in bed. He had to go to work in two hours and he had a roaring need to expel the testosterone that built up after his workout. He got hard as he approached her, she lying on her side, buttocks and back bare towards him. She rose once he woke her, startled and tired. Climbing into bed, he held her gently and after some cooing tried to make his move but she said that she was sore. He mentioned that she had her mouth and hands; that her genitalia was unnecessary for him now. She consented and knowing that she would allow him to do so, he straddled her with her breasts directly under him and dipped his penis into her mouth. It was as if he was having sex but the pleasure he derived from it this time was something he had never felt before. In and out his rod went, and she stroked him sensually on his thigh, buttocks, and abdomen. He wanted this to end quickly and then suddenly rose from inside him a bubbling, evil desire. As he saw her regurgitate the saliva out and it trickling down her chin, he was filled with immense pleasure; and as she gurgled when his phallus was deep inside her mouth, this evil desire sunk deeper into his soul. He drove his rod all the way down attempting to bat the uvula like a boxer and imagined his hands choking her while he thrust inside and out until she could no longer breathe and passed out. He wanted to do this; he thought about it as he continued to execute. But his conscience knew that she could easily bite or throw her knees and jab him in the back. So he kept going hoping the thought would go away but it wouldn’t. He pulled out so that he could grip this intestinal burn while she commenced licking his balls. The burn made its way not downward but upwards through his stomach, up his esophagus and all the way to his throat. He could taste it. What it was he didn’t know but his face began to flush and his erect penis felt like it would explode. Something had changed within him chemically; he was never this depraved during sex. He knew he had to finish so he inserted his penis once again and with all his might fought the urge to choke her, hoping to flush the desire back where it came and within moments the burning water was ejected and swallowed. He gave out a yell as if he was being hurt, and it startled her. He bent down towards her and began to kiss her, his tongue licking out every part of her mouth. He kissed her on the cheek and held her in his arms like a baby. Confusion was on her face. At this moment looking at the face and mouth he had just fornicated he told her that he cared for her. It was a true emotion and he wanted to cry but held himself from doing so. He laid down beside her and fell asleep to the breathing of her chest and the comforting sound of her beating heart.

When he woke up she had somehow unclenched herself from his grip without waking him. The light through the window was beaming down at a strong angle and looking at the clock he saw that it was 8:11 AM. He slept for an hour or so, she had must of left shortly after he fell asleep. His job allowed him some leniency when it came to being on time. He had yet to be late since he took the job a year ago. Not in the mood to go to work, and needing to fix his sleep, he called in sick and since he had never done so before, there wasn’t any resistance. Get well said his manager. Get well. How he wished he could get well.

After a shower and a large breakfast, he sat on his couch to ponder. Could the body really have gone this far without being discovered? A visit or a call from the police should have been due by now. After all, he was one of the dead man’s best friends and the only one he had in this city. The man’s girlfriend didn’t even call. There was still nothing on the news, nothing in the obituaries. The thought of going back to the yard crept into his mind, followed by an equally preposterous idea of calling the police station, and even calling the man’s girlfriend. Upon further contemplation he decided to wait. Patience is a virtue they say. He would need this patience, now and all the way through the end. Hell, he better start practicing because for all he knew he could be in prison for a long time soon. Prison, what a hell that must be like. Like hell, it was a place where patience wasn’t rewarded. Patience or no patience, he would be in there forever.

He rose from the couch and rolled himself a joint. Now, with nothing to do but lay back, he thought it best to descend into a calm high. One that sank him into thoughtful projection and intense self-reflection. Life could be so beautiful masked in a certain layer. What if that layer remained always between reality and his eyes? But it was impossible. Nothing could ever make himself see what others did. All his actions were merely a reflection of his inner thoughts and emotions. A roundabout of the same cars and vehicles that kept circling around and exiting, circling around and exiting, with no purpose and no end. It came down to this: if he was able to comprehend the reality of his life, the reality of other people’s lives would not matter to him.

The humor in his thought patterns emerged when he delved into the box of life and took out three dozen letters marked with his name in red pen and each tied to white feathers. The sense of denial in his voice emerged to all those present. He fought it back, mimicking the actions of his fellow onlookers. They stared at him, silently; nothing moving them an inch or centimeter. He turned to walk away from them, letters in hand. What those letters contained he had no idea. But he was sure that his guess was right. He was always right.

He put out the joint and was in a relaxed haze. An endless array of images, sketches, scenes and pictures welded together by iron came to him in spurts. This is how it was with marijuana: the herb that was smoked for centuries with miraculous results to the human brain, at least for some. Like alcohol, it was only for people who knew how to use it. There was nothing more lowly than a drunk who used alcohol recklessly, and it was the same with marijuana: uneducated people smoking and sitting around numbing their brain with TV, idle talk and other things that waste time, getting stupider and decaying their mind with every puff. Every drug could be used to someone’s advantage; it’s not the drug that destroys the person, it’s the blame placed on the drug that does.

The TV paced on with its pictures and sounds, alongside his memories: his own television broadcasted all that he thought he could project. But there were still other things that came like a fly pacing across a screen. When he was high, his actions would be placed in front of a judge and jury. He, the defendant, sitting on the witness stand watching what he had done. Every action was scrutinized and thought over, and a judgment would be given to him according to what he could collect from the evidence. The urge to choke his girlfriend, the midget who he wanted to kill, and the despicable act of murder. He needed to connect them with reasons, motives, underlying objectives. A sentence had to be cast but more time was needed. Time. Time was nothing but imagination. It moved to the pace of one’s own discretion and was nothing else. When he thought about his actions, he could only think of them as concrete images. Nothing in the world could change what had been done and nothing in the present or the future could ever make it right. Those realizations were bothersome in some unknown way; facts of life he could do nothing about.

Running away. The thought came racing down the street and collided into a railroad crossing where his initial thoughts were headed. Now going in the direction of the street, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. Fleeing the country would make the most sense. But what would he do with all his belongings, money, his family; his friends. He couldn’t make that transition. Running away to another state was also a possibility but they would soon catch him because he didn’t have enough faith that he would be smart enough to pull it off. The best course of action would be to take it head on. If he suddenly left everything and ran, and they found the body, there would be no question who had committed the crime. But it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that he had done it. If they came and asked him questions he would answer them the best way he could; staying put, and planning out his actions and his alibi gave him the best chance of getting away with the crime. He hadn’t even started on it. They could come in at any minute and he would be stumped as to what to say. It had to be sound, everything; tracing the event backward and looking at all the possible ways to place him somewhere other than the place of the crime was what he had to do. He had to do it step by step.

—-

It had already been more than twelve hours since he woke up the night before. It was now in the early afternoon. The after high had made him sleepy but sleep now was the last thing he could do. Pouring himself a cup of instant coffee, he contemplated texting his friend’s girlfriend. It didn’t make sense that she had yet to contact him after not hearing from her boyfriend for two days. He convinced himself to do it. There was no suspicion because he could say the same things that she would say, his concern would be equal to hers. The text was brief: had she seen him since Friday? While he waited he took his coffee onto the porch and looked over the narrow street outside. There was a homeless man pushing a grocery cart loaded with useless things. No pity entered his heart. He only felt a sort of resentment that a useless man and his useless things should be alive while so many others were dead. As he was lost in an intense theory about the plague and morality of homelessness, the girlfriend texted him back saying that she had not seen him but that she wasn’t worried because he had mentioned some sort of private expedition in a city three hours away. The last time she had talked to him was an email he had sent mentioning that his phone had been stolen. This was on Saturday, it was now Monday afternoon; the murder happening Sunday early before dawn. He was taken aback by the news. His friend had never told him this and he knew where he had been Saturday and it wasn’t outside the city. After a couple drafts of texts he thanked her for letting him know and that now, checking his email, he had gotten a similar one.

That was perplexing. Why would he have sent out an email when he knew that he hadn’t lost his phone and he was with him all night Saturday. His anxiousness increased; the coffee making it worse. Back inside, he threw himself onto the bed and closed his eyes. The coffee made his mind think really hard about nothing in particular; his brain flexing, causing light patterns to illuminate underneath his eyelids. He would have to go back. Crazy he thought, the old cliche was true. There was a sort of disbelief when it came to his crime. Had he really killed him? He shook this notion off; ofcourse he did. Everything was real. The idea wouldn’t go away, the more he fought it the more it began to suffocate him. He had to see it for himself. If there was a body then someone had to have found it. It laid there in plain sight. Maybe he could ask someone there if such a thing happened. No, that would look suspicious. It was impossible for anyone not to have noticed it by now unless it was removed by a third party. Or even worse they were waiting for someone to come back. This was a task that could not be taken lightly. His mind was in a frenzy. Nothing made sense, and the dots that should have been easily connected were blank and incorrect. The picture not forming and the connections continuing to be erased.

With new found energy he opened up a journal he kept for his thoughts and when his mind was scattered. An exercise that helped was to write without thinking and letting his subconscious write what it wanted; and after it had finished what it had to say, he would read it and try to make something out of it. Thus he wrote:

Obsessions. Numerous or single can drive an individual crazy. The worst of them are the ones that lay under the surface of the subconscious. Not being realized by either the conscious or its sub. It remains there waddling between hemispheres until it finally sinks into either one. When the conscious mind finally realizes the presence of this hidden obsession it buckles under the weight of the stress, at first trying to purge it from within itself. And once failing, it accepts the obsession as the only goal, at times with some benefits but mostly just driving the mind crazy.

One would think it strange that the mind would work in that fashion. Remainders and squares among other things salvage the line of mediocrity that lies in the brain. An entity so powerful and strong yet weak and pathetic. 

When a straddling obsession, however, seeps into the subconscious, a crevice is born. The subconscious burrows within itself a home for that obsession. It welcomes it with wide arms and happily accepts it as part of its own. There is no cure for such an instance. The fates hold all the cards and one becomes a robot. A deity controlled by the fates. Yet to the individual nothing is noted within the conscious mind. Which becomes agitated by this new essence within its neighbor for a period. Before succumbing as an unknown slave to the deity that lives side by side with it.

There is a repeated cycle of things. Therefore when it is mentioned that these two consequences of a hidden obsession are linked by two different outcomes, the point remains unknown whether either one or the other can be diagnosed as one or the other.

This would seem a trivial matter if only one could see through the lines and utter an undeniable fact in a single word about the sentences that are written and read.

He read it three times before acknowledging that what he had written was somehow related to his desire to go back to the scene of the crime: Yet to the individual nothing is noted within the conscious mind. Which becomes agitated by this new essence within its neighbor for a period. Before succumbing as an unknown slave to the deity that lives side by side with it. The crime scene was to be visited, there was no other choice.

It was five by now. The sun yet to set. No longer could he stay awake with a tired mind; rest was what he needed. Planning to wake up early in the morning after a long sleep, he took his medication and fell asleep shortly after.

—-

Slowly…slowly he awakens and quickly he rises out of bed. The time. It was 3:11 AM: another twelve hours of sleep. And through the mire he lifts his body from the bed; a strain if there ever was one and gets ready to embark on the day. There was a comfort about things when he awoke. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He remembered fondly that his team had won two days prior, today was early Tuesday morning. A lethargic contentment was suddenly interrupted by a sudden, climactic surge of adrenaline, followed by a video of his friend dying in front of him. For a few blissful moments, he was free. An instance of a dream outside of a dream when the body had yet to realize that it had awakened; and that it was no longer a spirit wandering among spirits. It had a body and a weakness.

His stomach began to churn with a deep resentment of the man he had killed. And the remainder of yesterday and the day before were pieced together like a puzzle until he saw both memories from afar as one would see an animal at the zoo: hoping that the animal hadn’t hidden in its artificial habitat, like a memory hiding in his subconscious. It took forty-eight hours but it finally hit him. The previous day was a dream now. Not the murder. That was as real as day. But what had happened afterward. The game, the girl. It was a perfect day after a gruesome murder. Even the contemplation he had done before bed was free of guilt, just thoughts strained by a temporarily forgotten regret, simple thoughts that didn’t weigh on the conscious. They simply were without being. Without existing. Had he not existed for a single day? It was as if he had lived and died and lived again.

As the water poured over his body in the shower, the heat rose and enclosed him with its own fear and resentment. The water poured and poured as he tried to picture himself on a beach after a swim, showering, imagining him being purified from the dirt; the sand and the salt being washed away by clean water.

Once in the car, he pulled out of the apartment parking structure and tried to remember his drive home from the murder but couldn’t. The streets of the city were quiet, still too early for the people to have woken up. It was the kind of quiet that you only notice when it’s cold and there is no wind. He did not remember at this moment what had plagued his mind when he had woken up. He developed this anxious joy for his current memory loss. He had made his mind work for himself. The control of the mind was all anyone hoped to conquer in this world. With the control of the mind, one can control his own life and destiny. Or that’s what he was beginning to realize now. Like it was some sort of game. A silly one. Between proposed angels and demons in one’s head that tempted and persuaded him into pursuits both good and bad. What came of these games? What does the victor attain? And who do we call the losers?

The blankness of his mind suddenly fell on him and he was numbed into oblivion by the pitch black of dawn! – A seemingly profound shutter of a blackness followed by a blazing, rayful light, much like that of the sun. When it came he began to swerve between the divider lines of the empty city street and stopped until the cathartic experience before his eyes had been finished with him. He remained, his eyes closed, until the apparent sun disappeared and the sudden blackness turned into calm. What had he seen? It had happened before. Things like this always came. They were like shocks, appearing visually like the nerve endings one sees in science videos about the nervous system, with the nerves appearing as lightning, accompanied and interrupted by sudden bright lights blowing up like fireworks across his brain. Like the night sky lit by spots of whiteness with no sign of lightning. He didn’t mind them when they came. They were not remotely painful; they were actually very comfortable. Like the mind was being stretched and flexed: much like a muscle. He tried to use it to his advantage.

After a few minutes, he got back on the road and started to concentrate on his plan. He had checked the news online before he had left and again there was nothing. What were he to do if he found no corpse, no body? The thought sent shivers through him. A memory came to him at the moment, about a time he went to see an old French horror movie in a cinema downtown with one of his girlfriends about a boarding school run by a man, his teacher wife, and a teacher mistress. The wife and the mistress shared a mutual hatred of the man who treated them both badly. They planned to murder him and did so by sedating him and drowning him in a bathtub. They threw the body into the school’s pool hoping it would surface and seem like an accident. The next day the body fails to surface and his body is nowhere to be found when the pool is drained. That was just the halfway point of the movie. Before the ending credits, the movie tells the audience not to tell what happens in the end. That was a movie he thought. No way could it happen in real life.

Approaching the lot where he had parked on that fateful night, a feeling of great impending doom came up within him. The thoughts he had been harboring for two days: they all seemed like whispered nightmares. A cross between comfort and pain. The closer he got to the harbor, the closer the imminent pain was to his destruction. He felt like the end of a needle pricking his own skin like he was the source of the pain; a man diving into a pool of blood and gore.

He parked his car and sat for a minute. There was no time to sit and gather the courage, no time to think about what lay before him. The dots scattered within his brain and he could no longer think. Carefully, as if being watched, he got out of his car and headed towards the crime scene. There was nothing in his mind, he had no control over his movements.

Turning the corner into the harbor, were the gates, and past that to the right in between two crates was the death scene. His breath blew from his mouth and dissipated. It was calming, as if he was smoking. There was a cloudy mist in his eyes as he approached the scene. A mist so strong that he had to lean on a storage container to let it pass. Was it real or not, it didn’t make a difference to him now. As he drew closer he knew what his subconscious already knew. Maybe the mist was trying to hide this from him so he wouldn’t get hurt: like the body was trying to protect the brain by not being able to believe what the eyes saw. His face gave a sudden twitch as he got up and got closer. And a feeling he had as child welled up inside him. He used to have a fear of monsters and criminals who could be hiding in his closet, behind the curtain of the shower, and under cars in garages as he passed by them; also when going up or down from a dark area where he thought someone could take him by the ankle and drag him down. There was no reality to that fear. It was nonsense, and as a kid he knew so. But that didn’t change anything, that feeling always came. He hated it and the only way to let it pass was to get out of the situation. But he had to face it first.

Nothing was there. He stared it down. What he hoped was a paranoid thought was actually true. There was no body. No blood and not even a single trace of a murder scene. He would have fainted if he wasn’t thinking so hard. A thousand useless images ran through the PowerPoint in his head. Pictures of flowers in brown dusted laden pots. Pictures of a lawn being mowed. Grass in the morning dew. A fire hydrant. A dog. And a dog pissing on the hydrant. A laughing clown. A miniature tea set. A doll. A doll being torn by a dog. A dog humping another dog. A smile. A smile on a little girl. A merry go round breaking down. People crying. The merry go round scene from Strangers on a Train. Black and white film reel. The bombing of Hiroshima in black and white news footage. A demonstration of Christ being crucified: thorn, blood pouring from an open wound. A bandage. A hospital. A hospital bed. A bed. An old man asleep. An old man dead. An old man dying. An old man being thrown out of an airplane. An old man laughing while falling from a plane. Then nothing. Just the empty space. The space that once was called home by a dead body. And nothing. He knew now that whatever his troubles were before…they would be nothing as they were now. He had given up his destiny the moment he found nothing. His sanity would be put in question, everything that he knew to be real would be second guessed. And then among all things right, he was wrong. And of all things alive he was dead. And of all things sane, he wouldn’t be.

—

He didn’t know how long he stood there rehashing the events of that Saturday night and Sunday morning. Every step was analyzed and every decision too. It was real, he wasn’t crazy. There was something else. Someone found the body and hid it. Wandering back to where he came, the man only thought of one thing: the location of the body. There was no way it could have been moved by someone without a motive. Was he a part of some sort of game or was this a police cover up he didn’t know about. Maybe it was an animal or some beast that took it. But what kind of animal would be big enough to move a grown man’s body? At a dock for that matter too.

Whatever the reason, he knew that his life would be more complicated now than it would ever be. If he had found the body, he would have seen the reality of his actions. But now, since the body was gone, the possibilities were endless. He would begin to doubt all his senses. The trust that he had built up in himself would be tested. This was a mental nightmare that might not end well for him.

A sudden strike of panic seized him. He felt a pair of eyes in the dark watching his moves. The stare was felt right in the back of his head and he started to run. At any moment, he sensed that a hand would reach out and grab him from behind. A ghost who would come out of nowhere. The same feeling as a kid: at any moment a monster or beast could grab him, it didn’t really matter who, but it was something. That was the feeling he had at the lake as a child and elsewhere and it didn’t stop. It would only last a few seconds back then until the situation was over but now, when will it be over?! Nothing was real anymore and a monster’s hand on his back or anything else was not unrealistic in that state of fright.

He reached his car and, slowing down too late, hit it fully with his body, afterward fumbling for the keys and got in. The sounds of the thunder! They came all at once in regularly repeated intervals. In the seat, he began to choke himself, as if someone else’s throat was around his hands; the noise was reduced as he gasped for breath, and letting go once the roars ceased. A dream, it could be a dream. His body, without his authority, reached for the cigarette car lighter and branded it on his thigh. Giving out a yell he threw it at the windshield. No, it was real. At least to him it was real. The pain was ignored by his body. A darkness descended upon him and he fell into unconsciousness.

—-

The man in the blue coat, the one that stood before him just now, behind a fading light, rose to strike him. “Kill me said the sleeper. “Kill me!” Replied the man in the blue coat.

—–

He woke up. Had he truly seen it? If he had woken up in his bed, he would have had a second or two to think it had all been a dream. But he was still sitting in his car and the pain of the burn was felt as soon as he regained consciousness. It was 8:11 AM, he had to call in sick again. They let him have it and wished him a speedy recovery.

