Mute Burn

I went to the shed. I hadn’t planned to. We were all busy making plans and thought a little get together with everyone after some American piss in a can and the small talk framing our lives as fantastic but omitting the doubts and insecurities we only lay bare in one confessional Facebook post or whatever would be great after all this time. But I didn’t go. I had an inkling, but I didn’t go. I went to the shed.

All the trees stood nude and leaves lay all along the path and dying grass. No snow touched us yet this year, but the air was ready to welcome it. I think I shivered in my t-shirt and jacket. But I couldn’t care. The tips of my fingers were a full red and numb but I couldn’t care.  My eyes could bleed from my sockets and I couldn’t care. I kind of hope they do.

I could only hear the wind and the quiet steady stream of a river. The day was orange and brown but seemed a dark purple. Sometimes I see myself walking in front of me. I’m heading nowhere, and want to ask myself a question or two. But I never do. I never do much of anything. Only words to get lost in wind.

I got to the shed twenty minutes, two hours later. Cobwebs in the tens, hundred, thousands (?), majority of the planks rotted and something likely died beneath the floorboards. But it’s nice. It’s so nice to be here away from it all.

I can still hear their voices even with me here. Going on about how they’ll be the first of the species to create a grand something. How she’ll be the first in her family to deny grad students their union. The joke forever was it was “his” story. About how this perpetual drift is a long collection of men to see their labors and hopes end in blood and mud; as their sons claim a superiority to their fathers before sharing a legacy of worms. A grand tradition to make more inclusive. But I don’t say anything though. It’s all an adolescent nihilism I refuse to outgrow. I never say anything. It all gets lost in wind anyway.

There’s a rusted hacksaw sitting on top of a shelf hanging on the interior wall by a prayer. 

The muscle in my arm seems to be suffocating. Poor thing. All wrapped too tightly beneath this little binding of mine. I bet it peels off like Velcro. Like taking off shoes after playing Naruto the whole day in muggy summer. I’d love nothing more than to take it off: This binding. And what would I do with this new blanket! I’d cover myself: blind my face to the cold for a moment. Be Leatherface in my personal Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Let the rain trickle outside as my feet dampen. Pull the sheet around my neck as a homemade scarf; and hopefully strangle myself with it. 

I don’t do anything but play fantasy with hopes and dreams of self immolation. Think that’s why I want a lover so badly. Have her dress up in leather and black to beat the shape out of my face. Crack in my ribcage and pummel my teeth out. Complement how pretty her fake violet nails are and how great they’d be to claw out my eyes. I don’t know. I read and hear a lot these days about women who want to be an Amy Dunne; have a woman led corrective to Crime and Punishment and split open a man’s throat. But I read this more than see words morphing to behavior. More lost to wind.

Things happen, but they’re never important. In weeks time, a thin sheet of white will cover the road and the leaves will have rotted. In a month’s time, my friend will be married and we’ll all act happy and joyful for the honeymoon phase; until she starts complaining about him not doing his share of the housework. In half a year’s time, the flowers will have bloomed and I’ll be doing my annual Elliot quoting. In a decade, the first bit of wrinkles will dot my face, and I might have a freak out over what this has all been about. Buy a way too expensive car and get some college age mistress to regret. But why? What could I have done worth making such a fuss about?

I remain here, but I’m walking. In fog and haze. And I’ll go all my days, stuck with this whining in the id. Wishing for iron maidens over numbness.

The hacksaw is always within reach. It’s in my ability to act, but I can’t be bothered. 

Eulogy

He’d got off his bus to finish his return commute from work when the weight began to gnaw at him. Only fifteen minutes or so were between him and the covers he could hide beneath to feel sorry for himself in his darkened room. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t muster the strength to walk. The weight of invisible anvils were nailed in his feet, and soon after shuffling a block or two on the sidewalk, he needed to sit down on a pelvis high wall next to the parking lot of a small strip mall; where he’d stop for as long as necessary in the cool fall air musing about the various problems both in his life and the world as the wind kicked dying leaves and bits of trash down the road.

Another tragedy had befallen Nick O’Toole. Not a major one in the grand scheme of the universe. Not even anything comparably painful to other events which had occurred in the 34 years Nick could call a life. As he sat there with the back of his jeans dampening from the wet concrete wall, Nick wrestled with the absurdity of allowing himself to get depressed over what, for the most part, was nothing at all.