He weakly drove back to his place, away from the harbor, away from the dockworkers and construction people that had passed by him as he had walked to the car, they not noticing a man fading away in their midst.

He climbed the stairs of his apartment complex like a goddess, his lower extremities seemingly lifted by another source. Upon swinging his door open, a moment of calmness descended upon his heart. At least this, his security, was not in jeopardy. It was still there. Somehow someway, it was still there.

He threw himself onto the bed then sat upright to roll a joint. His self-inflicted injury was not a priority right now and the marijuana would ease the pain anyways. Smoking it, he found that it was quite possible that he had been tricked. By who, it wasn’t clear. But someone could be after him. Who?! It didn’t make sense and the harder he thought about it, the harder it became to believe.

He grabbed his phone and called his murdered friend’s girlfriend. He asked her about his victim and she repeats that he had gone out on a business trip to a city three hours away, just like she told him the first time. How can it be? He asked her if he had contacted her since that single email they both received. She yelled at him saying to mind his own business: they never had liked each other. Now it seems all has been lost. He didn’t know why he had randomly called her without thinking and with no real purpose. He wasted a chance to find out a little more but blew it. What if he really wanted to ask her something important next time? He knew that this was one of many mistakes he would make due to his clouded thinking. But what was he to do but follow his mind, his instincts? He couldn’t just sit there and blame it on the faith in his mind’s actions. What is it that they call a man escaped? A man who is trying to set himself free from a certain thing. Isn’t that what was happening here?

His mind no longer questioned the reality of his situation. There was no disbelief in what he saw and what he heard. This was as real as real can be. But the numbers, the patterns and the connections made no sense; it was as if an event had been erased from the strands of time. It no longer existed. How then did it ever exist?!

There was one way that he could prove his insanity. If he had maybe, somehow, just imagined the past four days. A text to the girlfriend about the address hotel thankfully yielded a reply: The Crimson Light Hotel, 811 Sycamore Ave. Three hours away. He had to go. And the mistake he thought he made earlier didn’t really matter now. It eased him like a single drop of water in the mouth of a severely dehydrated dog. Sometimes he thought about things too hard.

He attempted to call him. What if he never actually killed him, what if he was still alive, and all was imagined? The calls never yielded a response. Straight to voicemail. He never left one. It was something he never could get himself to do.

—–

Two hours into the drive and he had yet to think a single thought since leaving. A blank space that remained consistent. Only interrupted by a light, here or there. The story had become vaguer and vaguer. Who were the parties involved and why did it happen? It seemed like a long shot that he was insane. It was something else. The tension was rising so he calmed it by not thinking, by squelching the urge to question his actions. Why had he thought the things he thought? It wasn’t fair that he could only see one way and feel only a certain kind of feeling. It wasn’t fair.

He was somewhat relieved that his victim’s girlfriend had responded to him. He would have been lost as to what to do next, he needed to tie every loose end: every possible reality. Her name was Cindy Banks. She was Gary’s girlfriend. Gary. Gary Tanguay, the name of his ex-friend. The couple had met in Egypt on a riverboat sailing down the Nile. It was a great love story. One for the ages. He didn’t know her that well. She had always kept her distance, and he his. 

—–

The Crimson Light Hotel, 811 Sycamore Ave. A tall building, he counts seven stories as he walks in. “A Mr. Tanguay? Just a moment.” As the attendant looks up the name, he looks around the hotel. It was a very nice one. “Sorry sir, there is no Mr. Tanguay. Are you sure of the spelling?”

He was relieved for some reason. He felt a bit saner. He decided to stay at the hotel reception for the day, in case Tanguay had checked in with a different name or was with someone else. He sat on a red single seater red couch in the lobby with its back to the entrance so he could clearly see every person who exited and entered. It was comfortable and the softness as his body descended into it, gave him a second of comfort. He began to think of how he had met Gary. He wasn’t a friend he had met in college or at work. They didn’t grow up together either. They met at a meeting for a semi-legit financial pyramid scheme. Gary had been a financial career wanderer. Money was never his goal but it was all of it at the same time. He always had a monetary backup, whether from his parents, grandparents, aunts or his uncles. So he was aiming at this far distant goal that he couldn’t picture yet, so he just thought that it had to be money. 

After blowing multiple promising career opportunities he got through high connections, Gary decided that that was it for his career in finance. He had seen the career arc for people who got jobs the way he did: it was easy if you worked hard. Just run real hard through a hallway collecting gold at every turn or T intersection. What was the fun in that? Then he would have to start a family and raise kids; hell even if he didn’t he would have been stuck in that same circular cycle; where the fun would always be linked to work. He wouldn’t be able to sip a whiskey glass without thinking about numbers and proposals.

So he decided to pick up and travel the world, hoping to find out if it was money that he should be chasing. He left no ground untouched in the three years of his early to mid-twenties and tried to keep his expenses to a minimum, testing money’s actual value to him. But when he saw something he wanted badly money would be no object. It was the experiences that he was after. And when money isn’t an issue, the risks decline.

Gary once told him about a story when he woke up with a chicken suit at a bus stop outside a small town in Spain with no recollection of the night before. He was 25 and two years into his travels. What a terrible state he was in: his mood, the setting, his clothes, the sun, his skin. He went around town trying to find someone heading to Madrid and convince them to let him tag along. He managed to do it. Gary was a smooth talker. He could BS his way through anything. But strangely, he was a horrible salesman, couldn’t sell a treat to a dog. He always got nervous when he had to convince someone to give him money. If they wanted it so much they could come and ask. His thought didn’t make sense to people, sometimes not even to him. He didn’t like the trickery involved; it was different than advertising or selling merchandise. It was person to person. It was a competition, a duel, friendly or not, with the goal of him trying to take advantage of the other. He didn’t like it. That’s why he was such bad salesman.

His hotel room had been torn to pieces when he got back to it. Feathers from the pillow, lamps broken, TV smashed. The fridge seemed like someone or something tried to light it on fire. The toilet, the sink, and the bathtub were clogged with rolls of toilet paper and other indistinguishable material. There was nothing else but the mess. The safe was open and undamaged. The only thing that was left was his Blackberry phone he used for international SIM cards. Blackberries sucked he would always say to people when discussing phones. Whoever robbed him agreed.

How they kept this without attracting attention and complaints he did not know. This was one of the times he took on a nice residence in his travels. He was two weeks removed from visiting his family in the States. He had to get slowly back into it, he had said. You couldn’t go from high thread counts to dirty bunk beds in a single day. He never found out what happened that night. All he remembered was going into the hotel bar early the night before.

Memories, our hero thought: they don’t live as people do. It had been an hour since he first sat down in the lobby, nearly 3 o’clock. What was he doing? A feeling of worthlessness came over him. Was he going to really sit here all day and wait for something he knew might not come? What was he expecting? The mind sometimes, it only makes perfect sense at certain moments. Like there was no other way but what was seen. It was amazing to him how he continued to move forward even when every thought led to a mistake. He didn’t have time to ponder on it. It was life and death. Like a cornerback who drops an easy interception; the mistake before not mattering the following moment. 

His mind was in a tight organized disarray: shattered glass cubes motionless in mid-air. A sort of symmetry and logic, that was stuck in place. His mind would be destroyed if the shattered glass cubes fell, then there would be no symmetry, just broken glass on the ground. But he was not afraid of that happening; not as long as he took his medication. Even in this state, he knew his mind wouldn’t buckle under the pressure. He had initially feared of losing his mind, as he was still in shock, but now he was numb to the facts and to reality. He was following a certain path already set out for him in his head. The outcome didn’t matter, he was going to go about it his own way, whatever his mind told him to. That’s all he had now. His mind. No one else.

He received a text from Taylor Vickers, the girl he had hung out with during Sunday’s football game. It asked about an engagement he had with her later on that day. His mind now switched to thoughts of her. He had liked her the most out of all his girlfriends. She let him do as he pleased with her: she gave him all of herself. And to him, that’s what kept a small desire deep inside of him that he could permanently be with someone like her. But he detested the idea. He thought relying on a woman for strength and moral support was a weakness. If a man could do it by himself then all for the better. Isn’t that why men gave into marriage eventually, he had said once to a coworker. Because they were tired of going about life alone? When he saw her name on his phone, his mind was recalled to a scene previous that month.

He had taken her out on a date to a small amusement park. She was learning physics and was explaining to him how roller coasters worked. He had watched her closely, her face being stretched beautifully by her expressions, and she spoke with soft, confident explanations, that made him understand and grasp the concepts easily. She talked to him like his elementary school teachers had done. He had always loved and admired women, before and after puberty. It started with his teachers and then to his household. He enjoyed sitting around his mom and her friends as they talked. There was a thing that he never understood about them. Like they were something very different than he was and that’s what drew him to them. They gave him a completely different perspective on life. Things slightly changed after puberty; the admiration remained but now he wanted them for more than conversations. 

He realized soon that not all girls were like him. And the girls who weren’t willing to give all of themselves to him, like he had no problem giving to them, even only for a night, were a waste of his time. Because in his mind, once a woman gave herself to him he could see nothing but her true self afterward: what she was as a person without this sexual need inside him. He quickly picked up the ability to pick out girls best suited for him and those who were not. When sex is taken out of the situation all that remains is the person, he had told Taylor once. Sometimes, he would have this rush of love during sex, that would take air out of his breath: a feeling of wanting nothing more but to have sex with, her, this one person, forever. He hated thinking about the feeling afterward however. It was not a good thing for him to fall into such a thing. And now after what he had gone through with her on their last meeting, he didn’t know how he felt about her. He had said he cared for her. What did that even mean? It was the come down of whatever was going on in his mind. How can he commit himself without knowing that he would always be fulfilled sexually. Why put himself in that prison for some comfort and security. No. They would have to remain mysterious to him. He did not want to see how they really were, only wanting to admire them from afar. Like one does a well-sculpted statue or a beautiful painting. He was afraid that if he got too close, this thing that mystified him would be torn and he did not want that. He was a sexual deviant maybe, but like criminals he had his own set of morals and he never wanted this image, this mirage if it indeed was one, to be revealed to him, as it was so important to his desires. The desire for a woman was more than just her flesh. It was her soul, her spirit, the heart to heart transfer of an unidentified energy and the connected brain sparks that occur while kissing.

He excused himself from the engagement. And as soon as the text was sent his worthlessness was joined with loneliness. Oh if he could just hold her now as he did the night previous. These random emotions to him were strange, it was only because of this ridiculous thing he was going through. Maybe it would be good if he went. He wanted to go now. What was he doing at this hotel anyways? His mind, it trailed off into something else he could not remember and soon he was asleep.

—

He woke up twenty minutes later. It was a small doze. And hunger immediately struck his stomach so he decided to go eat at the hotel buffet. Taylor had been disappointed that he declined and had called him when he was asleep. The phone was on vibrate, strange he didn’t wake up. The nap must have been deep.

He loved buffets. It was kind of like a game. The restaurant asks for twenty or thirty bucks and challenges you to make them lose money on you. He remembered how giddy and energetic a Chinese buffet owner at his favorite Chinese buffet in his hometown would become when a big family with three or more kids came in. And it would make his day if it was a party or a huge gathering. He would be running around doing stuff restaurant owners do in an exaggerated way that just showed his happiness that he would make a lot of money on them. The kids ate a couple of fries and some chicken nuggets. And families never really over ate at buffets. Not him though. He never wanted to go unless he had a very empty stomach, going after the gym was his favorite time to go. At the same Chinese buffet, there was one time when his brother and he had gone to a buffet straight after a workout at the YMCA. They went in with their sweaty shirts and shorts and annihilated the restaurant. Destroyed it and were made victorious over the Chinese buffet owner and made up for the money they had spent. He loved buffets in general and Chinese buffets especially.

He was on his second massive plate, sipping water instead of a drink so he would have room and the appetite for dessert. The sugar in any drink would satisfy his cravings and kill it, and dessert to him was always better than a drink. The urge to put everything that was on his plate in his mouth all at once was strong. He never understood why he and maybe everybody else would want to eat as much of something good all at once, stuffing it in their faces as quickly as possible so they could shove more of it down their stomach. It made no sense because it was more enjoyable to sit there and eat slowly. He enjoyed it better, as he could actually fit more food and still not feel too stuffed and tired after; but the urge to eat quickly was always there. But he had spent years strengthening his will. It was his greatest weapon; look at what he was going through now and he was still sitting at a buffet in a different city enjoying his food. Others would not be able to cope as well as he did, he reassured himself.

It was midway through this second plate that he heard a man at a booth with two others mention a name that he thought was Tanguay. Not Gary, he used the name Tanguay: that’s what he had heard. He put his fork down and listened. How lucky and fortunate he would be if his ears were not deceiving him.

The waitress had come and was pouring them water. “They got him real good,” one of them said after she left. He had a long thin face, round eyes, an elongated downward nose and highly visible cheekbones. He seemed a bit tall, about six feet. When he turned to his side he looked like the side of a fish, and when turned to the front his face resembled a tiki mask: his skin white with a tannish complexion. “They battered his face, when they brought him in no one could tell if it was him. We had to identify him on a mark on his back.”

At this point, his mind was in a calm intrigued chaos. The shattered glass cubes now no longer still, suspended, but dancing in symmetry to a song that foreshadowed a huge turning point in whatever this was that he was going through.

The other two were non-distinct, average looking men. One chubby and the other chubbier. One with a face of a fat cat, and the other a bowling ball or a jawbreaker where the chubbiness was an extension of the bones on his face. They all were dressed in mint attire. They looked like somebodies. The chubbier fat cat looking one: “They should have never messed with someone like Gary. They should keep business in-house and if you don’t, at least get someone who had worked in the business. That Dinklage fellow, we need to stop associating with him.”

The food now on his plate disgusted him. His stomach churned and a deep anxiety hit him. He took another sip of the water. He was going to have to take a loss on the buffet.

“What’s wrong with Dinklage, everything turns out well in the end. And the money’s never been better. As long as that’s the case I don’t care about the mistakes.” The Tiki mask looking one winked at the bowling face. “It was a risk worth taking”, he continued. And at this, he dropped his pen as he was taking it out of his breast pocket.

Was this really happening? They had said Gary, that was clear. But he only thought he heard Tanguay when they caught his attention. Maybe he misheard it. There were many Garys. But how many were dead? Murdered for that matter?

He was going to go up to them and talk. Just talk and see where that would go. What else had he to lose? So he got up and put what he owed on the table, motioned to the waitress and headed to the booth two small centered tables down; not hesitating one bit. He directed his words to the long-faced man as he approached saying: “Excuse me gentlemen, but I heard you mentioning a friend of mine’s name. He’s staying at this hotel but I can’t seem to find him.” What else could he say? He wasn’t going to waste time with formalities. “We didn’t mention any names,” the long-faced man said. “I heard you mention a Gary Tanguay.” The tall faced fellow gave a piercing glare to the other two, as if him being overheard was somehow their fault. “I don’t know a Tanguary or a Gary.” “I know what you said,” locking eyes with him. The tension was high and the other two began fearing a fight and growing anxious that they would not be able to finish their meals, and lose to the buffet too because of it.

His face, the skinny man, had a hesitating smirk that one would find on someone who knew he was lying but because of the situation and the circumstances, his words could not be proven wrong. Who was this stranger asking him about someone he didn’t know? There was no need to get worried about him letting that spill out. There was nothing if there was nothing. He had all the power. This guy couldn’t do anything to him. Diverting his gaze, he lifted his hands to call the waitress and then returning to the eyes of the questioner, realized he was wrong.

A loud thunder! He heard it this time. No lightning, just the thunder. And then a volcanic fire from deep within his gut, engulfing all his intestines, lungs and heart. The same feeling that came up within him so frequently in the past few days rose again, and as he was in mid-thought, his hands were on the back of the tall fellow’s neck, smashing his head on to the table. One wasn’t enough so BAM! One more. The other two looked away with disdain and decided they could do nothing. He threw him on the floor and started kicking. He knew who Gary Tanguay was. He knew it and he was BSing him and there was no tolerating that kind of behavior, especially towards him. No one lied to Tommy Maddox. No one!

In a minute or so two security officers stormed in and tackled him to the ground. Struggling, he landed a few good hits with his elbow and feet until receiving a painful blow to the head. Within a few minutes he was restrained and the police were on their way.

Chapter 2

The cell was cold, as he imagined most jail cells were. It was a big rectangular room, about the size of twelve parking spaces, with the benches, the wall and floor all made from the same material: soft, grey painted and cement-like, with nothing disconnecting them; all meshed as one. The sun was setting when he was led to the door of the justice center: not so much a police station but a large court house connected to a large jail house. They took him in from the back, handcuffed and bruised, and made him wait in a holding cage outside under the jail as he waited for them to book him. They brought him inside when it was his turn, took his picture and led him into the cell he was in now. He was going to have to sleep here tonight until he saw the judge tomorrow morning. It was going to be a long night.

The cell was empty except for four others and began to fill up as the night wore on. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. So he sat in the corner thinking. There was an open toilet in the other side of the rectangle opposite the jail door and water was spilling towards the ground from it. How was he going to sleep here. The medication was the only way he slept everyday and without it he couldn’t sleep. He could tell them, but he didn’t want to be bothered, having to get up, wait by the cell door for God knows how long until he catches someone’s attention and then go through all the loops to get the medication. He would just tough it out. And he had so much to think about. The past forty-eight hours were filled with so many events and change. Change. He laughed as he remembered last Wednesday, five days ago, when he had gone out to lunch with Gary to discuss the business they were engaged in starting. At the time, murder was this mystical sin he never thought he would commit; a crime so gruesome that a person’s whole life would end and the person would stop existing. All due to the hands of someone else. If someone told him he would have murdered a man before the upcoming weekend was over he wouldn’t have believed it, no situation he could think of would justify such a thing. Maybe a stranger, in self defense. But a friend? Gary?

It was eight now. The early drunks and trespassers started filling up the cell. One of them, a black, short, shaved headed man with baggy clothes, who Tommy knew immediately would be a nuisance this night. Tommy was right about people. He had this knack for sifting through individuals who would be compatible with him and those who weren’t. It was honed early on when he had to learn to differentiate between girls that he would chase. Girls who would suit him, because not only was everyone else a waste of time, but the girls would usually be negatively affected and he didn’t like hurting people, especially girls. That’s why he had worked on it and the skill naturally extended to everyone else. He also cared for friendship. A good friend was even more valuable than a girl because a girl could satisfy him for a few days, months; but a friend could last a lifetime. And unlike girls, he could have more than one and not have to hide anything. Another benefit was to know who to avoid and who to go to when he wanted something, who to be nice to and who to be aggressive with, it was all just a dashboard. He could press buttons to see what would happen and adjust accordingly to the charts and calculations of his subconscious. He assumed that this is why he had coped so well. That now as he was sitting in this cold cell, after committing a murder that appeared not to have existed, except for a few minutes a few hours ago when he had heard those men talk about Gary.

Another topic came to him. He didn’t even think about the wider repercussions of his life outside this whole predicament. His job, his co-workers and colleagues, his friends and family. And it was interesting to him that he hadn’t thought deeply about this in the hours and days after the murder. Only now that he was in jail did he start thinking about telling them at least that he was in jail for a night. At least that’s how long he hoped to be there for. He didn’t know what would happen in the morning. What would the judge say? They couldn’t let someone like him stay longer than this. What if the bail was too high? He would worry about it in the morning. He wanted to sleep and for it to be morning already. If he had his medication it would have been fine. And if it was hard to sleep before, now it was even harder; he was right about the bald black man.

He was talking up a storm and seemed like on a mission to find a like minded individual among them to entertain his talking throughout the night. This was a defense mechanism, Tommy thought; if he could talk and talk, then he could make this cell into a barbershop and before he knew it the haircut would be over. He talked about sports, TV, music, and rehashing how he got to this point more than seven times. Tommy joined in here and there to make them at ease by his presence. He stood out like a sore thumb, and as most people in jail are paranoid, they suspected he was undercover.

The ground was cold yet inviting; he had to be on his back to sleep, and he wanted to sleep so bad, so he bent down and laid down. He wasn’t alone. There were two others lying on opposite sides of the room underneath the benches. All in the room was made of the same material and nothing separated the furniture from the wall. The floor wasn’t cement, tiles or anything he’d rested on, it was more comfortable and sank a little bit when forced. Like playgrounds, prisons were trying to make things safer it seemed.

He was at the corner where the bench stopped and a small benchless wall began. The position he finally decided on was putting his feet high upon the wall, where his rear end almost touched the wall. He didn’t care how it looked, he wanted to sleep. But alas sleep never came. And he laid there listening to the bald man. If there was someone there to listen to him, about twenty all together, he would not remember; only the man’s voice droning on like a late night radio show host.

One of the topics he remembered in that daze between wakefulness and false sleep; a point in the middle, where there is no rest and no attentiveness; was that of masturbation. The black man had brought it up adding it on his discussion topics list. “One week, I’m good. Two, I’m alright. But three, three is too much man.” And at that point Tommy was stricken with anxiety. There were no women in jail and no sexual outlet but one’s own hand. And how he hated it. There was no substitute for the real thing and the image of him masturbating to a magazine in a cold cell came to him: he was naked under a small tent like structure he had made, with the magazine directly under the opening of the light. He looks up to check if he’s being watched and sees the man in the blue coat, standing, his face covered by his tall brim hat. Startled he slides to the bed corner of the wall, his back wedged between the corner, yelling: take it away! The man in the blue coat did nothing as he repeated it over and over again.

He would not remember this. As it occurred in a dream between the few minutes of sleep he did get. But when returning to that wakened sleep he continued to hear the bald man speak. Now about a certain basketball player’s greatness. These were one of the few times where he thought about interrupting this middle state with some other time consuming task. But he did not want to realize the reality of his surroundings. If he did get up and look around he would never go back to sleep, not even to this state, which at least passed the time better. So he simply turned to his side laying his shins now on the wall, floating from one small dream to the other, with many breaks in between.

He woke up what he soon found out to be four in the morning. The talking man was still there. And unintentionally, Tommy had given him an annoyed face, and on seeing this, the man gave a smart remark. And at this Tommy’s drowsiness was evaporated by the swelling heat of his anger. He gave a smart remark back in an agitated tone and the bald black man knew that he had baited someone into a game and wanted to play. They verbally sparred, with one mentioning this and the other that. The important thing from this encounter he soon would find out was his sudden realization of his growing fearlessness. He did not fear this thug looking individual in front of him, or any of the other inmates, seeing right past his face and into his fear. The fear that the man complained about all night while he laid there and took it, just like the rest of them. And the man continued to talk; to talk down to him and say things about him. How? When he was whimpering before all of them. They got within an inch into each other’s faces before the guards caught on and threatened as guards threaten and both seated themselves on opposite sides of the room.

He did not care for anyone in the world now but himself. The flow of hot blood through a bulging vein on his head agreed. He knew now that he was alone, to fight the world by himself; and everyone who wasn’t already a friend was a foe. And the bald man triggered this feeling that would never go away. Who else of the people he knew would be as strong as him mentally to cope with this. They would all have been scared, frightened, worried to the point of panic. No he had control of the situation. No one could stand in his way now, even if he did not know which way he was going yet.

They now waited for breakfast in two hours. Food was on everyone’s mind. Prison food; he was curious to try it. After breakfast came the meeting with the judge who would decide if he would stay or go. He was still anxious, being strong wasn’t about not getting anxious but having the ability and will to control it; there is always anxiety when a possible incoming threat is looming. He did not want to stay here. He had too many things to lose. And the murder. He didn’t want to think about the murder. So his mind thought about bail. Who would he turn to? He had no lawyer, never needing one and was still young enough to make due without. He didn’t have any numbers memorized except for his work and his family’s home but he didn’t want to call either. Being upfront to work about the whole thing would be wise but he didn’t want to deal with it, the whole mess: the bad news, excuses, the long stories and most of all he did not want to bring stress to the family even if that meant more stress in the future. Work became insignificant by the hour. All he cared now was to find out what happened. That was his goal. He would deal with the money, deal with all the repercussions. But the body had to be found at all costs. Even if it meant something drastic.

The bald black man was now more talkative than ever. Tommy got all the information about the upcoming process through him. He was in there for being caught smoking weed in a car in his neighborhood. He was sure the judge would let him out he said. Why did he seem to him to be scared then. Breakfast came and some pushed away their trays but he ate everything on it. The men complained about the quality and the taste but he always could enjoy almost any type of food. It reminded him of a school lunch and he always liked school lunches. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mind it.

Afterwards, they took them out in rows and handcuffed their hands and shackled their feet and they were all connected at the waist in one single file line. He was behind a still slightly drunk black man who had come in a few hours earlier, around the same time Tommy had risen. They led them under a tunnel towards the court house and locked them up in another cell similar to the previous one but half the size. There were a bunch of cells lined up in another tunnel-like hallway and they split the men between four of the cells. There they waited to be taken in pairs to the cell directly connected to the courtroom. There were six men with him now; all nervous and contemplating and predicting their fates out loud to each other. Tommy did too. It was the vibe in the room and the upcoming event that made all of them start talking. Like the bald man did. He now realized what that feeling was; it wasn’t fear but an anxiousness combined with hope that initiated the need to vocalize that hope and how the thing hoped for might not happen. It had to be expressed in a way. And the only difference between him and the man was that he felt it much earlier because his offense was so much smaller, that the hope became paranoia. He couldn’t talk all night just about it so he channeled it in another way. He wondered if he would see him again.

Eventually came his turn, and he was paired with the drunk man and put in a cell the size of two phone booths where they could only stand. He initiated a conversation with him and found out that he was expecting a son that very morning and that if the judge let him go, he would head right to the hospital. He was a Muslim and shared his fear that God might take the pleasure of seeing his son away because he had sinned or might give him a bad child. Tommy reassured him that that would not be the case and felt some mercy in his heart that he hadn’t felt in a while. A kind of unselfishness that only came to him during sex. He told himself that if it were up to him, if only one of them would have to stay and the other let go, that it would be this man to go. His problem didn’t seem as big to him now. The man went out of the cell to see the judge before Tommy. And he knew as the door closed that what he had said would come true.

The judge was a female. They took him in to see her and she glanced at him trying not to judge this different looking defendant in the line up. The prosecutor was adamant that a man who severely beat up a man’s face as to hospitalize him should not be let go. That it was not fair for him to be free with only a court date when the victim was imprisoned in the hospital. The judge was convinced; and at this point in the legal process, the defendant had no say. They never even gave him a phone call. He didn’t understand how that was legal. He looked down when he heard her mark bail. If he wasn’t bailed out, he was stuck there until the court date.

They took him back to the second holding cell from before, those who weren’t let go were back with him. The bald man was absent, and so was the drunk Muslim man. From there they took them to a cell besides and identical to the first cell. He was numb during the walk back. He was numb and void of the anger and resentment that he expected to be in him, weakened by the mercy he had felt in the booth with the man. He thought now about where he was and where the bald man was too. They were free and he wasn’t.

Sitting now on the bench contemplating taking freedom for granted: to be caged like this, with every action watched and every activity planned. And the waiting. There was going to be a lot of waiting; that is the worst punishment in jail, they make people suffer the excruciating passing of jail time. Where a minute is extended into two and one begins to curse the existence of a thing such as time.

He was now waiting to be given his uniform. He was given a tan prison suit with hospital-like shoes after having to stand naked in front of a police officer who examined his naked body and laughed at his shriveled penis. The place was cold. He wanted to tell him that as he told him to bend over; he resented the laugh, resented that he was judged on this abnormal state of it. Then he thought of Taylor as he put the prison pants on. Oh what he would do to be in her arms right now. These events made him more in need of morale support; he didn’t care what he had felt before, so much has changed now. He knew that if he asked for her help, that he would be leaning on her and then she might think something else. Something he needed now but didn’t want. He didn’t want to lose her forever in such a state of weakness, choosing a path that might end when that end could have been avoided all together.

After the clothing was more waiting. It was four before they were escorted to their individual cells. The jail space, one of many in the jailhouse, was a rectangular yard with two floors and two stairs at the opposite corners. The upper cells looked out onto a sort of parapet overlooking the yard. It was an open space with a guard sitting at a front desk in the middle by the wall, and a bunch of tables to the right, which served as the dining and sitting area and to the left was a small old TV hanging from the wall with a bunch of folded chairs lined up in front of it. There was also a basketball court in an adjoining room, with a slight opening to the left of the door where the wall stopped a quarter from the roof to an open slot for air and sun to come through. That was the closest thing they got to the outside. His cell, which was on the second floor, consisted of a metal like bed and toilet jutting out from the wall. There was a book panel and a table with a chair. It was the size of a normal cell, four vertical coffins. It was already dark when he got to it.

The doors locked behind him. He had nothing but his clothes and the furniture mentioned. Who was he going to call? He began to think while resting on his bed. They had told him he would be taken to a phone soon. But he had no one to call. His mind started working on a way to get Taylor’s number through work. What was it, seven now? He would call tomorrow. There was this colleague of his, very weak and easy to manipulate, that he thought of contacting to look her number up. It was something. But where was such an idea coming from? So narrow it seemed that this was the only way out. There was a small window in the cell that blew in cool air. It made the room colder but the freshness felt good on his face.

He didn’t want anyone else to bail him out. He wanted no one to know anything. His family, his friends no one. They were so distant from him now. People in a imaginary world he once inhabited. The thought of that world being so real just a few days before made his mind swirl. And the murder, like a vulture circling the desert, stuck its claws into his heart, tearing it with its beak in pieces; only to leave it there and come back later. Sometimes it disappeared for a long time that the vulture was forgotten, until it descended once more to rip it open again.

That pain felt those claws. He had killed a man, a man dead right before his eyes who might still be living; or already dead, dead like those men said. A Tanguay they had mentioned. Gary Tanguay. The shock of the imprisonment yesterday and the haze of not taking the medication made this feeling go away. He had other things in mind and this thing that has become unreal was treated as so, only when reality again showed the truth did it return. If only Gary had listened to him. Maybe if he, himself, was not quick to anger, maybe it would have been different. But there was no difference now. Whether he had killed a man or not, he was still stuck in jail. Not for the crime he was supposed to be in here for but another.

The men at the restaurant, they had mentioned a murder too. With that name. How? How could it be the same person if he was the one who did the deed. There was pleasure in the tone of the narrowed face one. It was as if Gary was in with them deep, like they knew him. What would Gary be doing with them if the matter was so serious as to result in death? That was the case for him too, he thought. The reason that Gary died was not so serious either. Damn this whole thing he whispered loudly. Damn it all.

Dinner was usually served at six but since his jail space was on lock-down, they gave it to him through a slot in his cell. He ate it heartily, not minding the faults. He laid on the ground with his back on the side of the bed and closed his eyes; he was tired. They gave him a pillow and a blanket at eight, he took it and slept a deep deep sleep.

—

It was still dark when he woke up. Standing on his toes to peer out the window, he saw the early break of dawn. A string of fading light in the midst of a starless dark sky. He looked at the horizon and only saw the night; the darkness that was still considered night, even with light approaching, appearing as if a sunset. In the midst of such things, he said in his head, in the midst of all this I can still see the beauty in the darkness. A wish to have a pencil and paper to write down his thoughts so he could understand them, make something of them, came and went. He banged his head lightly on the bottom of the window, now his feet resting on the ground. The thought of this all being a dream never entered his head. It was real. If he was certain of anything, that was it. And it was the basis of his sanity, he philosophized. The reality is what grounded him from this changing thing within him.

The dull feeling in the middle of his head, he now attributed to two nights lack of medication. Upon this realization, he now felt the symptoms. The difference of it all. How he had felt before he slept and what he was feeling now. The very same walls looked changed, the toilet appearing strange, and the cell door seeming as if it was the size of a mouse hole. That dull feeling came from an emptiness where that medicine would have filled. A certain chemical was lost or interrupted; he could feel it through his nerves. Flashes of lights like lightbulbs, that were once comfortable became not and the patience with the whole thing evaporated. All of it. He wanted it to end, and the frustration that was welling was subdued by the feeling of emptiness and the lights.

He was standing still, head tilted slightly eyes closed facing the window. His hands were on his sides and feet shoulder width apart like a soldier at attention. Agghhh was somewhere in that emptiness. A sort of sound that needed to be omitted so that the body can rest easy knowing it has been expelled. Aghh, it raged again. And then he thought of Taylor and suddenly snapped out of it. The comfort! He needed the comfort now. These walls were so thick to him. Built thicker than any wall he had seen: miles and miles of stone and steel separating him from the outside, from Taylor. This feeling choked at him now, realizing now that he was as weak as the men he had once looked down on. He felt demoralized, dejected and beaten. As if losing a championship game in a blow out. They did it because they knew something like this would happen. Something like this where someone needed support. They had known it before he did. His life had been what it was for so long, a consistent forecast with a few floods from time to time. He had expected it to remain that way and that he was strong enough to handle it on his own. But there was no such thing as a strong man. Only a man who could hide his weaknesses well. Yes, he knew the truth of it. For to others, he seemed a titan of a man, which nothing in life could phase.

The truth was that he was weak like the rest. He twisted his body around and did a couple of push ups, his mood changing with every push. No! No, that was not the case! Look at where he was now. Look at what he has endured, had taken on the chin, this thing that had smashed his life. Weaker men would have buckled. He sneered and pounded the steel-like bed with a fist. And now he hated the girl he had just bled for, hated her for making him feel that way; hated her not as a person but what she stood for; and a siren for something he wanted to avoid. And with this, his loins began to burn, ignited by a match dropped on gas, his penis erect underneath thin pants which made it more comfortable to take it out; the hairs standing erect from the goosebumps. He wanted it now. This thing in between his legs, the thing that drove his every move; the thing he relied on to cool him down, to make everything right. It was perfection how they knew and used each other. He admitted to himself his own fascination with his own private part, how he gazed at it as a hunter his rifle. It was something he was proud of and rightfully so. He imagined it now: past experiences with girls and tried to imagine it as hard as possible; the fire in between his legs in volcanic heat. He soon drifted into a deep daydream, filled with intense passion and love. It was sufficient. He had not masturbated. he couldn’t, it was cold and his hands colder. And there was nothing to lubricate, nothing to at least mirror the wetness. But it was enough. The daydream. He was reminded of the blessings of his cock and it humbled itself. Men he thought, always are fueled by the desire to procreate. To hump, and to penetrate. They were led by this desire in all they do, even in marriage. They were all like him he thought. They just hid it well; years and years of conditioning and whatever this thing he had just felt for that girl. The conception that it had to be tamed. No, it was not to be tamed. Not for someone like him.

The vulture swept in once again and his desires became a small worry. Something now, that could not be appreciated or thought about. It was now the claws.

The day he met Gary was one of those that Tommy remembered as waking up to the knowing of some good thing occurring later on that day. He was invited to a weekly meeting of this financial investment company which seemed to him worked like a pyramid scheme. It was one of his girlfriends who was the bait on this one. She needed to bring in people who would eventually fall to the company’s objectives; fools fooling each other he told her; but she believed in the message. It was a cluttered room on a Tuesday night. Many of the attendees were sharply dressed to the point of humor. Atta girl the man behind one of the check in counters told her upon checking in; two she had brought in: him and her friend, which Tommy thought was too insignificant for his attention. This girlfriend went around introducing them to her colleagues, many of them didn’t look like suckers; this seemed like it was a little better than a pyramid scheme, something if someone was really good, could make a lot of money. But it seemed like a lottery, a game that even those who aren’t suckers play. One of the men: below average height, with thin yet plentiful black hair and a frog like face with the eyes positioned close to the jaw bone and the forehead. He had bright skin, a small muscular frame and a smile that beamed confidence. This was Gary. Tommy felt that this was a like minded individual he had just been introduced to. There is a feeling one gets upon meeting a person when there is an alert from the brain: good, neutral, or bad. Gary was good. His brain was saying it was good. So he broke his bored face and asked about the real story behind this. Gary told him what he had guessed. There was a legit product behind it, a bank, that made the thing seem acceptable. But that it worked like the rest of them. Gary was there because he wanted to check this out for himself, he had heard of it through an acquaintance and he wanted to see what kind of people went to these things. This Gary, Tommy thought, was the good he had felt in the morning. He had stumbled on someone good.

—–

The door opened at six, and he stepped out slowly, thinking he would get rebuked for leaving his cell. This was his first time on the main space other than when he entered. Descending the stairs, he headed directly to the table area where breakfast was being served. It was a group of about thirty-five inmates with rectangular tables grouped in sixes. After a minute of inspection, he chose to sit next to two silent looking fellows who seemed like they could go through a meal without talking. They waited for the food to come, and Tommy jumped in excitement, the first feeling of the sort since the incident, upon seeing the trays being brought in. And then like children they were called by tables to get their trays. He was halfway done with the first before he thought about getting a second one. There were some that couldn’t stand the food and he took an extra unwanted tray and ate it all. They had an hour now to walk around in the space and do as they wished. There were phone booths lined up next to the reception desk. He could make a phone call, but to who. He sat at the booth and tested it out, and found out that the calls were collect. How would his work accept a collect call? It would seem suspicious. He laid his head on the table and thought hard but nothing came to him. He wasn’t going to call anyone. Not yet anyways. He was going to stay here.

—-

Turning around, he headed for the TV area and sat down in the middle row. There were five of them watching a movie about a famous African American leader. He, this leader, was being brought up to a pulpit where he was giving a speech of some sort. And then numerous men stormed the room and shot him to death in a barrage of bullets. Then the movie ended. He had never held a gun before. Never even thought of owning one; maybe at a shooting range. But now he was curious to see how a gun would feel in his hands, the cold temperature of the metal, maybe the slickness of the plastic, or the smoothness of wood. These were imagined adjectives but he assumed he was close. To be at the opposite end of it, to die a death by being torn by small metallic, copper or whatever bullets were made out of. How does the mind respond in the few seconds when it is still alive and being shredded? This scene would be a horrible end for most but it seemed to him now heroic. A sort of baptism before the darkness came, before it all ended. He didn’t mind such an end; especially if it had a purpose of some sort. He imagined himself kicking a front door to a house surrounded by policemen and SWAT team members who tore him with bullets as he tried to do the same to them; he imagined stretching his arms as if crucified, and dropping down to his knees, as darkness descended and the feeling he proposed he’d feel was a very spiritual one. That’s what he saw in the movies, that’s where he got many of his perceptions about death and violence.

It was time now for the inmates to go back to their cells: playtime was over. They only had two hours after breakfast to hang out in the space area; two hours to digest their meals and wake up to the new day and figure out what to do in their cells until lunch. He was going to think, that’s all he ever did now. There were so many thoughts that started blending into each other like the colors of the spectrum: every topic different than the other yet melted all into one.

He had to write. Wasn’t that the way he had decided to go back to the crime scene, from interpreting his own subconscious writing? This method did not seem to him a bad idea. His life was ever changed by the decision but that was the reality; he had to face it at one point and things would have been worse the longer he kept himself in the dark. And thus with a mangled mind, and sitting on a wooden chair, he began to write with a pencil on lined notebook paper.