A gang of teenage boys walked by, and as they passed loudly pointed towards and mocked amongst themselves the weird, sad looking guy they theorized was likely to be a future mass shooter. As someone who generally disliked being profiled for horrific acts of violence, Nick put his hand against one of the concrete blocks to lift himself up to start walking again. He got as far as the black bench in front of the pizza store at the end of the mall.

Maybe it wasn’t the depth of the various tragedies of life that ought to cause a reasonably minded person to fall into a state of melancholy, but the realistic expectation that a life was to be full of them. The advice of everyone except the naively optimistic was to learn to tolerate the disappointments of tomorrow. To know personal ambitions ought to be tempered, and that settling for not a second-best career or even third but a fifth or sixth was realistic in a life. That almost every cherished friendship and love would wither and die in time, and those lucky to find themselves in old age would live their twilight years wasting their last days hunkered down on a couch watching broadcast news in a rage.  And while he tried to put things in perspective by relativizing his problems with others who had suffered more in this world from the hands of unchecked police brutality, starvation from poverty and being maimed by ethnic violence, brooding over the full depth of human misery only made Nick feel worse. It all merely highlighted the miserable state of the human condition. Humanity was an animal capable of dreams and joy regularly wasted by its various myopic limitations. As much as people of good fortune tried to put it out of their minds, a significant amount of corpses decomposing in the ground were innocent children whose brief lives mostly knew suffering. So the advice always went, in the grand scheme of things, Nick should try to tolerate the bad and keep his mind on the good, at least that was the advice of people kind enough to refrain from telling Nick to stop whining. He’d have to concede they were all right however. In the grand scheme of history, his life was much better than that of a poor peasant woman who’d worked hard on their farm day-to-day to have their life end by witch accusations. His life as a middle-class white, male westerner also remained better than the vast majority of the several billion human beings living presently. Sweatshop workers in Singapore would kill to have Nick’s life. Then Nick’s melancholy returned, because the reality of the extent of human misery meant there were people who envied the mediocrity Nick called a life.

Still, it wasn’t as if Nick’s life was composed solely of bad memories, he reminded himself as he got up from the bench and slowly paced through the suburban streets next to the mall in a direction that did not lead to his apartment. There were the usual highlights for someone of his demographic. Graduations and ceremonies to what were second choice schools but still furnished a decent education. He’d visited the tourist traps of Europe like Paris and Rome that nevertheless provided an expected good time. Never great sex, but sex.

Though many of his youthful friendships were dead, the pleasant memories of adventures together could only die with him. He’d rebelled against the conservative Catholic values of his parents, viewing the Church in his teenage years as a massive pedophile ring as well as a waste of a perfectly good Sunday morning. Immediately after losing his faith, he adopted what he viewed in hindsight grating and pretentious views; such that people who believed in anything besides modern science were dumb and the need to believe in a higher power was for the weak. Abandoning the ascetic values of Christianity meant he was free to get fucked up with his high school buds in the back of a Costco parking lot and vandalize the property of powerful and rich corporations’ guilt free. It was likely this lack of moral constraints which caused him to drift away from his old friends as they began to engage in darker behavior. But those nights drinking a whole bottle of fruit flavored vodka were still great early mornings to relive through.

Though his father was another conservative, controlling patriarch whose authoritarian style of parenting may have contributed to Nick’s hostility to religion, he more or less had a decent relationship with his mother. They didn’t see eye to eye on everything; and as his views became more secular and liberal and hers remained religious and conservative it was difficult to engage in lengthy conversations with her, especially in recent years where she consumed a media diet exclusively of right-wing junk. She remained giving and loving throughout the years out of what appeared to be a mix of instinct as well as her beliefs on the essential role of motherhood, and he could count on calling her to tell her about his problems to hear answers of consolation he couldn’t delude to tell himself.

On the topic of loves, he’d been in relationships with women. He thought about the fun dates he’d been on, whether they involved sharing a bottle of red wine at an Italian restaurant or casually strolling through a modern art museum while pretending to understand Dadaism more than he did. There were fun movie dates, fun days at an amusement park. A lot of fun shared in the three real relationships of his life. Not much real passion however. His relationships were predictably predicated off a want of sex, but more of a want to feel like he was living up to societal expectations rather than lust. He and his old high school girlfriend both lost their virginity to one another after a party; and soon after doing so, they broke up as they didn’t really share anything beyond wanting to tell their friends they’d lost it. Real love was something unknown to Nick. If anything, these past relationships were passionless things where both parties tried their best to avoid being seen as needy or clingy. This didn’t mean Nick did not aspire to love. A deeply passionate mutual love was the most desperate want of his life. He wanted to fully understand another person, and be fully understood. More than anything, he wanted to see the world with another person with shared eyes, with both bodies able to detect the light jade hue within a mountain sunset invisible to the gaze of others. But instead, Nick’s relationships mostly involved each person being aloof and aspiring to talk around their most intimate thoughts most needing expression in favor of endless small talk about the near endless pieces of media consumed and to be consumed. Nick usually never minded when his relationships ended because if there was anything worse than being alone, it was being alone in the company of another person. 