It is with this that I right to you my darling. I have found something different within me that I had never imagined I would succumb to. This emotion–

Knowing where this was going he slammed his fist on the table. He cursed it! The worst part of this whole thing was the discovery of this weakness. He had never depended on anyone for emotional support and why now?! Because he had murdered a man; his friend? No it was because he was lost. If it enfolded like it would have, if the body was found and the police knocked on his door, if he was brought in for questioning and if he was charged, and if had to spend his life in a place like this: it wouldn’t feel as bad as it did now. The only pain he would have had to deal with was regret and disappointment. But at the present he felt those things and more. He wouldn’t have needed anyone, and he would have endured the punishment being himself and not whatever this was; this person that he never was. The paper was thrown to the ground and he went back to his bed, hours passing like days until the door opened.

A prison guard stood in front of it. Tommy Maddox? The man asked. Yes. Grab your blanket and pillow and anything else.

He walked confused, bewildered and anxiously excited for the upcoming revelation. Who bailed him out? Disbelief flowed through him from the moment he exited the cell. He walked with a blank state of mind other than uttering: who? He was led through one electric gate to the other, hand cuffs at feet and wrists. They took him to a place where he would trade his prison outfit for the clothes he came in with and take back his belongings too.

There was one person there with him in the locker-like room, wooden benches included; a very jolly black man, who one would never think would be in a situation like this. The joy made them converse about the delight of the upcoming freedom. Tommy felt it. The soothing relief of being in control again; the sun and the breeze, the stores and the cars. He took what he came in with: his wallet, phone and keys. The phone was no doubt dead. The final door was opened and he saw in front of him the reception desk, where families and others came to see the jailed.

There stood a man in a blue coat who looked up at him, staring with lizard like eyes. This struck fear into Tommy’s heart, something he had never felt in a long time. What was this? The skin on the man’s face was deformed, with his skin a mix of burns and acne-like scars; his ears the same, all except his nose which was dark blue, like a swollen bruise.

He extended his gloved hands and spoke with a surprisingly timid voice and told him that they would speak later. He started walking, not saying a word, expecting him to follow. Tommy did. The automatic doors opened to the wind and the breeze; his face being relieved by the coolness. He had felt it in his cell but not like this; not when it came with freedom. He swore that he would never take the wind for granted, nor curse it, ever again no matter how cold and splitting it was.

They stood out in the chilly cold for a minute before a limo pulled up and the man opened the door for Tommy. As he was walking out of the jail house, he knew that his old life was over. As if entering a wormhole or walking through the walls to enter a different world like a book he had read when he was younger. As soon as he saw the man’s alien, monster looking face, he knew that he had stepped into a world that was strange, yet slightly familiar to him like the murder he had committed. The limo reaffirmed this belief. He had been in many limos with Gary but this time it felt like entering a dark cave not knowing where it led, if it did; or if he could ever back.

The limo ride was quiet and the man closed his eyes for extended periods at a time; as if this situation was not awkward or out of the ordinary. The scarred man had no wish to accommodate Tommy’s need to know what happened. He acted as if it was normal when it wasn’t. The only relief in that duration was looking out the window and seeing the outside: people walking, stores open, cars honking. Freedom. He never wanted to be jailed ever again. But he had an inkling of a feeling that he had left one jail for another. As if the man in the blue coat was just another guard who was leading him into another cell; an altogether different one, with different circumstances, but he somehow knew that he would be shackled to something, he would be a prisoner to some entity, tangible or not. He preferred this type of jail however, the metaphorical one.

Tommy decided to follow the man’s lead and close his eyes for a few minutes at a time too. He was tired; he had forgotten that.The feeling now came to him in the form of a whirlpool in his mind; moons and meteors clashing like those on the rings of Saturn, in a state of confusion as an impending force was making it so, some nearing force that caused it. He was sucked in and his body shut down his mind.

He would wake up to the shaking from the gloved hand on his shoulder, with the man leaned over, his face a foot away from his. And upon opening his eyes to such a sight, Tommy gave out a rough scream. The man’s lizard-like eyes stared, eyes seemingly unblinking, in stupefication before realizing how he looked like and the state that this person was in. “Sorry to frighten you. We are here, you can get out now.” The timid voice eased Tommy. Rubbing his eyes, the excitement evaporating his tiredness, he opened the door to the entrance of a tall tower. It had a name of a bank on the top and a statue of a man on a horse in the courtyard. The statue felt out of place for such a place; the man was a general of some previous war. Tommy wished he could be a general and sit on a horse like that, elevated in power and prestige. A sword sheathed and a gun in his arms, men listening to his every word. Men that would die for him just because he asked them to. And with a purpose such like that of a just war? The supremacy of it.

The man walked past him as he did exiting jail, expecting him to follow naturally and without a word. Tommy did so. He didn’t need to ask anymore questions, preferring now to walk as a spirit towards a distant light, hoping that it would eventually escape and the story be over.

In the elevator, after passing the reception desk and security, which was unusually tight, the blue coated man continued in silence with heavy eyelids. They stopped halfway to the top, floor forty, taking an elevator from the back with a path where the man had to show many IDs; he was motioned to exit. He was asked to wait outside the office at the reception desk. It was one of those reception places where you only see in movies. Red velvet chairs, a fireplace; the kind of furniture and style that would be more fitting for a library in a mansion. One of those reading by the fire kind of rooms. The man in the blue coat entered the big doors and left him there.

Tommy had walked past many office workers, bankers, lawyers on the way to the elevator. It reminded him of work. And he couldn’t fathom it. The idea that a week ago he woke up and worked eight hours in an office, dealing with people he did not care about and having to take orders from people above him who were stupider than he was. To be under someone again, he laughed. Never. His phone was still uncharged so he asked if by chance the receptionist had a charger. She did. How many voicemails and missed calls would there be? Probably a lot from work. The only reason that he dealt with it was because of the money. They paid him to come and jump through hula hoops, to do as as they asked and he did so and did it well. These things were easy for him. He did not have to work his mind hard to pull off goals and deadlines. Pressure never phased him and that was always the case before this event. All these weaknesses he had felt recently and in jail were artificial. It was produced by an event that should not have happened. There was no doubt in his mind that whatever this was, it all had to do with Gary, the inquiry came to him as he walked out of the jail and was reaffirmed when he had entered the limo; and the man’s silence too. It was too complicated for them to explain to him what had happened and what will: why he was being bailed out, what they knew. So they had brought him here to explain this. And he knew it was because of Gary, and he knew it was because of those three men at the buffet.

The receptionist told him that he could go in and that she would look over his phone. Thanking her, he headed for the doors and opened them. There was before him an office decked out to the max with a mix of the furniture from a luxury office and the library like room in the reception area; with bookcases lining the walls and a fireplace too. There was a view too, with a balcony; yet some buildings still stood taller around it, but one could still get a good view of the city. It was similar to the office of a superhero he had liked as a child and still did.

There sat behind the desk, a mid-aged man, less than forty, who stood when Tommy came in. The man in the blue coat stood next to the fireplace, his head down, and his hat by his side. There were two guards on opposite sides of the man’s chair. “Raymond Carver,” said the man with a smile. Tommy shook his hands and it was a good one. He locked eyes with him and for a second Tommy felt a courageous flame ignited, a great one; one that would make him handle the situation better. He told him to sit down. “You know what this is about, right?” Raymond said as he put his feet on the table and his hands behind his head; a common practice among men sitting behind desks. He saw Tommy’s head nod yes.

Raymond had never seen the young man in front of him, he had heard of him yes but hadn’t seen him. The suit he wore was worn and wrinkled, as if he had slept uncomfortably in them. He still wore it like it was brand new; he had straightened it out a little bit. That made Raymond feel respected, Tommy had known where he was going, and he appreciated the intention of coming to him in a respectful appearance and working with what he had. “It’s about Gary.” Tommy said after a silence which Raymond used to observe the young man. Tommy knew that he was headed somewhere like this. Maybe not an office tower, but somewhere where a group or a person who wanted something out of him. Maybe saw the murder, or maybe he had hit a very important man and the bail money was worth his blood. He didn’t need to think about it because he knew as soon as he saw the scarred man. If all around him was reality then so are his conclusions that are made from that reality, no matter the lack of faith in it. He had to go as if everything was real.

Raymond did not say anything as he continued to observe him. The young man was of decent height, perhaps six foot or slightly under; his age twenty five or older. He was of an ambiguous race and handsome. His face was disheveled, his brown eyes were red and his skin was pale from lack of sleep and stress; his normal tone seeming slightly brown underneath it. Anyone could see that this man was tired, and exhausted beyond belief. That his patience had been tested but that the reins were still in his hands. He stood upright in the chair with his hands comfortably on his thigh and his head faced forward, until now when he looked down and began a deep thought as this Raymond fellow continued to observe him. Whatever this thing or group was, they never felt the awkwardness of the silence, as if the situation called for it; even though the situation was a blazing fire in a forest. And this man was making him wait, as if it was normal. The nerve! The man in the blue coat remained where he was; his coat still on him and his body not moving an inch. Tommy had a feeling that he was sleeping.

Raymond now began to speak. “Gary…Gary, Gary, Gary. Do I know a Gary?” Tommy moved suddenly in clear annoyance. What was he trying to do? Make him lunge at him; take a pencil and gouge it threw his head? If the man had known what he did then he must know who Gary was and who he was. And in Tommy now boiled a furious rage, a rage bordering madness, which projected through his eyes, changing the color of it. Raymond saw this and motioned to the guards who rose their weapons. That did not quench the anger but added to it. What was he to do with this rage? There was no outlet but physical, but the move would kill him, and by damn he refused to die before he got to the bottom of this. He felt like a raging bull held back and caged, and no power within him could release the rage. He kept ramming the gate as they prodded him; and if he was given the chance to fight whoever put him here, if he was just given a chance, he would unleash this rage, make them see it for their own eyes. But there was nothing he could do. Nothing but to take it like he was being raped.

The anger now confused his mind, as other emotions began to flow. This he would not allow. The rage yes but not this, and in front of these men! These men who were responsible for the position he was in! He stood up as the guards steadied their aim. “I am leaving.” He said with a conviction that made it clear he was ready to pay the price if he was not allowed to. Raymond knew now that he had made a mistake in attempting such a silly joke; such a clumsy way to start a conversation, and one like this. He had wanted to poke him a little just to see what he had in him; what he was prone to do in such circumstances. Other men would have crumbled thought Raymond. But not this man, a man who was capable of doing that to his own friend and coping well with the unusual consequences, must have something amazingly strong in him, as most men cry when they realize they had committed murder; the weight of the crime crushing them.

Raymond knew the rewards of patience; he wouldn’t have accomplished what he had without it. So he could wait to speak to this man at a later time. He did not need to tell him what had happened because he had already figured it out. If the murder wasn’t real than this wasn’t, but if the murder was real than this was real too. That did not have to be said, and that’s why Tommy had accepted it, why he wasn’t eager to ask questions, no fear and no care.

Because Tommy had to be patient too; and he knew if he left, he could come back, or they would come for him later. Later was better than now. He couldn’t deal with them in this state. He wanted to leave this building, this room and this city. The need for familiarity grew; he needed to be refreshed. Raymond had given him an eye of an approved consent. He turned his back as soon as he got it and the blue coated man opened the door. The walk to the exit of the building was the longest walk of his life.

He exited the building after saying goodbye to the man in the blue coat and saw the statue again in front of him. To be in a position of power he thought: people couldn’t do what they just did to him; no one, he would be the one telling the orders, caging sheep and bulls. It was going to be him, and he swore to himself that he would get revenge on the people that had transformed him; the ones that made this change. If the body was found, he would have had a chance to live a normal life; it wasn’t a sure thing that he would have been indicted. He still would have had a chance to regain his old life. He had not yet grasped this situation fully, even though he knew it was painted right before him. It had to be interpreted and analyzed. Maybe it was Gary’s involvement with them that had made him do what he had done. That Gary might not have done the thing that Tommy would kill him for.

A part of the painting came to him, a bony white hand holding a cracked egg from which a flower grew; ants climbing the base. It caused him to remember the small changes in Gary, starting a few months back. Nothing out of the ordinary because it was hard to tell if a person was acting himself and not hiding something inside; or a personality changing while being forced to act like the former self in front of friends or family. He noticed that he began to mirror those small changes, and it affected the code of their friendship: the limits and rules were altered and their relationship was taken into uncharted territory. It could be that. Maybe if Gary hadn’t messed with those people he wouldn’t have changed and that meant he would still be alive. But I was the one who killed him, he said. He would still be alive if I didn’t kill him.

He took a taxi to the hotel garage where he was arrested. The car was the first familiar thing he had seen in what seemed months. The smell of the car brought back comfort; he sat back in the seat and fell asleep immediately.

—

It was 7:11 PM when he awoke. He had slept for three hours. And woke up like a man from a coma. His car. He asked himself why he had slept here before it came back to him. It didn’t come hard like it used to. He was getting more accustomed to waking from a dream to a nightmare.

He went inside to grab a cup of coffee from the hotel lobby. It was across from the buffet where he confronted those men. The urge to go back to the scene was strong, so he did. The chairs, the table, he played it back with his eyes and he was glad he had came up to them, glad that he had driven here on a whim. Looking back on it, he had traced it brilliantly. The clue seemed unbelievable when Cindy had given him the address, knowing that Gary was dead. But he followed his his subconscious, his gut. There was something that drove him to his decisions and he was always glad when he was right.

The three hour ride back to his city and apartment was spent listening to a classical radio station. There were no commercials, and no interruptions, just the sounds of symphonic movement that created light waves in his mind. He wanted to numb the brain, to sooth it, and to put it into a calm gentle state. This did it. And he was in this state until he pulled into his apartment parking garage.

Once inside, he placed his wallet, keys and phone by the bedside table. He would deal with his phone after he showered, not turning it on when he took it back from the receptionist. It took forty five minutes and he was so hot when he got out that he had to open the window to let the cold air in. Dressed in housewear, he laid on his bed and turned his phone on. It seemed so strange in his hands. He looked at it like it was a nostalgic item from his childhood; a memento. It has only been a few days, he thought again; it made him stop every time the fact came to him.

There were numerous missed calls and dozens of voicemails. Most were a barrage of calls from work and his colleagues. He wasn’t going to listen to any of the voice messages or call anyone back. He looked at his texts, scrolling down through them, and his heart dropped to his stomach when he saw a text from Taylor the night he was in jail. And another this morning. He couldn’t believe that he had forgotten her, disappearing from his mind like a short term memory. A feeling of shame came over him for some reason. He put his hands over his face, and sunk his head into the pillow. He wanted her so bad, now not for the obvious reasons but for her herself. The comfort he was seeking was in her arms; he knew he would find it there. But he knew also that he couldn’t and would not talk to her tonight. It would be unnecessarily negative to her opinion of him if he called her to come tonight, or for him to come to her, or even to go out with her, he must not do it. He did not want to make it seem like what it looked like. If she only knew! If he wanted to keep her then he had to be careful, he could not handle this on his own now. He laid down his guns as soon as the need for comfort leached onto his heart. He would succumb to it and would do so gently. There was no knowing what would happen to him if he had no one to support him; to help and advise him; he never needed or wanted it from anybody but now he allowed an exception for Taylor. It was too serious now to look back at the past and how he thought about these kind of things. He had no pity for himself; and he came to the conclusion that he did not care if this was indeed a weakness or not. All he knew was that it would help him with his goal, and with his life.

He wanted now to sleep. But his throat was being choked by this thing he had for Taylor. This feeling that was so alien to him, as if shards of glass were dropped on his heart or a tight noose around his neck. His old self was officially dead now; he was someone else. A man resurrected for some unknown purpose, headed to an unclear goal. Taylor was the final cause of this death. It was finished. He glanced over at the other texts, and felt no emotion to the people who sent them: family, friends, girlfriends. None of them. These emotions and attachments were inside his old self. Everything had died with it. Maybe he could go back to them one day, but he did not care if he did or not, and not now anyways. He had to be rid of them, of any contact with them. He held his phone and imagined it a grenade and with an outburst of frustration threw it at the wall. He rose out of bed and held it in his hands again. I am going to destroy this, he said. He didn’t question the decision when it came to him right then and there. It was only fitting. He was going to bury his old self by doing this. It was the only way. He took down Taylor’s number and smashed the phone with a hammer and threw it out the window. He watched it fall in the mild snow filled wind. It wasn’t six feet under but it was sufficient. He took his medication and slept to a picture of Taylor in his mind.

Chapter 3

He woke up around eight after a good night of sleep. His mind was clearer and the sun that shone through his window was brighter. Time heals all things, and the wound felt a little bit more tolerable. The shock of waking up was also not as strong as it had been. This was his life now. The repercussions of him not yet finding the body would have been drastic; that would bring the strongest man to his knees he thought. At least now he had a better grasp of what happened: that Gary was involved in something and things got bad. That’s why the long faced man at the buffet had said that they got him good, in such a negative tone. They had seen them that night. The email of him going to the other city for the weekend did not make sense when Cindy had told him; it made made perfect sense now. Gary wasn’t supposed to be there with him that night, he must have side tracked him. And they were after Gary, maybe thought he bailed and they were chasing them both. But then he did it for them. Did the job; but why then would they bail him out when they could have just let him take the fall for it? What was the reason for that?

These thoughts came as he was eating breakfast in his kitchen with a sore feeling in his heart about Taylor. That was his first thought when he woke up. He was amazed at these emotions inside him, that a girl could dominate his mind to such an extent. It would have been different if lust was the reason, at least he knew that such a thing would not last and posed no threat to him. But this, this would not go away unless it’s destroyed. His will now to take the chance, to put everything he believed in, all his chips on the table, for this girl that could leave his life at any moment. If he made a mistake, if this allure she had was a mirage, how would he deal with it? How could he? He had seen what it did to other people, how did they cope? The risk wasn’t worth it. But now he had succumbed to it like the rest; he did not care. He had an excuse, this would not have happened if he wasn’t in the position he was.

And he believed now that she could help him with this vague new goal of his; this new life. There was no way he could explain what was happening without turning her away for good. He wanted everything of the old life gone. The need to be cleansed from the past and start anew like a newborn baby or a phoenix from the ashes, or God risen from the dead, was what he sought.

He had to get rid of his apartment, and he would have to leave before he saw anyone from his old life. He went to the rental office and told them they could keep the deposit if they took care of the furniture. When the manager responded in the negative he told her that he was leaving either way. Next, he went to get a new phone and a number. He got the newest iPhone, which was different than his old one. He got a different carrier too, AT&T.

He took the note with Taylor’s number and texted her an excuse for his absence and a desire to meet her this afternoon or later; she said that she was busy all day. He wished there were more time in the day so that she wouldn’t be busy.

What was this? This nonsense. Had he not bigger things to worry about. Things that had to do with his actual life: when would they come for him? He did not mind if they did. They seemed like reasonable people, and they wanted something from him. Maybe that’s where his life was headed. If that was true than he would not be under anyone very long. If that was where his subconscious was taking him then that’s where he would go, but not if he had to be under someone.; that was in his past life. This one would be different all together.

His next stop was buying suitcases for his most cherished belongings. He would take everything that fit in the car in order of importance. He left the garage parking lot as a police car pulled in front of the complex; someone from work must have put in the request. He had just made it out. This reaffirmed his belief that he was destined now for the fate that was before him; that his decision was the right and only one. He drove now to the city three hours away. He went to the same hotel of the fight and got a room leaving all his belongings in the car except for a small suitcase which he planned to use in the meantime.

It was five now after a rest session consisting of half-sleep, and a text from Taylor was waiting for him that said that her plans changed and she was free for the night. He thought about her a lot during the ride here and now he knew that he would think about her a lot on the way back. The door wasn’t closed on her when he had left. It was better that way, a better excuse and a distance that he thought was tolerable so she could be kept at a distance from whatever state he was in or what situation. He also had an inkling of a feeling that it wasn’t going to work out, that if he had told her what he planned to tell her that she would turn him down. And he imagined that to be a horrible feeling that he did not want to go through. But he could not resist when he saw the text. Perhaps, his mind was trying to get him away from her, that it knew the distress and the negative consequences of attempting this. But the mind fails when the conscious is dying for a certain thing to happen. That the conscious sometimes succumbs to the decision and needs of the heart. Like a car accident, it can happen at anytime, without the person’s say.

She wanted to have dinner, so he dressed nicely after unloading his suitcases in his hotel room, which was a task he had wished he had done before he showered, it slipping his mind. He was in a content excited mood on his way there, trying to forget about his life. At least he knew what actually happened to Gary’s body and that he was not crazy. He needed a break from the wear and tear of his predicament. Imagining her now, as an angel inviting him to take her hands so that she could bring him up to the skies with her, he drove in the darkness of the empty highway. Her face beamed in his mind, and he couldn’t wait to see her. This load that had been building inside him since he last saw her was great; not only sexual but more so spiritual. It was going to be different this time, he told himself. I’m gonna let it go where my heart wants this to go; just like my other decisions; I’m gonna throw myself to the wolves without fear nor regret.

Nervousness wasn’t a trait that visited Tommy much; anxiety and excitement and fear, maybe but not nervousness. The coolness of his mind under pressure was that of ice, with a melting point that of helium. He already knew what he was going to say: the reason he didn’t text her back was because of his work; and that was true. He could say that he got a position somewhere else. He was expecting to stay over her house; he knew it would happen and he would say that he had already moved and his apartment did not have any furniture so they wouldn’t go back to his. He contemplated the idea of breaking into his old apartment or have the nightly security guard open it for him. All his stuff were still there, but no it was too much work to pull that semi-lie, off.

For a second he thought about telling her everything but the murder. That he had quit his job and wanted to start anew. Maybe even ask her if she could come with him. That would be crazy he thought. They only had known each other for eight months and the strings were not as strong to justify such a rash move; that would turn her off completely. Another extension of the thought came to him: what if she had the same feelings for him that he did for her. He wondered maybe if he was wrong thinking that she was like him, maybe she saw something in him and wanted him for what he was, and had a long term plan. That maybe her mirroring his own sexual abilities did not mean that she’s had practice with many men but that she’s had a lot of practice with a man or two, or a few. But he did not care; he was not a hypocrite and in his world there was no double standard. He would have been ashamed if he had used her past against her. Hypocrisy was a trait he hated in people, it was a trait that he had purged from himself when he saw the hypocrisy of those who claimed they were religious

So no, even if the number was seventy-two or more he would not care. The days where women are held to different standards than men in regards to sex would soon be over. It is hard to stop the future, eventually the past will no longer be able to be held.

The restaurant was a nice one, an Italian restaurant, Taylor’s favorite type of food; a fact that Tommy knew.  She was there first due to some unexpected traffic along his route. He saw her from the entrance, and he moved towards her like a flying insect to the beautiful light that would soon kill it. She would not kill him however; a light that beautiful could hold anything but good.

She looked up excited when he approached. She looked at him through medium blue eyes and blonde hair over her shoulders; a typical pretty white blonde girl. He didn’t mind; he had tasted all that this world had to offer in terms of girls and she was not like the rest and it did not have to to do with her appearance let alone her skin, hair, or eye color.

She saw something different in him than the last time she had seen him on that unforgettable night, which she had fantasized about ever since the morning after the night. Three days was it? She was attracted to him because of his demeanor and a confident listless attitude he carried, one that paid no attention to anything that did not have a direct affect on him. That and he reminded her of her last boyfriend, the second of only two. She was with him for four years, he was a college football player with a fierce sexual appetite and who had taught her all she knew about sex. Her love for him was immense and had tried her hardest to make it work but failed. His aggressiveness on the football field made his emotions erratic and caused a lot of unnecessary fights that damaged her soul every time. But without him she would not have become what she was now; and she was appreciative of the benefits she got from the relationship.

Tommy was the first man she messed with after a year long absence. She didn’t do it on purpose but had an unintentional ambivalence towards sex. She couldn’t imagine how she could do the things she did with her ex with someone she didn’t know. To her, anything done in bed with a long term partner was fair game; that dirty sexual acts are cleansed when done with a passion other than lust. So she did not want to open that part of herself to anyone, first for her being uncomfortable with a stranger and that the stranger would make assumptions about her that were not true. And she was not the girl that would sleep with guys first and then decide if she wanted to stay or not, or wait on the man to decide. Sex was an extension of herself, a sort of art that had to follow a strict set of rules so that it could be classified under a certain genre or type.  

The moment she locked eyes with Tommy for the very first time she saw something deeper in the brown eyes that were staring back at her. The same way his eyes were looking at her now, glazed with a coating that made him mysterious and untelling as a good poker player. But there was something slightly different about them now, a softer more gentle projection.

Tommy ordered for them as he already knew what she wanted. He had a good memory, honed from years of experience. He talking to her in a tone she had never heard before. A pleading tone that did not make the plea clear. He was telling her about his work, and what had happened to his apartment. She had known him for eight months and the relationship was unfolding at a speed she liked. Tommy had broken the drought, a month after the first date. It was easy for her to give herself to him. There was something in him that understood her sexually. Something told her that her pursuit of this man would not end badly. That even if they did not last, that they had a mutual understanding. He never judged anyone and she saw it first hand and that was why she gave in to him so much easier than she expected and how she started where she had left off.

She remembered how the first time they had done it, the feeling of the orgasm lit up her mind and her whole body for seconds at a time, her brain screaming as this thing that was untouched for so long had been allowed to be so. His eyes were always respectful and understanding, and she knew ever since then and every time she looked at his eyes during sex that she had made the right decision.

She could not concentrate on what Tommy was saying. She didn’t much care for what he had to say tonight as all her thoughts were about sleeping with him; she had spent the past few days since lusting for his sexual organs. The inconvenience of the urge was acknowledged by her as it distracted her greatly. A girl’s desire is the same of a man she told herself. It’s so great that men have spent years trying to quell it. That if is a woman’s sexual appetite was not constricted that it would be detrimental to society. The only difference between the genders was that it was easier to control a woman than a man. And since men could not control their desires they spent all their years controlling women’s.  

All these things that Tommy was telling her came through one ear and out the other. Her mind in a totally different world.  He got her attention when she heard him say that he cared for her and asked where this was going. She was delighted. This was the second time he had said that to her, the first being a few days earlier; the night where she had seen him vulnerable for the first time. Thier relationship before then was a steady skate on thick ice, a comparison in a good way. Why she asked, seeking to make him more appealing to her than he already was. “Because you have everything that will make me change.“ He told her. “I was a certain way before I met you and now I see myself changing, and it’s all because of you. That night, when I cried. That was the first time I’ve cried since college. Six years.” That warmed her heart and confirmed that her instincts were right. She wanted him more than ever now.   

She now had a certain desire that came in her stomach, a desire to please Tommy for what he had just said, to give a sort of pleasure to him that she knew would be that equal to the pleasure he would give her. This fire in the stomach was in the mouth, and not in between her legs. She got wet like she assumed was equal to an erection and that made her flush. She could get off by just giving pleasure, sometimes not having to be penetrated or even achieving an orgasm. Tommy was the other side of the equal sign, they were always equal, in both spirit and in passion, making themselves one. She wondered if he thought about where she had gotten her skills from but he did not seem to mind or that she let him do things to her that most girls would never allow. That was their loss she thought. Everyone was different and there was so much happiness in something that others tried so hard to snuff.

The food came and she put her sexual thoughts on the shelf so she could come back to it later; something she assumed guys could not do. They talked about normal things: her updating him on what she was doing. She was pursuing a PHD at a university in the city. She was one year older than he was; having worked as a teacher in another city that was in need for good quality teachers before pursuing her passion, physics, something that not only did she love but was really good at. She didn’t know what she was going to do after but thought maybe a career as a professor wouldn’t be bad.  

They talked about other things too: news, pop culture, television, stories. he seemed like he wanted to talk about something else but was waiting; an impatient feel to his voice even though he seemed engaged. He never did anything slightly wrong to her, and she had heard her friend say that a man with no problems is a sign of a problem. But she couldn’t judge him based on that sort of logic. It wasn’t fair to him. And she thought that he had influenced her in a good way since she started dating him. They were alike in their confidence levels but Tommy took any doubt in her heart, no matter how small, of her own self worth away. You can read it on my face, she said once to him when she mentioned this. He agreed and encouraged her to stay that way no matter what. Even if this didn’t work out. She always felt comfortable around him. Like he knew something she did not but hid it so innocently that she overlooked it. Like a mother knowing where her child’s candy is hidden: something that is so cute that she couldn’t punish. She never claimed that her logic was always right, but that it was right to her; that’s all that mattered. She was responsible for her decisions and if that was the case then she’d do it her way; that way the only person she could blame for failure is herself.

“Did you hear what I said about me moving?” She felt embarrassed that she was so deep in thought that she had only a vague idea of what he was talking about and that she got away with not listening.  “Yea, how do you feel about it?” There is no easier response to a question except following it with another. He seemed upset at her ambivalence to the move; she had never seen him upset much except when his sport teams lost. Or he would get angry at strangers who irritated him. He usually did it smartly, and it ignited something in her every time he left looking good in that scenario. But he only did it when he was upset, she usually agreed with him. “It’s only three hours away, and we don’t see each other regularly anyways.” His upsetness turned into surprise at this ambivalence of hers, especially with how this dinner was going. She knew now, something she wasn’t one hundred percent sure about, that he actually did care for her. She hadn’t been able to find out as her class and his work schedules conflicted and Tommy had to stay at work late some nights. So she didn’t have a clear grasp on him and who he really was. But she had made enough calculations when taking the time spent together into account. And he had such a positive influence in her life to this point and only over an eight month period, where they met maybe forty or so times during that span. It was time well spent and very efficient. Every minute with Tommy felt like it had meaning and a purpose.  

She took his hands that were motionless on the table and held them, looking at his eyes like a teacher to a child, and told him that they would make it work. That she was in this with him and that she wanted to continue it. He seemed immediately comforted, straightened his back and regained something he thought he had lost. it was obvious now how much he liked her. And she was glad that she was right about him. She knew her worth and he liked what he was getting and bought it. This is exactly what she wanted, a person who would be so enthralled with her after she had given everything to him; that sex wasn’t her biggest draw anymore. She didn’t know if that was true with her ex. He was loyal but he was loyal to her body she sometimes thought, but it was enough for her but she realized that that sort of loyalty and relationship was bound to break apart if it was not ended.

They drove their cars separately back to her apartment, parting with a small kiss on the cheek. On the short drive there, she took that feeling off the shelf and brought it back. The feeling was excitement mixed with a sweet nervousness; that what awaited her was the thing she had been anticipating these past few days and it was going to be tonight, in just a few minutes. She loved everything leading up to it, and loved how Tommy would raise her in every possible way before the riding began. He was generous and a pleaser, doing everything for her that he asked her to do to him. She would never describe herself as overtly sexual but a woman who was willing to give her whole body to please someone else, a partner. That was what women were made for back then, ever since the first man, women were made for them, to bear their children, take care of their sexual and domestic appetite and everything else. It was changing now, but basic instincts are still alive in all the creatures on earth. There was nothing more beautiful, she thought, than if she gave all of herself to a partner and he gave it right back. And there was this thing she always enjoyed, when she would be out and about, and a random feeling of a naughty pride that she was doing dirty things that no one knew about; that if they knew they would lust after her, even the girls who she would pity when they looked like they didn’t even know how to spell sex, let alone have it. To constrict oneself like that, everyone can enjoy sex if the right triggers are pressed; some people don’t care enough to press. An image of a sexual act with Tommy got her hot and that proud random feeling came again at a stop light. It was the same feeling she got when she was going through puberty, when after she took a shower she would stand naked in front of her window, afraid of someone seeing her but excited by the fact that someone would or could. She never wanted to go through puberty again. Girls have it harder than boys growing up. And they are treated worse. She was optimistic about the future, that her daughter or granddaughter would have more freedom and be more in control of their lives.  

After helping Tommy find parking, they went up the stairs and the passion could not be contained for much longer. There was a shyness to this from the start, not on her but with him. He was a little bit more gentle and interested in different things in her body. They were in bed now, her mouth being fulfilled by that desire she had felt at the restaurant. A desire that burned in the stomach leading up to the esophagus and towards the back of the throat. She had learned to take it well, having something in so deep tickled that fire and cooled it so the warmth is like a cupped hand over a candle. This was another side of her, a side that no one had seen but a few, two to be exact. That was the random feeling she got when she was reminded by it. Something so dirty felt clean when it was done with etiquette. She knew that he liked her mouth as much as what was in between her legs and she always let him have it. No matter how rough or overpowering he got, she knew that they both had an understanding; that the eye contact was plentiful and the eotic feeling of their body parts were too transferred to each other that increased the load of both of them.

He was now taking her from behind. Someone had told her that some girls thought it demeaning and she laughed. It was her favorite position and the most natural one she said. What animal lied on its back and took it? She was a confident, powerful woman outside of this, so she allowed herself to be dominated by men she knew cared for her. Her first sexual experience was in college when she had given herself to her ex after a huge win by the team. She was glad she had waited because it was such a unique experience tied with something so charming as a man coming back from a battle, wounds and all back to his woman. She knew that that would be the point where he would appreciate it the most. Right off the fumes of victory and the mirth that causes an increase in sexual appetite. She had him after that night for good. But the thing that started their relationship ended it, she couldn’t deal with the strain of being with a football player, and he was with her for her looks, loyal or not.

She had remembered that her dad had called her shortly after the deed was finished. He knew, she said. He felt it. She called him back and had an hour conversation with him while her ex was sleeping. Parenting must be really hard.

On this night, her desire was in her mouth more than anything else. Everything was good but that desire for it would not go away even when she was being pounded, pounded that was the word she had used, so she asked and he responded with all kinds of different positions that tickled that thing in the back of her throat. She knew that he knew that she was special; one of a kind, and she got off that too. That she was one of the few women who knew her worth so much and knew what she wanted that giving all of herself made her even hotter than she was. She felt the pleasure in her brain, a shockwave of nerves that felt good, an indescribable feeling. She had heard the different names of what they used to call this act. One of the words was brain, that made perfect sense to her. He interrupted her to admire her back side. She enjoyed being looked over by his eyes, that the same sexual erotic sense in his eyes was being transferred through visuals only. She loved when her butt was being admired, because she appreciated and liked it too. Sometimes she would look at herself in the mirror and stare at it, shake it, and bend over just to see what ninety percent of men would want to take. Sometimes she could get off on so many different things that she didn’t have to constrict herself to one thing. He licked her like a cat licks its fur. She liked it but not as much as she assumed he did. It was good at times and neutral at others. But when it wasn’t working for her she would look back, as she was on all four, and admire her butt and how it enticed him. She could get off on herself and how she looked.

She told him that she wanted him to finish and she told him wherever he wanted. So he spilled it into her mouth as she had let him numerous times before and was happy because that’s what got her off this time, using her hands to break the dam.

They helped clean each other off with towels and laid there naked in each other’s arms. “I want you.” He told her. She said that she knew. And kissed him on the head.

Tommy laid there with an intense feeling of euphoric bliss. Not only because of being milked like a cow but also that she had been okay with everything he said. She still wanted him and he too. And he found reassurance when she had reasoned with him about the distance. So he got all he came for and more.

She fell asleep shortly after and he got up and sat in the living room watching a sports news channel in the background. Where did Taylor fit in with his plans? He had to go back to Raymond. That was the next step. He would do it tomorrow, then he would have a better idea of how he could make it work. He had gotten high of Taylor, a buzz or a high greater than that of a drug and he wanted to cherish it. He imagined as if he was in an opium den like he had seen in the movies puffing on pipes that calmed and made him forget his worries and that pipe was Taylor. The pain of his deed and his predicament were numb throughout the night. This would be something he would crave often, and it might become an addiction for life. A commercial with attractive women in swimsuits came on and he thought about all the girls he had left behind in his other life. They had become to him nothing now, people he did not want to acknowledge ever knowing or done anything with. He’s gonna make it good with Taylor. Play it straight. If this high would continue he would be able to do it.

He thought now about providing for her. He wanted to give her anything she wanted. A scene with him buying her an expensive necklace came to mind, right after a skate in the rink. He was becoming sentimental, more feminine. But it was all part of the high. Like when one is inviting and open and filled with promises when drunk. He hoped it wasn’t only the high. But he continued to think about it anyways.

He was going to live off his savings which he had not touched for a long time. During the recession, he had bought many stocks in large essential companies that people feared would fail. There was no way the stocks will go lower than they already were nor would they be lost, he had said. He was advised against it but he saved for months buying dollars stocks in huge companies that he knew could give him five hundred or more percent return. He was right and hit the jackpot.A stock that was one dollar rose to thirty. Another one from three to twelve and yet another from four to seventeen. He never touched the money, knowing one day he would need it for something.  

It was enough to to get him by with the same life style of his past while he pursued this Raymond; he knew there would be a work opportunity there. Everything seemed now like it was slowly returning to normal. As if Gary’s death never happened or more precisely that he had nothing to worry about his death. No more repercussions to deal with. He no longer missed Gary or had any feelings towards him. That was left behind. He wondered whether Cindy had reached out to him after Gary didn’t come back when he said he would. He’d look at the news tomorrow. He might be on there too. What if that was true and Taylor saw it? How could he explain that to her? Somethings are meant to be left untouched until the event happens. Why worry when it might not be a big news story. Taylor didn’t watch local news and she had no connection with anyone at his work. She had never even seen it except when driving by while riding with him.

He had realized also that this hatred for being tied to a single woman had been left behind too. He was hoping that it would last. But again, he wouldn’t think about such things as they happened. His mind wouldn’t allow it, wishing to purge the idea from itself so that it may never happen.

He took the medication he brought with him in his wallet, he looked at them in his hands and begged himself to stick with them at all costs. There was no room for games in such a delicate situation as his and he refused to lose because of something as simple as taking a pill.

He came back into bed and she made a tck tck smack sound when he placed his head on her chest and cuddle with her; a sound of a sleeping person sensing comfort from outside the dream. As his eyelids began to get heavy, he finally admitted to himself what he had known since his night in jail and what he knew now: he had fallen in love with Taylor and there was nothing he could do but risk everything so it could survive.

To be continued…

The Book of Elija

…as it is revealed to the Messiah…

01. The Days of Descent

By the Lord of the Crescent Moon and by the Lord of All Created Beings: these words henceforth shall be a declaration to all on earth that a new age is within reach. An age where those who call for the times of the past shall be fought with the pen; and made to succumb to the Right View. The people of your faith among the biggest of them, claiming: in the past lies salvation. What has the past done for them. They recall the times of old as if the people were walking amongst them; as if their memories are worth something in the present. They say look at what our fathers did when they followed this! Ask them: did their fathers know more than us; more than we know now? How then can we follow their views to the law; when the reasoning is no longer relevant, stripped with the evolution of man. Does not their book say to them of the polytheists when called to the One God: No! we shall follow the way of our ancestors. Do they not know that their ancestors are gone and are not among us to see? So do not bother with their words and views for they are not of the new age. And what is new shall always conquer what is old; and all will soon stand with you. Smile to those who smile to you, and be accepting of those who are accepting of you. For what is your purpose in life but to unite a disarrayed earth. And let not their outdated views hold any weight to you, but nod to them until God gives you the spirit to speak.