He was taken out of his mind and back to present reality at the sound of something in the distance moving fast, and he moved onto a front lawn by the sidewalk to ensure his safety. The sound came from a car driving much too fast for a residential street, and Nick looked around to see a bunch of unfamiliar houses all around him in every direction. He’d been so lost in his head he couldn’t even recall the path he’d taken to get to the clumps of grass his sneakers were on to retrace his path. Nick wasn’t too concerned about being lost though. He hadn’t walked too far (he believed) and knew the general area sufficiently to recognize the landmarks on a Main Street to find his way back home. It didn’t excite him to be on this little misadventure, but he began reassuring himself life could be worse.

He tried to think of times in his life where he’d viewed himself in hindsight to be in the moral wrong to feel less like he was a victim of life’s misfortunes. He remembered when he ran away from home as a teenager after an argument with his father, making his mother sick with worry. He lingered on the arguments that ended the different relationships and the needless words he’d said to hurt other human beings. He had memories of betrayal and friends he betrayed. Never had Nick committed anything so egregious to merit a cloud of remorse dangling around his neck for the rest of his life, but he wasn’t innocent enough to claim some of the misfortunes in his life were not of his own making. And if relativizing his problems wasn’t assisting in making Nick feel better about himself, at least owning up he’d somewhat deserved life’s thorns assisted in creating a feeling of stoicism and strength to get by with his days. Or at least, his walk home.

Oh! If only there was someone out there to forgive him of his past! If only there was someone who could fully understand his transgressions! Why he’d been such a fool, why he lived with this sense of shame burning in his nerves, and love and care for him anyway. But there wasn’t! There was nobody! All there was were future strangers to exchange air with as an excuse for conversation, their visage forgotten with time until all they were was a body shuffling down a street in his brain space, their memory as detailed as a marble bust eroded by time from the elements.  At his age of 34, he was much too old already to believe he’d find a love just around the corner who could love him in all his flaws. But as was his habit, Nick thought on the issue more, and began to think maybe he should continue his absurd hope in finding a person of perfect understanding and that a life might be better lived through pleasant lies.

Nick  found himself by a school park. The school itself lay at the opposite end of the green field with a playground residing near by. In this field were small flowers and dandelions. The sight while not too picturesque was pleasant nonetheless, and Nick’s anxiety relaxed as he thought there were a number of small beautiful things in life a person can blind themselves to as they stiffen their attention away from themselves. 

He even came to feel a sense of peace as a squirrel moved over the grass, hopping in jumps of two or three from one patch of grass to another. The squirrel carried some kind of nut in its mouth, and after two or three successions of hopping would get up on its hind legs to try and bite into the nut while holding it in its front legs, before giving up to stuff the nut back in its cheeks to hop somewhere else and try the endeavor once more someplace else in the field. The squirrel would hop over to a patch of small white flowers, then empty grass, then back to another patch of flowers, never successfully being able to crack the nut. It was quite possible the entity in the squirrel’s cheeks was not designed for squirrel consumption, or at least this particular kind of squirrel. But there was something relieving seeing the squirrel innocently attempt to bite into the obviously very hard, brown sphere it was holding in its cheeks/mouth, and it wasn’t as if Nick had anything important to get to. He allowed himself to see this cute naïve continuously endeavor on a meaningless venture, and by attaching his attention to the light bit of fluff attached to the end of the squirrel known as a “tail”; Nick got lost in images of clouds, cotton candy, and the general blankness roaming inside a child’s skull. 

The squirrel moved over to a clump of dandelions to try and bite into the nut again. It stopped after a few attempts, but instead of moving somewhere else in the field; the squirrel became as still as a statue, seemingly not even moving its chest for breath. There was nobody else around besides himself, so Nick naturally assumed him to be responsible for the squirrel’s fear, and began on his way again.

After a couple steps, the squirrel bolted from the dandelions to sprint to the nearest group of trees bordering the field. Nick concluded he was correct and continued heading to the nearest main road. A black blur could be seen just from the corner of his eyes darting in the direction of the squirrel, and moving back to see a missing rodent, Nick looked around to see if he could find the small, furry mammal, somewhat confused. 