By the Lord of Night and by the Lord of Day: you have been made to drop your arms and hands these last ten days when all the world has them raised. Your heart pleading to pray and your brain refusing: knowing that these were the days of descent: knowing that all has been answered and written. The rest stand in worship of their Lord, hands raised for a savior from among themselves. God has answered their prayers yet many do not yet know. [12:07:15]

By the Lord of the Full Moon and by the King of Kings: you shall lead a nation among them that will advance humanity and trigger an evolutionary mechanism: so that the advancement will be rapid. You may doubt yourself when looking on those trailblazers before you, like a climber does a mountain, and you remember your size and that you are nothing but a man. How many a men have been given knowledge at different points in their lifetimes? Are you not young, with a mind not yet fully grown?

By the God of Light and by the God of Darkness: you shall reign over them with an iron fist and an open hand. They shall come to you for a savior and some you will turn away. Do not let this be of any moral weight to you, for they are not your responsibility and God does not strain the believers: Those who, when they see good, praise and uphold its values and those who, when they see an evil, cry out so it becomes clear.

Be among those who praise others, for truly those who praise others are among those who are praised. Be among those inclusive: allowing all of a good heart and mind a right to a smile; for a smile is charity. By the Teacher of Men, and by the Most Merciful, you will rise from above and below them, to sit on a throne under the King; your crown an instrument to His plan. You worry now about how long it will take. But what is time to God? What is time to you? Has he not taught you the power of perception? Has not time been one of your dearest companions? So do not be ungrateful to your Lord for these blessings. Let it not hinder your thoughts or expand your worry; it is a lesson in itself: time. It is the paper which God’s tests are printed upon. Time: the ever constant teacher and healer of men, allowed to be perceived by us, so that we are able to, as much as possible, comprehend the Truth of an Ever Present God.

By the Destroyer of Mountains, and by the Healer of All Things, a great sustenance will soon descend upon you from the sky and from underneath the earth. They will ask you for proof; say my proof is my Lord; and time will stand as my witness. Then they will say, surely that is a convenient reply! Say, wait, for I too am waiting. [06:07:15]

Do not be afraid of the guidance that God has given you. Your path is true and they will soon know it too. The Day of Independence: the day God sent down his angels to stand by the side of men to create a new nation under Him, shall be observed as a day of celebration. Eat and drink from the bounty that God has made available to you; and do not drink past the point of a loose tongue or eat until sleep overcomes you. Praise the Lord for the food in your stomach, the water in your veins and the merriment in your heart. There are among them who spread ill views of God’s Nation, saying that she has sowed mischief throughout the land. They act as if the sins of nations only apply to yours; they act as if no other nation is guilty of an evil but yours. Look! To them you will exclaim: what freedom has man bestowed upon himself greater than these of the United States? The earth has never known such freedom. Has He not raised a nation unlike any other in history? Has He not fulfilled the promise of its manifest Destiny? Then let them curse the hand that feeds them, mock the culture that has influenced them, and utilize the technologies that were made for them. So turn away from those among your nation who do not wave stars in their mental abode. Ask forgiveness for their thanklessness; and for the sins, past and present, of this great country.

Prostrate to your Lord when you awake and before you sleep, during the day and in the middle of the night, at the first light of dawn and at the setting of the sun. He is nearer to you than your jugular vein and He knows the workings of your mind; so call upon Him wherever you may be and He shall call upon you. Count the Lord’s Favors and that of your people. And do not be too quick as to forget your ancestors, those from the dry palm trees of Najd, the ones from the olive branches of Palestine and the cedar groves of Lebanon. You are no longer an inhabitant of their lands but their blood runs through you, and what blood! Their prayers descend upon you: they ask for a king, a lion and a leader from among themselves. Alas you have come! So announce yourself by your holy name. They shall ask you to declare your allegiance; say I pledge my allegiance to my Lord. Lest you be swayed by their words and veer from the path He has set for you; in every story there is an ending, yours shall always end with a beginning. [07.04.15]

Do not fret over those whose brains are narrower than a channel and those whose are freer than the unrestricted sky. Has it not been explained to you that of your rank and status? Were you not of their mindset before knowledge was bestowed upon you by your Lord? Then do not fret over those who declare a creed and believe theirs to be true and others false. Is it that God has favored one creed over the other? Has evil been clearly defined in one and good in the other? They talk as if goodness is the belief of a faith: have they miracles to share? Have they prophets among them who declare God’s Message? Have they clear evidence that their path is right?

Do not fret over those who cling to the past as a sailor does to a plank of wood; your duty is that of the future, those who cling, you will leave behind. God has descended upon you calmness and tranquility and the promise of a nearing and permanent heaven, for then why do you let those behind you influence your happiness? You will not be asked about them but them of you. Had they not heard your words and turned away? Had they not refused to succumb to the future? These are the days when God’s Messengers no longer walk among them. When the final prophet was buried, man was left to himself. What will be his ultimate end? Now there are among them who have declared cessation from God. Do not fret about them! For they will be the first to believe in you; their judgements not shrouded by the falseness in their hearts. The hypocrites, those who you know by their faces and their walk, let there be no association, and to them evil is permitted. They are the dwellers of the lowest point in Hell and their punishment the most severe. So do not fret about any of them. Have you not a God who has guided you since an infant? Have you not seen their sins being done upon you as you learned to understand? Has not every injury led to strength? And now, as God has shown His Signs before you, do you see the fault of your worry? Is there a slave on this earth that you can fear with this knowledge? So advance as you have been advancing; strike down your plow into the soil and declare to the Rich your want of wealth, declare to the Teacher your want of knowledge and declare to your Lord the need for His Mercy. The words they shall use to exalt you, and the words to demean you shall both hit your heart, made out of uncut leaded diamond: turned away, not to affect anything that is in you. [02:07:15]

They say unto you that your way is that of the transgressors, that your good deeds are in vain. They say unto you that their faith is stronger, their decree: the truth. As if their patience with the fasts are worth more in the Scales of God. As if their prayers more devout, their charity more true and their intentions pure. When you and those among your people call on the anger of God to smite them, punish them for their wicked ways, they point to the scriptures. Deaf dumb and blind! you to them shall say. Then they will raise their swords, praise the name of the devil they falsely name God, wave the flag of darkness and kill in his name. Have they not seen how a mountain is shattered by the setting sun, engulfed in an orange like hell with the clouds appearing as red smoke; the imminent darkness defeated by the shattering light. Have they not realized that their spirits glide upon a blackened light that when shone in darkness does not light anything? Then let this be an open decree, that if the present was the time of the past: that to every able bodied person who fears God should take the sword to the wrong doers and fight them to the death wherever they may find them. Evil is allowed to be stomped by an evil in kind; if that evil will make way to good. As in all things, when darkness is returned by darkness the result is unchanged, only when light is introduced is there a source for vision and sight. The enemy will say unto you that you shall burn in the hell fire. Say I and among those with me share your sentiments. Let God make them remain in darkness so that they are punished for their evil ways; that they have no respite in the Mercy and Guidance of the Most High; that they’re skins burned, peeled and healed to be burned again. So that they may taste the punishment; so that God’s Mercy remains just and there too remains justice in all matters. [01:07:15]

They shall call you the Riser and those with you the Risers; they will ask you how have you risen and you shall say because I rose. [29:6:15]

02. The Passing of the Hours

Whispers upon the wind that send and deliver messages to all those on earth. There is a wanderer, his name is not of importance; he searches for a tree that produces a sort of fruit which shall nourish his mind. He has heard in the scriptures and elsewhere of stories told about a tree of knowledge. He found it on a hill beside a fortress referred to by many as the Law. There, he saw the tree and ate the fruits before him, finding what he has sought: the tree of knowledge produces a fruit and it is that of the seeker. These are the parables of which there is no doubt; a guidance from the Lord so that they may know. Some of them will whisper among themselves loudly and quietly: questioning that of your words. What shall they question but themselves when they come true? Alas some will be blinded on that day and remain so. But you have not been sent as a healer, but as a leader of a new nation amongst them. You shall rise like those who have risen before you and reign like those before you have reigned. They will come to you with questions so answer from the knowledge your Lord has given you and hold your tongue on that which God has yet to teach you. Without His knowledge you would not be able to lift a spoon, so take heed with your pride and do not let the ignorant among them sway you from the path set out for you, but thank and ask for His Blessings in all things; for He is the Mighty, the Most Praised.

The whispers in the winds that reach you; they are the messages of people far away from you, some you do not know and some you hold dearly. So listen to the whispers and make use of the comfort they have sent, and seek refuge from those who send evil towards you. What slave on earth shall you fear with God’s Hands above you; do you intend to insult the Almighty? the Supremely Proud? So let them pass their whispers on to you, across oceans of blue and mountains of rock, under tunnels and through the open range. Let the winds carry their whispers and yours. Give back to those who have whispered kindness, a blessing; and those of evil, their rightful recompense. For those who support you are of you and your glory and light within them. Yet many do not yet know. [08:08:15]

They ask regarding the sacraments. Tell them the sacraments have already been ordained by the saints and teachers of old, so remain to them. They ask about the rituals, say do as they have been done by the prophets in the past. They ask you about the interpretations, tell them that their own is the only one of merit.

Pity to the misers! Those who burden themselves under the words of others. How unfortunate is their state, for they lose the pleasure of this world, and their reward in the next is minimal; God does not appreciate a stubborn unseeing heart. Their burden exacts on them pain and toil; do they not know that God desires not to burden His slaves so. How severe they believe Him to be.

They will take claim with those pious leaders before them and say unto you: you are among the deceivers. Are their leaders among us to see?! If their leaders were raised from the dead and made to look around their graves they would claim the present world a magical fantasy. So how can they take claim with the learnt men of old? Are they too blind to see? Verily they are the deceivers! Those who when are shown clear signs turn away from them and console their hearts with false speech and ill-intentioned piety. Do they not know that God is aware of the whispers in their minds?

The scholars! They whip their pupils with whips made out of half peeled aloe vera: one side piercing and leaving a scar and the other soothing the skin: strange is what they claim Him to be. The worry you had of them is no longer in you. The Guidance from your Lord has come and they shall soon see His Signs so that they may know them. God guides whom He wishes and leads astray whom He wills and He is the Most Merciful, the Ever-Thankful. [26:07:15]

The hours; they pass as the people count its passing, asking you: what is time? Tell them that it is for them to answer. God has given man a conception which does not exist; a day is a thousand years to Him: the One Free from All Needs, the Ever-Present, the Magnificent! Glory be to Him; how strange is, what they attribute. And they ask you again: what is time? Tell them it does not exist. A drop of a sand pebble in an hourglass is only counted when it has dropped. You have seen it drop and they too but what have they not seen? The emptiness of the hourglass: that is what you don’t and can’t see. That is the reason for your appointment. The time that you see, no words will make them understand. So only try to aid in their understanding, with their words and their reason and their logic. It is not their fault that you have been elevated; so take heed of your tongue, lest you judge something in haste and lose it forever.

They ask you regarding time: does not every minute glide into an hour and hours into days and days to years, as all in the heavens and earth move in calculated turns, stopping for nothing? Surely that is enough for them to believe; for them to accept your answer. They see the tangible and you see the truth: the restrictions of this world! Words too limited to explain the working of the mind; and all to Him will return.

Teach us to count the days! they once prayed to Him of which He answered: on to wisdom you will always remain. All thanks be to Him: the Teacher!

Pray for knowledge; for knowledge is God’s favorite weapon. Man is in loss; for he does not appreciate what he has received.

They ask you about time’s end? Tell them that the date is only with the Lord and it all shall end in due time. They ask regarding its perception, say that the sand in the glass is only seen if counted. Have they not seen the passing days; the passing hours: they move all around them and they say there is no God, nonsense! For if not for the hours and the days, man would be in loss. They ask you regarding the passing of the hours. Tell them that they are the passing of time. They ask you again about time, say it only exists to those who see it and an instrument to those who don’t. They shall look at each other and talk amongst themselves about the hours, as they pass from one hour to the next, remembering the previous one and pondering the next, as everything in the present fades to nothing, only to have existed due to the passing of the hours. [22:07:15]

03. The Mountains

Woe to the hypocrites. The hypocrites who wake up at every dawn to pray and the hypocrites who never miss a Sunday. Woe to them who are pious for their own selves and not for the sake of God; God the All-Knower of men’s hearts. You have heard of what some of them whisper amongst themselves, and the rage in your heart compels you to sadness. Do not let their sick hearts misguide you. Some sympathize with those who spread mischief on earth; those who spread mischief on earth shall earn a grievous punishment; and those who sympathize with them are among them. So turn away when they speak to you and do not give them your respect and do not sit with them if they verbalize their beliefs in public or in private and if you sit with them surely you too are of them. You have declared those who kill in the name of the devil as your enemies; the ones the hypocrites sympathize with you shall have no hand in. God has promised your sword over their necks to do as you please; and God loves those who are merciful.

These are words inspired by a Divine Light, as a warning for an age that has yet to receive a warner. A Guidance from the Lord of the Worlds to save yours from the darkness of ignorance and the depths of the hellfire. You have not been asked to make them believe in you but for them to believe in the Signs of your Lord; those who believe in the Signs of the Lord are among the dwellers of His Kingdom, eternally living there in. They will scoff at you and say: He has invented a lie against God! Have they not seen how their scholars contradict themselves on the pulpit, and in the classroom, and in their interpretation of the scriptures. Have they not seen how they have taken the words of their scholars as that of God? So say to them which one of us has conjured a lie against God? Who amongst us are the liars? They will look at each other in amusement and ask: So which of these signs do you declare to be yours? Declare them to your Lord! They know them as well as they know their sons; the Signs are in their books and in the words of the learned men of God. So which of His Signs will they deny? They will claim to you that this is not what has been predicted. Ask them have not some of their predictions been proven false? Do they not differ amongst themselves about their own predictions? So which of your Lord’s Signs will they deny?

They will say that this is the work of a skilled writer. Nay is the response to their claims: what book has glorified itself before it has been written, and what book has validated itself before being revealed? No such book except those from God; and God is aware of all what they say and do. And when the promises made here are brought before their eyes they will exclaim: There must be a logical explanation to this. Say to them the explanation is the Divine; and this is a book for all mankind. Many will never believe the Truth. God has sealed the hearts of some so that they may never believe. So do not worry about a party of them who are among the hypocrites, among the wicked ones. They will do you and those with you no harm, standing like a wall they will never break you and those who stand by you. Verily the hypocrites and the evil doers are in the lowest depths of the hell fire, eternally living there in. [28: 08:15]

Show them the mountains and warn them of the Hour; the day when the mountains shall move like the passing of clouds, plate over plate in a fiery storm. The Hour: how it draws closer while many are unaware. These are words of a book, simple to those who are learned: those who ponder the stars and the heavens with wonderment and amazement and say: Our Lord! You have not created all this in vain, glory to You! Exalted you are above all the falseness of what they say about You. We submit to Your existence so grant us salvation.

It has been written that a man shall rise from above them and below them to raise a nation unlike any seen before. They shall claim it impossible. Tell them to look at the civilizations and religions of old. Have they not seen how the Lord raises some for a time and lowers some for a time, extinguishing some and immortalizing others? He does as He pleases, yet many will look at His Actions with displeasure; God will take displeasure with them! The Debaser, the Humiliator, the Majestic, the Most High. Leave them be until the appointed term set by Him; bow down to your Lord in humbleness and deference and say: God is sufficient for me. He will give me of His Bounty and He will enrich me. He is the Mighty, the Protector, the Provider, the All-Powerful. [29:08:15]

04. The Message

By the Lord who has sent down this book in pieces so that they may understand. A book revealed in reverse so that they may see its miracle. Do not let the fear of blasphemy prevent you from preaching it but trust in the Guidance sent down from your Lord; it is not for you to judge your actions but for Him. Your fear of retribution is nonexistent; it has been erased by the Mighty: the one who takes your soul to the heavens in your sleep and the one who brings it down again before you awake. So do not fear anyone but Him; He is the Compeller, the Majestic.

By the Lord who has surrounded you with friends who shall be among the believers. Whosoever turns their back on you turns their back on God; and those who turn their backs on God are among the losers. Those who when faced with His Signs say: this is but a fancy. And this to them will only be the beginning.

They will put words on your tongue that you did not utter just like those like them before you did to the prophets of old. Their aim is to turn you away from the path God has shown you. Their rejection is disbelief. And to the disbelievers shall come a gruesome end.

They will say that if this is a book from God then why has it not been revealed to you all at once. And if it had been revealed all at once they would say: We do not understand it! What are these circumstances and developments it speaks of? What are we to do with such a thing?! Verily it has been sent down from your Lord in stages so that they are given time to ponder its words and divided in parts so that you may read it to them in intervals. And do not forget the comfort that these words bring you. If it were not for your Lord’s revelations you would be in loss. For it will be revealed piece by piece, gradually, so that your heart and the hearts of those with you are eased by them and your anxiety soothed; and God is your Protector.

You have shown a concern to offend people when it should be God that you fear to offend. Those who offend you and your Lord are those misled. Will they be your excuse when you are resurrected and made to stand before the Resurrector just like they will stand before Him, blaming their scholars and leaders saying: We were but followers of them! Whether they followed or led, whether in despair or in patience, the fire will be their abode.

So do not worry. Your message will spread like the news of a cure. There will be no one on earth that shall be ignorant to this; and it has come to them as a mercy. And do not ever think that you are above anyone of God’s slaves, even the wicked ones. For it is to God to rank the people and His Judgement is All-Encompassing, the Truth. And do not ever think that your deeds are better than others and your sins lesser than some. Have you not seen the sins you commit by day and the ones you commit at night; the ones in public and the ones in private. So do not be among those who are arrogant and turn to your Lord in forgiveness; and who can forgive but The Oft -Forgiving, the Pardoner. And do not separate mercy from God; He is the Loving, the Compassionate. The One who created mercy and made it into one hundred parts: ninety nine for Himself and one part He made to be shared by all of his creatures until the end of time. So what a low comparison is that of man’s mercy compared to that of God. If they only knew His Mercy they would drag theirs shins and knees up ragged rocks to attain It. Have they not seen how God has made it easier than that, how He does not desire to burden His people so?

When they ask you where is God’s Mercy when children are slaughtered and women raped throughout the lands? Say God’s Mercy is with them. Where is God when the people die of hunger? Say He is with them. And where is God where there is injustice? Say God is with them; and He is aware of all that is done and He is the Most Just, the All-Aware. If they only knew the truth of this world they would not ask questions but seclude themselves to prostrate to him until death. These are verses for a people who wish to be pious.

The words you speak are from yourself but this a book from Him: a guidance to those who wish to be guided. Remember how He has taught you what you did not know and enlightened you when you were ignorant? Do you then deny the blessings of your Lord?

Relate to them the stories of David and the Sons of Israel. Verily the stories of David and the Sons of Israel are signs for a people who know. When God appointed over Israel Saul as their king they said to their Prophet, Samuel: why has God chosen him when we are better fit for the Kingdom than he? He said to them God has chosen him over you and has given him knowledge and stature and God grants His Kingdom to whomever He pleases; He is the King of All Kings. So when Saul marched them to meet their outnumbering foe some of them said we have no power against Goliath and his men while those who believed said how many a small numbered group have been given victory over a large one by God’s Will? And God is with those who are patient.

And when they advanced to meet Goliath, he asked them for a champion to challenge him and Saul chose David who overcame and Israel was made victorious over its enemies by God’s Leave. And in this are lessons for a people who understand. You have been chosen by God as the keeper of The Covenant; it shall be yours. And if it were not for these revelations to you, the Tribes of Israel and Judah would have lived for naught.

So declare the message of your Lord. The message of Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. You have come as a reviver of God’s Scriptures: the Quran, the Torah and the Gospels. Your message is that to the sons of Abraham;the message that was sent down from your Lord to His prophets as He has sent them to you, and the one you will spread. The words you speak are from yourself but this a book from Him: enlightenment to those who wish to be enlightened.

To those not from Abraham you have no claim but to say you have your religion and we have ours. May we be guided to the right path and join each other in righteous deeds; and God loves those who are righteous. This is a book for mankind and this is God’s religion.

So do not fear the mouths and hands of those who oppose you and say you have no claim to the Lord. Whoever opposes you opposes God; and God does not like the evildoers. Those who corrupt the earth with their deeds and think they are the ones guided. And when it is told to them to believe as everyone else has believed they say: shall we believe as the infidels have believed. Verily they are the infidels but they are blinded. Deaf and dumb also your Lord has made them so they will never change until they see the painful torment.

God has given you permission to fight them. Those who kill you are allowed to kill, those who do evil may be recompensed with an evil in kind; your Lord does not tolerate those wicked and immoral.

So do not fear them when they call for your death. Put on the full armor of God and trust in your Lord; God loves those who put their trust in him. Have they not heard the story of David and Goliath? Did they not say when charging towards Goliath and his forces: Our Lord! Pour forth on us patience and make us victorious over our enemies; and did not God answer Does your heart still carry a single doubt about the success of your mission?

So count the favors of your Lord and know that to God Alone belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth. He punishes whom He wills and forgives whom He wills and God is the Most-Merciful, the Oft-Forgiving. [03:09:15]

05. The Declaration

This is a declaration to mankind that a new era has arrived. An era where all that is bad will be left behind; the scriptures renewed and reinterpreted, missionary work abolished and all of God’s religions shall become one. That is what you have been told to declare. So declare.

Verily the heavens and the earth were one before God parted them and created the Universe out of nothing. Verily that is proof for a people who know. Many will accept the second and deny the first. As if something created out of nothing and by chance is easier to believe than a Creator initiating it.

Have they not seen what was there before their existence? How creatures roamed the earth before the creation of Adam? They point to their bones and say that there lies the proof of the fault in the scriptures. Tell them that they were only a test for this era. Verily God tests a people so that He may know those who believe and those who choose not to. So that those with true faith remain so and those with weak faiths be tempted to disbelieve; and those who disbelieve shall earn a gruesome punishment.

And to every soul God leaves to it, its decision and no soul shall bear the sins of another. Remind them that this world is but play and a game and that all will be questioned regarding their actions on earth. And all shall be judged accordingly and justly; for God is the Most Just, the Most High.

Have they not seen that when God parted the heavens and the earth there remained a darkness until God enveloped the Universe with His Light. And He has made it and everything in it from the dust of the stars. Verily that is a Sign for a people who understand. Yet some would rather believe in the belief of a chance existence. How can something be created out of nothing except for God, for He is not of anything of this Galaxy. If He were to describe Himself to His slaves they would not be able to comprehend it. The parable is that of an animal who sits before a great astronomer who explains to it the principles of gravity and the motion of stars; is there a point to such things? And verily some will not believe even if God stood before them.

So do not be frustrated by their words and their perception. How many men have been ridiculed and killed in the pursuit and the spreading of knowledge? How many a church has killed and wronged believers who looked at the stars and tried to explain them with the knowledge that God has given them. There is disbelief even among those who believe in Him. For what is their belief to God when they kill the believers He loves the most. And those who He loves the most are those who pursue Him through knowledge and those who do good solely for him.

Tell them that the purpose of this life should be that of righteous deeds, the attainment of knowledge and the humbleness to acknowledge a creator. For who of His slaves can say that he was born without a mother? Verily man can be an ungrateful, stubborn being.

Tell them to look at what He has made available to them. Has He not given those before them horses to travel the earth, camels to traverse the desert and mules to climb mountains. And then has He not taught them the movement through and under the waves and the gliding through the lands? Has He not made this earth accessible to everyone? And has He not taught them the abilities of birds and the knowledge to ascend to the lowest reaches of the heavens so that they may see His Signs and Miracles? Yet some look at all this and say: it was us who has made such things. It is us who taught ourselves. Woe to them who see the favors of the Lord and deny them. Verily man can be an ungrateful, stubborn being.

So smile to them as one would smile to a toddler who has said something that shows their ignorance. Their influence to the world will be that of a flea on a dying corpse; it’s purpose to annoy for its existence; the nutrients dwindling and it’s death imminent; ts existence and its intention to harm yet its efforts useless.

And warn them of the day when they will be asked by Him: Has not a warner come relating the truth now before you? They will say: Yes but we turned away and did not believe him. Surely if You had guided us we would not have done what we did. And they will beg for a second chance and God will turn away. What a loss is that of the rejectors.

Do not fear those who have greater power and wealth than you; those who can ruin you if they chose to. Their likeness is that of a castle made out of sand, built on a beach with a low tide, the threat of destruction so close yet they ignore it. And if God chose He would bring out the tides and ruin them. So do not let their threats occupy your mind. [09:09:15]

Verily God knows the sadness in your heart regarding the state of the world. The beliefs of the people counter your beliefs and you think your life will be full of anger and rage towards you. God does not deny such things; how many men have suffered in life, for God or otherwise? It is part of human existence. So be patient with the Lord, His sustenance is coming, and God loves those who are patient.

You were never content with being a follower and now that this Message has forced you to lead you become weary of the hearts and tongues of the people. It has been told to you the uselessness of your worry; and you are aware. Yet the human condition is that the worry disappears only when it dissipates in front of their eyes.

Remember the Prophet in the desert who had been given a similar message and it pained him as it did you but yours is an atom compared to his. Was he not made victorious in the end. Were not the disbelievers made to succumb to God’s Message. There are some who call him a false Prophet who received his revelations from Satan. Or that he was crazy, a liar, evil. Oh! may they protect their tongues so that they may not be cut. If only they were there when Gabriel descended on that cave with the Light of God; if only they knew the burden of its weight. You will cry as he has cried, to be chosen to change and lead a people is a task reserved only for a select few; those with a divine message carry the greatest of burdens. Tell them like he told them: if I am a liar then I ask God to take away my left arm and my right leg and I pray that I would be condemned to the Fire.

They select verses of his Book to read and point to the blood. They look at the stories and point to the barbarism. They look to the Decree and point out Its flaws. Their likeness is that of a fruit picker who enters a beautiful, bountiful garden only to select the bad ones. If only they could be shown the state of the times they would think differently. It is as if they think that the way they think now is what was thought back then. Have they not seen how much God has taught man since? Does not every century come with greater knowledge and advancement? But they will continue to judge it by the standards of today and what fools are they. Have they not seen the nation he made out of them? Do they ignore the enlightenment that made it easy for them to advance? Many will deny such things and those you will leave to God.

Do not say to them that his way was the only path. No, for that is not the case. He was a carrier of the same message that was sent to the Sons of Israel, so that the belief in One God becomes widespread and if it were not for his message and yours, their lives would have been in vain. They were God’s chosen people before they veered from the path and God sent down His Message to another nation until an appointed term when His Forgiveness will come over them and He will claim them to be His again. Glory be to God who has created the Earth and the Heavens, they are His Dominion and all its inhabitants are His slaves. He does with them as He wishes and to Him all will return. [08:08:15]

06. The Law

This is a book revealed so that all mankind may know it’s truth and the truth of the One True God; the Almighty, the Magnificent. A book inspired to you so that the Sons of Abraham may declare it as their own and believe in it’s signs. Yet many will turn away and hold to the beliefs of the past.

A book, revealed to bring an earth from the darkness of that past to the light of the future, from the ignorance of their current beliefs, to the knowledge of the new age. Verily this is a Straight Path for a people who wish to be guided.

To each nation a government based upon its culture of leadership and its laws chosen by the people. That is a Right Way for a people who wish to advance.

Do not let your heart be saddened when you hear of those who have more power and wealth than you; spending it to turn men away from God and spending to spread corruption and mischief on earth. Both will come to you in time. And money shall be of your greatest weapons.

Ask them if they were witnesses when death neared Jacob and he said to his sons: Who will you worship after me? And they said we shall worship your god and the god of our fathers: Abraham, Ismail and Isaac. There is only One God and He alone we worship. Those are a people that have passed away; to them their deeds and to you yours, and you will not be asked about what they did.

They say be a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian, and you will be guided. Say: I would rather follow the religion of my father Abraham, the One true religion. Say: I believe in God and which has been revealed to Muhammad and in which was revealed to Abraham, Isma'il and Isaac, and Jacob and the Tribes; and in which was given to Moses and Jesus and and that which was given to the prophets from their Lord. I do not distinct one from the other, and to Him I submit.

So if they believe as you have believed then they are on the Right Course; and if they turn back then God will raise you over the disbelievers. Those who reject His signs when they are shown; and God does not love a blinded, ignorant people.

Some say that Abraham and Isma'il and Isaac were Jews, Christians or Muslims. Do they know better than God what they were? So tell them to claim whoever they which as their own; as they will one day argue amongst them who has claim to you. Those are a people that have passed away; to them their deeds and to you yours, and you will not be asked about what they did.

So call upon your lord in the evening when you’re heart dwells on his favors. You were ignorant before God showed you the truth. And now that you see the Signs in His Scriptures you claim yourself guided. You have spoken the truth, like those before you spoke the truth. Among them, Solomon when he asked the Lord to grant him an ability never given to any man before. And God gave him more than he asked; and if a slave asks God for a single thing, God will give ten, either in the present or in the next life. God is the Balancer of Scales, and what more accurate Scales than that of God?

The Sons of Israel: their blood runs through most of the people in the Holy Lands: years upon years of slaughter, rape; peace, harmony; forced conversions and the dissipation and movements of tribes; a brother side by side an enemy as a brother, and a brother on the other side and not an enemy. If they only knew the truth of the situation they would surely cry. In this is a sign for a people who understand.

Let it be declared openly that God’s money is only money earned rightfully and legally. And that which is earned in any other way is the devil’s. And that all illegal paths lead to the fire, will they then not abstain?

They ask you about the business of money. Tell them that the lands shall be free and inviting to the sellers; and the hand of the government only to aid in this. Some of them will complain and point to the lies and the greed. Ask them: are you the judgers of men?! Where then is your right to take this as an issue, for let it be to God to punish His slaves and for all of them to follow His Law. Those who follow His Law are those truly guided.

Tell them to pursue money and wealth as a source of action; so that they may feed the poor, pave the roads, and protect their lands. Tell them that money given to a nation is given to God; if the leaders are rightfully guided, and the people are enjoining good, and fighting against evil in their laws; and God is all aware of what they do.

And if a people of a nation are a majority to a law other than those outlined here or accepted as good and moral by the rest of the world then you are to tell your followers that they may take to every adversary the sword until the people return to the Right Path. And do not show mercy to those who wish to spread mischief on earth and destabilize nations. They are the enemies of God and to each He will customize a punishment according to their deeds; and God is aware of all that they do.

And tell them to pay back the families of the wrongdoers they kill some of your wealth and if there is no wealth than food and goods equal to that amount and if not that then a promise, a prayer for a better future and a safe passage through the lands. For God only knows the martyrs among them and those who are destined for the lowest depths of the fire. And tell their families to enjoin good and prohibit evil and show them God’s Mercy so that they may return to Him. And if they still turn away then warn them that your hand and the Hand of your God is severe.

Tell them that there is no need to slay for God’s name anymore except in the cases outlined in this book, that was asked of those before you. But this is a new era and a new book so that they may advance. Tell them that certain evil cannot be met without death; so when the trumpet of war is blown, let all who hear it, willing and able, make their way to the embattlements and ready themselves to defend the rights and liberties of God’s people: all those who wish to live peacefully and freely beside another.

Ignore the loud talk of the blind peacemakers. They will come and bellow out their nonsense; their intentions will be rewarded by Him, but he asks you to ignore them. They are like a farmer who desires not to plant his crops in the soil because he fears for the insects and the animals, deciding rather to starve. And if they had their way they would drive countries to the ground and their families and everyone else into bondage and enslavement. And if God chose, He could make peace spread throughout the land; surely that is easy for Him; and if He had not checked a nation by the means of another, the world would have been voided of any good. And to all will come a time to explain themselves.

And tell them: the work of the present is for the future. They will claim your commands, as they will, your words and this book, a fantasy. Let them think as they may. For when they see the Riser rise before them as he has predicted, they shall begin to question their beliefs. And with every passing year, and with every revelation, many will grow in admiration of you and others in fear. This is God’s Words you have declared, and at every declaration there is resistance and joy, and those who resist you, shall come to see a horrible end.

So call to the way of your Lord and command them to follow the Laws of God. The ones written in the scriptures before and the ones derived from the times and the minds of the people. For who ever follows God and His Laws are those who He will reward the most; and God is the Rewarding, the Just. [14:09:15]

It is the Law that binds you to God, and it binds them too. For do they declare a law better than that of God? Tell them the perception of it, is in what lies in the truth of one’s mind, whether falseness or not. That is the bait by which the devil recruits his servants. For there are two paths to God: one through Him and one through the other. One in the fire and the other in heaven. So do they doubt the Judgement of the Most High? He is the Final Judge, The Arbiter.

The Law: It is a fortress upon a hill which no armies can overcome and no floods can wash away; that is the parable which has been set forth to those before you. So will they not pay their respects and believe?

There are among them that break the Law and give excuses. Shall they asked to be excused from God without an attempt at a pardon? For the laws of a nation are the Laws of God and one who breaks one breaks the other. And in that is a system which soon you will expand and one they soon will understand.

Some claim themselves to a king others to a general and others a selected official. Tell them that it is not of importance whom the people claim as a leader. And tell them more that it is not of importance the way in which the leaders lead. As long as they defend God’s Law, and God’s Law is that of the people.

Some leaders will come and say we fear for our sovereignty and power. Tell them what is their sovereignty and power to the Lord? Do they not know that one who does good on to an individual shall be granted the deed of ten and to each ten, ten more. If they only knew the truth about God’s Mercy! And tell them that the lands are for the people, if they enjoin good and prohibit evil in their laws. And those who don’t shall earn a great chastisement from their Lord. Tell them too that the highest levels of heaven are reserved to those who were given power and wealth and used it for God’s Cause. Verily those are among the winners.

They say there is no law without a leader selected by the people. Tell them that is not the case. Have they not seen countries torn by the hands of one person, chosen or otherwise? For when their stability there is good. And trust in God, for He is the Stabilizer.

God’s Laws are made for the people and that has been the case since the Message was sent to the Sons of Israel; the Psalms and the Torah, outlining therein how they asked and sought to be governed; the severity coming from them and from the love and anger of their Lord. And there is also another example in God’s other nation, the ones chosen after the Sons veered from the Straight Path, wherein came a mercy to a severe people; a Guide so that they may take their share of this earth. And this, with every era, does God bring to His tribes and nations, people who guide them so that they also may take their share of this earth; and so that it becomes known God’s favors upon the select few of His Nations; and that those who He has chosen from the descendants of Israel shall re-inherit the earth, and Jacob’s grandfather’s kin beside them.

This is a book and a law, inspired by a Divine Creator, will they not then believe? [02:09:15]

07. The Scientists

By the Lord of the rising moon

and by the Lord of the setting sun

your way will bring all to one

with a book revealed so events may be undone.

A revelation to a man who will become

a savior to all those who have none

a carrier of a message and enlightenment that has yet to come

to an age that has yet to receive one.

When they see it some will believe

and others will turn their backs to deceive

you shall leave them to Him to conceive

a punishment so severe that will make them grieve

saying: Bring us back to Earth so that we may be able to receive

the message and guidance so that we may be relieved.

Taste the punishment for your deeds

God shall bring all of you to your knees.

Do not be so quick to think they are all here to deceive

Those who look to the heavens and cannot conceive

A creator above it that allows them a reprieve

From their pointless lives they hold in esteem

to them you shall leave to Him to discern

whether their ignorance is deemed

forgivable by the intentions of their deeds.

They say we have reached the edge of space

there is nothing but time here we are out of place

do they not see

that the heavens were built free

and now that they have seen

the lowest of it will they not then glean

that it was made for them to believe

yet many with knowledge shall aim to deceive.

Have they not been taught the miracle of light

its speed matching that of sight

they say we have calculated everything and everything on earth has a form

did we not say to them this before

Some look at all this and still believe

others it turns them to disbelief.

They ask you about the sword

Tell them it is for them to lay it down among them

and for them to raise it as a nation under the Lord.

And relay to them the threat of an evil that is coming:

from the lands where civilization began

shall rise a demon possessed killing all through the lands.

The anti-christ they shall call him

the anti-christ they shall call you.

[01:10:15]

Tell them to continue to invest money in armies so that it may not be said

that peace has led to destruction and lack of bread;

that surely would be an end not so good of a hand.

And the kings shall glorify you to be allowed to stand

your word encompassing all throughout the lands.

The scholars shall preach to you

a certain brand that they want you to understand;

but you understand it more than they do

that is why you tell them to do as you command.

And the scientist will converge at you from every point

and the military will bow down to your knees.

The senators shall come and ask to buy a hand

those good among them you shall take a stand.

The women shall say that you are a man

who will raise them to a pedestal ever so grand.

Among them will be those who wish to cling to the past

bringing themselves down with nothing but their own hands.

The workers shall look at you for faith

hope and salvation you shall give.

And to the Arabs you will say:

You are the least of people so obey

this so that they may be taken down by their perceived worth

and so that they may reverse their own self inflicted curse.

The monks shall call out your extravagance in women and in wealth

say to them God has given them to you as a present;

the task that you have been given

is worth the reward of multiple heavens.

Tell them that you will share it with them

if they believe and do righteous deeds with what is given to them.

The businessmen and women shall raise you on their shoulders as a hero,

following numbers with multiple zeros.

To everyone you shall preach capitalism:

the strong survive, that is the model they have taken

so why do they become upset when the weak are forsaken.

Tell them that their goal should be that of advancement

that each generation is an enhancement

and all those in the past are left stranded;

and where would they be if it were not for these commandments?

The theory of evolution encompasses all through involvement

Clean money is the goal, shall be their given mandate.

The blind peacemakers shall threaten you,

turn yourself away from them and let them not deceive you.

The Days of Slaughter are ever approaching

Tell them to be ready or fear the earth folding

It has been foretold of the Beast that is approaching

And when the decision is upon them

half will still succumb to the him and forget the reminder

he, taking advantage of those hearts filled with rancor

of the good that is on earth around them.

Tell them you were crucified long before you were born

to some that will be the source of their scorn

taking you a villain that all has the right to abhor.

At this do not be upset,

God has given this all as a test.

And in time they shall know you

as they have known Him.

So prostrate to your Lord

with love and fear

He to you, is ever near.

Tell them to follow His way

and do not let them lead you astray.

And do not mention God’s name

in places filled with people who disclaim

lest it stir up resentment

and prevent you from fulfilling your intentions.

And tell them not to mock a ritual in comparison with another

unless it is falsehood that only a few utter

and tell them to weigh things equally

a pound of rice equal to that of a pound of flour

so that perception does not alter reality.

Say I turn all of my affairs to Him;

He is my Guide and my Light

Nothing is as fast as Him

He is the magnificent, the Clement.

[02:10:15]

08. The Believers

It will be said that among them shall be men and women of wisdom, if it were not for the past then one’s respite from his ignorance would not exist in the present. So tell those knowledgeable among them that it is their duty to spread their knowledge and to hand out wisdom to the people. Let those among them that seek no knowledge sit among the ones endowed and not speak to them in an aggressive manner; a manner spawned from a cancerous ignorance in their hearts. Some will say how are we the ignorant when you are spreading nonsense and heretical ignorance to the people, surely you are among those taken by the devil. Tell them that if it were not for ignorance in this life, then there would be no knowledge, for how is the dark to be lighted, if there exists no darkness. God has made it so that there are the two: light and dark, white and black, so that they may balance each other out; and if it were not for God’s Mercy all but a few would ever know enlightenment: the light that envelops the dark. And let it be known to them that their opposition to you is why they are the ones ignorant; and God will make them see His signs so that they might know them. And God is Oft-Forgiving, the Merciful.

Say unto your people to lighten their tongues by not talking about which they do not know, their likeness is that of a donkey who brays in the midst of a fright, not comprehending what it sees and not understanding what it speaks. Some less ignorant will say: what defines light from the dark, how are we to differentiate such a thing. Tell them that the matter shall be directed to you, with this book as a guide, and those you assign; and those you assign shall be brought to you by the people. And if there are less than four of which you must choose then let the final decision fall on the people. Lest ignorance take over the land and falter the Nation, of which was lit by Heavenly Light and shall remain so.

They will say to you that no such matter shall be raised to you or any of your followers, and that they will strive to make you among the losers. Raise your open hand to them and declare that your Lord shall make it so. They will laugh, mock and some among them will be touched with pity but what is their laughter and pity to God! and what difference does a feeling of a people affect His nearing mighty outcome? Your followers shall be few, a number fitting that into a holding cell, then an apartment, a house and then villages, towns, states and countries. All of them will want your words. The hypocrites will look at you to some of their opinions, and to all you will take under your protection, except those whom God has declared to be your enemies. Among them will be men and women who strive to spread mischief and corruption throughout the lands with their tongues, hands, eyes and their brains. Warn them and let it be known that to every organ there is a tunnel to God, and for every organ a separate sin. Your talk of sin will infuriate those with darkened hearts, they saying: this is surely a madman, how can there be sin when there is no God. May God dominate their beliefs into hell, of which will be their final abode. God, the Creator and the Sustainer, He blesses whom He wishes and curses whom He wills, God is the All-Knowing, the Wise.

When it is brought to them a sign they reject it and when they are shown the truth they call it a lie, oh woe the state of their belief! and God shall curse every one of them, except those he wishes not to; He does as He pleases and God is The Most-Merciful , the All-Forgiving.

So smile unto those who smile to you and when you see ignorance then take it and give it a respite and if you see light then kindle it with your hands. For a force is coming from the hearts of those ignorant from the people of your nation and you have been chosen to remove it from their hearts. And let it be known that this religion is that of the future and their belief is only counted once you have been shown to them and your title known, that is when God asks for their belief, it is then that He punishes those who will turn their backs on you; and God is the Bestower and He is the Guider. [19:12:15]

And remind them of the day where they will stand before God Almighty and are asked: why have you failed to believe and turned people away from the Straight Path. They say that day will never come, alas their fate shall been undone.

Ignore them and rise in the morning to bow in worship and late at night in prostration. Seek Him who has brought these words to you. He has selected your spirit so that your body complies. You no longer question His calling, but your hesitancy of the Message’s strength still exists. How many a men and women have We made the impossible possible to them? Surely that is an example for a people who strive.

You have been sent to a nation like those before you have been sent, and your nation is that of your birth; so spread the word there and let light erase darkness so that one can see clearly from sea to sea. Do not worry about other nations on earth, for if their people believe in you and these words, then let them follow your call and your footsteps and let them be blessed by them; and to every nation we have sent men to guide the people according to the age and circumstances, and the all-encompassing Will of God. And if they seek you and these words and desire to build a nation among themselves with these principles then send a convoy led by the best of your young well-equipped leaders so that they may do these words justice. And if they convey fear of failure, say: unto God is all of our affairs; and there descends no sustenance without His command.

Know that this nation is of utmost importance and others will follow after; so make yourself known to your people, and We have promised it a holy guider.

Say: Glory be to our Lord who has taught us what we did not know; the Teacher, the All-Knowing, the Bestower. The One free from all needs, and if it were not for His Light there would exist no knowledge.

They have said that we have taught ourselves everything that we know with no assistance from a Teacher; do they not see how the jets float through the air; how miraculous is the work of God! and if He chose, he would take the wind from under it, and let it fall; He is the Final Arbiter. Glory be to our Lord. [20:12:15]

We have sent to you inclusive words of wisdom, compassion and a Law similar to those given before you. So stand firm in your belief and do not let the ignorant among them stray you from the path We have set for you. And when they say: if these are God’s words then why has He made it as abstruse as this, why does he not make its verses clearer. Say: has there been a book that is comprehended without study? Does this question not prove their ignorance? And to those with knowledge, these words will come forth clear as day.

Let them see the miracles of these words: how God has inspired it in pieces and validated it over time; so that they may comprehend and see the miracle forming in front of them, and the Truth revealed. And some will never believe even if God appeared in front of them.

God brings forth the sun from the east and the moon from the west, turns night into day and day into night, and controls the motions of the sky. The earth and the cosmos are His Dominion and unto him all will return. Say: Lord have mercy on us for the evil of our tongues, and our hands, feet and hearts, You have promised forgiveness to those who ask for it, so forgive us for our every sin; You are the All-Forgiving, the Merciful.

And We shall shine on all of them Our Mercy and Light: the source of all knowledge which encompasses all of the universe, and bless them with it. So raise your hands in worship and declare the Message and know that you are among the chosen. [23:12:15]

When it is raised to them a parable they will mock its ideals and when it comes to them a paradigm for success in this world and the hereafter, they will fight it even if they see the truth of it before them; and they will sacrifice the goodwill of those who believe to make their points true, how corrupt are their intentions. Have they not heard of the Riser: the one that will be appointed over them so that they may know the true path, and you shall be the protector of the people. The one who has been written in their books and prayed for by the pious. Have they not seen the nearing blissful portent? Send us a savior, they pray to the Lord, and God has answered their prayers; yet when the selection is made and it becomes known, those with diseased hearts shall challenge it with every sinful deed, not caring for the people but only for their false outdated beliefs. But those who see God’s clear Message shall open their arms to you; those will be called the believers. Those who, when Our Signs are revealed to them acknowledge and declare them, what a reward is is that of the believers. Ask those who do not believe if these words are falsehood then why has it responded to them before there was an issue to debate? Do they not then see its sign? And when these words are validated by God through unfolding events, they will say this surely a coincidence, and coincidence to them is that of blindness! Their every word shall be recorded and they will be taken into account for their beliefs. Alas, do not fret, God’s Will shall be done. Say: to you your beliefs and to us ours, and wait for we are waiting too. And do not turn your back on this Message at times of weakness, you have seen the signs for yourself and your punishment great if you deny them. For how can God ask a people to believe His Signs when His messenger does not; but God will strengthen your heart so that you may never waver, even in the weakest moments. God: the First and the Last, the One and the Only. He will protect you and the believers; and when they experience the victories He has in store they will declare you their Savior. So prepare for a mighty calling, and wait for His nearing portent, God is the All-Seeing, the All-Hearing. [28:12:5]

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty came to me in a dream
And I said what brings you here
He looked at me and said
I’m here to please my friend

Remind me of the time I broke my head
And what was left to say had already been said

Don’t worry, get up and listen to this story
About a boy who rose to glory

Listen to this song I wrote to you
So that you can dream with me too

He laughed and shook his head till I awoke
Oh Humpty Dumpty I wish you hadn’t spoke

Humpty Dumpty came to me in a dream
I said your arrival here is sure to please
I come to bring you glad tidings so hear

I’ve finally recognized your face
I must say you carry yourself with a settled grace  

Humpty Dumpty you sure are a wise man
There are no verbs here to be found

I haven’t gotten to the story
I have yet to relate the tale of the glory

Humpty Dumpty came to me in a dream
He held down his hand and told me
to sit beside him here

I told him that we were really high
If I fall I could maybe die

Don’t say such things my friend
To all stories there is an end

I once saw Humpty Dumpty in a dream
Remember when the stars watered heaven with
their tears?
Is that why you’re here?

Listen to this song of joy I wrote to you
So that you can dream with me too

He smiled and gave way to fate
I fell, his hand reached out too late

Humpty Dumpty came to me in a dream
He had no words for me to hear
I laid there broken, death very near

He said to all the men
there is no way to fix him
he’s already been spent
So I put all my pieces back together
Without the help of any of them

Humpty Dumpty don’t fret or say sorry
This was the story of the boy who rose to glory

-by A.H. Salem

Demise

I see the end of my demise
Lurking between the shadows
of my two former selves
waiting for the moonless night
to come after the sun sets

I come upon a creek
I sit beside it to contemplate my fate
Has it been this long
and how long would it take

I keep telling myself that soon
I shall know the answer
But when is soon
and what is the question?

I long to be saved from my situation
To be raised on to a higher pedestal
where I can grow into something great
and not lay here waiting for something I might not get

-by A.H. Salem

The Father

He came in a tyrant and left a king
The fates predicted his arrival through the stars
yet no one ever thought to look there.
The beast within him had been chained
seventy cubits all the way down the drain
he cries to be released
his vengeance long turned to pain
but there is no going back for a beast in chains


A man no longer burdened will no longer stray
His guidance predetermined, etched in clay
molded by the hands of God he will remain
until the angels call out his name
and the Earth will never be the same


They say tyrants are the ones to blame
for the misfortunes of a world long decayed
the death and destruction are only His to explain


So what else is there that remains
only he will extinguish the flame
lighting a different fire in everyone’s brain


His reign long and prosperous, he will claim
all that was left to be renamed
and they will call him the king of kings
long after he decomposes into dust
and prayers at every dusk to cement his fame
From his offspring, by blood or name, will scatter the earth
living among the different peoples to guide them
creating generation after generation of a race they created from his name
And to this I shall leave you to ponder all that is written and explained
and to this I shall leave you to call out my name.


-by A.H. Salem

Horses Fighting in A Stable

I say to sir that I have lost faith in humanity
oh rising sun of the tempest that I speak
the dying last words of a mortal whose name I was to keep
shall it rain a fortnight from next week’s oblivious retreat
or shall I sink with my own dying disgrace

call me when the damsels throw themselves off the balcony
when the world cries to its name that I was the one to reap
all the benefits of someone who knew not what he said
a circular emotion
crying out with much commotion

mares twined together, manes rustled
men bustled
as they tried to keep the mares from fighting
a worried onlooker retreats to the corner
the mindset of the worried onlooker is one I seek to know

I say to you sir that I have realized that I’m different
the goodness in me is not the same in humanity
it is born of something different that no man has yet to offer
it beleaguers me to say I can’t wait to unleash it upon them
has it been a fortnight yesterday until tomorrow is unleashed

the worried onlooker I see
gazes down to the ground with eyes not yet to weep
he thinks himself not worthy a fighter
cowering only for a final recital
that his dying words could be libel

-by A.H. Salem

Sleeping

Sweet nectar I sip
the spoon ladles my lips
oh how it remains to enlighten the tongue
an orgasm within one
hand and hand with the objective of life

I consider it now a soup
for it’s contents remind me of
the grain soup from back home
yet this is sweet
but the texture was the same

How does one taste with a tongue attached
to a brain
if it were to be cut, made independent
how would taste, taste to it
Silly yes, but to think of the idea
is to access the brain
separating it from an unnecessary organ
only to realize it’s real potential;
that is the goal here.

I gulp down more of the soup
it has become dense towards the bottom
the seeds sank all the way down,
binding with one another as if in fear.
Crowds of them fall into my mouth and disappear

These tastes of a different time in my life
how all these memories are connected
some forgotten
long gone downtrodden
they only appear to me as stories
the spirit using the body to test drive it

Now that I have drunk all of the soup
my mind is in a haze and I begin not to know
what I write. As if a cloud lingers above me
blocking the sun’s rays from reaching their destination.
As I try to regain my original state
I begin to lose hope in myself
thinking I’m but a useless cog in a useless machine
droning and droning on into the night
turning and turning,
the machine not producing and I look for
a protrusion
I shall be fine for these seeds are known not to kill
but the haze of which I currently feel
is the sense of numbed enlightenment
from that blissful, sweet nectar of a soup.

Closing my eyes, I doze off to a deep sleep.

-by A.H. Salem

Drowning in Dreams

I drown the life that remains from
the suburban town of St. Augustine
They took it down one night in October when the mainlands were hit by a harsh rain. The local farm boys and their ranch hands took two horses down the trail and shot them. With one boy exclaiming, “There goes the devil! There goes the devil!”

Drown says the wise man.
Drown your eyes into the depths of your mind;
release the cables of reality and fall into the pitch black
where nothing is real
and your mind closed, turned off, in peace.

Likewise I had not slept for a day or two. Like that rascal from one of those movies about rascals. I had survived by eating honey, butter and bread. Sometimes sugar if I had run out of honey. Once I found some nuts and grains. I mashed them into little pieces and made a cereal. Those were the days where I’d find them everywhere. I hope to find more soon. But the honey, butter and bread keeps flesh on the bones. That’s why I eat them.

Drown into the depths of your imagination
Shallow, it is.
Shallow it will be, so sink,
sink deep into the black water of space;
sink until the last of you attempts to wink.

Crazy-eyed he marched down the hallway looking for the one they called Henry Babbot. He found him. Short of anything he had expected stood in front of him a five foot white haired man with a mustache sweeping the floor. “Henry Babbot!’ He say to him. Before he can respond the whole thing goes to black. No one knowing what could have happened next.

Drowning in dreams I lay
myself down near a ditch
or my bed or possibly the ground.
I drown into a land of utter dismay
and rousing happiness
I fall into the blackness of my mind
thinking only of what is mine.
Drowning with no need for respiration
only the desire to rest
and strengthen myself for next day’s events.

Towards the door at the bottom there lied the murder weapon and the monster–

Have you heard the news of the molestation–
…paralyzed from the waist down–

, coming and going–

no! no! nooo!–

seek refuge–

God–

…

drowning in dreams I lie awake
thinking of what I had just said and seen.

-by A.H. Salem

Rivers Amid the Tides

Rivers amid the tides burn with the fuel of my desire.
Staring at the reflection of the figure that stands
in my place:

In the past I would have looked at such an event
with mild amusement; most likely thinking of
Narcissus and if I could fall into the same trap
that he did.

I sit on a rock near the river contemplating
my rise and downfall, if there were to be a downfall
Most of the time I think of the rise,
the Riser some shall call me.

The tree that is the source of the shade
waves its arms in merriment
If trees had souls, I would like to think
they become happy; and giving shade
to beings make them happy.

I notice the river slowing,
the tides no longer burning;
yet my desire remains.

I rise to approach the river once more
Standing, I look down at my reflection
seeing it still with it’s eyes locked on to mine
I recognize it and sit back down under the happy tree.

Narcissus was a fool
Had he not realized that
we are the source of the fuel of our desires?
The river is tamed and
the reflection of the figure I see
is me.

I undress and give my clothes to the tree
which uses it as a flag.
Slowly I wade into the river,
staring at myself until I finally plunge
into it
Never to see my reflection again;
rising to the surface only to breathe.

-by A.H. Salem

Masterpiece

The swords play on in my heart
as I lie here:
Tired.
Cannot move my pen as
thoughts crawl to me;
Wounded.
The clock lies on my belly:
Crying, bleeding,
and slowly dying.
The pen in my hand…
dances to a tune of the crawling
thoughts.
My forearm twitches from the
melody.
My toes cringe:
Feet tense:
Legs still…
My stingy eyes belie my
heart as it is being played.
My head:
twirling down the steps:
Ascending (Upwards.)
While the crevasses throughout my
corpse (or body) sting and burn.
The acrid feel of the bloody ink on the
innocent paper:
The fire spreads through out my skin (crevasses.)
Lungs:
Rapid.
Done!
The swords drop,
dances stop,
the wounds heal,
while the clock seals.
The parts relax and the
eyes bear witness the truth.
The morning light through the cracks
and my work has been done.

-by A.H. Salem

Chest

Rock me with the ones who plead
That yesterday was last night’s reprieve
Say unto me the endless sleeper’s sleep is bliss
That the night after this shall never have known a
Better kiss.
Let slide the things that have been left erect
Erect knew things that stand abreast

Lead me to the shepherds of the fields
Let me graze with them and provide myself
Another yield.
Riches flowing through the gullies and
Swamps of the guilds left unclean
Leave me alone to ponder the scene

Feel me across the unspoken road
Lean into me and whisper a sudden roar
That once life had been redeemed
Twice it has been restored
Say unto me the last words of the book
Close it upon the chest and unhinge the hook

-by A.H. Salem

Once

Once there was a chance at redemption
A final recompense for what had been done
Was it me that pulled the knife first
Or was it he who shot the first gun
I lay wounded beside a pile of blood
My own dying liquid
Wondering how it got to this point

Once I was alive and well
With a friend who I never knew I’d despise to the end
So many minutes lost and gone
Resistance gained once I fell apart
Clearance obtained with a lasting call
Words never meant for ears other than mine

Crimson tides echo through a glassed wall
My eyes appear to dim only to fall
Lids closing to a tired song
Breaths in and out in rhythm to a crime
Done to erase all my flaws

Once I had left myself prone to a fault
A gaping hole left unfilled for naught
Signs illuminated in front and in back
Lasting only for seconds at a time

Mistakes I’ve made written on the wall
Etched in pencil easily erased by a shawl
Worn by the angel who answered my call

Once I was a spirit in living flesh
walking, talking and alive

Now only a dying body left to decay

-by A.H. Salem

Looking Down on Time

Looking down on time
I see a clock, one hand going forward
Another going back
Whether time was moving forward or backward
I could not tell.

Stranger days have occurred:
Time shifting back at intervals only known to itself;
Strange days attached to such occurrences.
Find a way to unhinge the screws:
It must occur.

Time, the ever-present nature
One thinks about it for a second
Only to have it pass before he can think for a second
Like a still boat moving by the force of the waves
Always moving forward as long as the force remains.

Time, has one considered the fall from grace?
If it weren’t for the apple would time keep the same pace?
Would we have asked God to number our days so that our hearts grow wiser?
What is time but the movement of space, unhinged by a superior being
Using it to test man’s soul:
To punish us for a deed done by a person long disappeared.

Looking down on time,
I see both hands pointing north at me
Is this the realization that I’ve been looking for?
The final reminder that I am time,
That it is only a concept in my head
And that it only stops the day I die?

-by A.H. Salem

Milk Man

They call me the milk man
Cause I drink so much milk
They call me the skeleton man
Cause all I drink is milk

Sex sent me to the ER
I asked the nurse for some milk
She gave me her jugs
Which I drank earnestly

They call me the milk man
Cause I drink lots of milk
They call me the white man
Cause my skin’s like the color of milk

My job requires me to carry milk around
I tell people that it’s good to drink milk
They agree with me but never buy any from me
So I keep it all to myself

They call me the milk man
Cause I drink 10 glasses of milk a day
They call me the milk man
Cause people think I might be gay

-by A.H. Salem