He did find the poor thing as he moved his head in the last direction he thought of, up. Resting on top of a telephone pole lay the body of the squirrel. Its head bent, swinging lifelessly in the air, and the bloodied intestines of the dead mammal were being eaten by a hawk or some other kind of predator bird. As the appendages of the poor squirrel twitched from the final instincts of the body, the bird continued to indifferently gnaw into the corpse. Though it was difficult to make out the finer details of the two animals, Nick could see a cold, voidal blackness in the eye of the hawk, and felt something evil to him in its glare. There wasn’t anything malicious in the hunters eyes. That’s more what disturbed Nick. There was no feeling in the bird’s eyes. No sentiment at all towards the violence committed against the squirrel. No recognition. No guilt. All that could be seen in the eye of the bird was a black hole; the promise of the consumption of everything at the end of time.  Of course, it was ridiculous to anthropomorphize an animal into feeling something only human like guilt. The hawk or falcon or who could care was just acting on its instincts. It simply obeyed the ordinance of nature.

As the bird continued eating, more gore spilled on its feathers and down the telephone pole. Nick turned away again to continue walking nowhere in particular. He didn’t feel much of anything for a couple of blocks, and even found a street he was fairly confident if he walked in one direction or another would surely get him out of the residential area. But as he continued, he felt heat begin to grow in his chest and cheeks. Water filled his eyes, and while he could continue walking, his pace slowed and his posture moved into a hunch after he blinked and tears streamed down his face.

Nothing! There was absolutely nothing above this! One creature lay dead and the other lived as a killer and there was nothing above to judge where to place blame. It simply was, and he felt crazy for allowing himself to get into a fit of weeping over the mechanizations of nature. No, he certainly was crazy, no person of a decent constitution would carry themselves like this. But he wasn’t to blame for his lapses of insanity, it was the world’s cold indifference. Days of frost were simply the rules of uncaring nature. Dying vegetation and frost-bitten flesh– buried beneath the cover of unholy white. In the distance, underneath a bridge hidden in day-dream fog; Nick could see the shaking body of an elderly man with black appendages cursing at a nature that coerced him to desire another day. Past this man; an infinite collection of gray bodies, shuffling, mumbling, at what? Nothing. There was nothing in front of him besides sidewalk and housing. Nick was just allowing himself to get lost in thought again. But there he went, having the audacity of thinking himself a victim when so many other people had suffered in the world and… and… what was the point of all this if he was just moving in circles?? 

Nick stopped just as the exit to a Main Street neared, exhaled, and wiped tears away from his face with the palm of his right hand. An attractive middle aged blonde woman walking her Labrador was coming his direction, and as the dog moved closer to Nick to say hello and sniff his jacket, the woman tried her best to avoid eye contact, and while he could see some pity for him in her movements, she clearly desired to get on with her day. Not that Nick wanted her assistance. He didn’t want to seem needy and ask for assistance from people unwilling to give it.

He’d finally crawled his way forward to the main road, after gazing around at his surroundings and recognized where he was. He knew the grocery store and Burger King by the main intersection on his right, and knew he’d have to walk the opposite direction to get home. He heard a buzz in his pocket, and felt stupid for simply not using his phone to find his way back. His mind was stuck on other things, things he’d continue to brood on, and he soon forgot his phone again.

As he let himself think too much on all that’s wrong with the world, he approached a small, two story church on his side of the road. He’d been past this church several times before without thinking much about its existence before, but as he was trying anything to move his mind away from his constant self pity, he read the bulletin in front of the Church parking lot.

“OakVille Residential Church: Serving His Mission with Purpose, Care, and Community.”

“Choir Practice every Monday from  6-8 PM”

“Congregational Meeting Wednesday the 11th, 5-7 PM”

And just as Nick was about to let himself sink back to his negative thoughts, he let himself be carried by a thin sentiment of hope. If there was just another empty conversation awaiting him at a bar or tinder date, perhaps He could be a place to find meaning. It was always instructed in Nick at Sunday school that He was the face of infinite love. That He was unique in being able to fully know and understand all of His subjects and all their needs. That He could love, understand, and forgive all the wretches of the world. From the women of the streets, to the liars, to the lazy, and even the murderers and sex offenders; He could find it within himself to forgive fools like Nick who’d sabotaged every decent bond in their lives because they thought there was something grander to this physical world besides atoms and chemicals. 

Human bonds. He thought of his mother again, and the strength and love of life she still carried despite being stuck with him, and it must have come from somewhere. It must have come from Him. Or a belief in Him. Which might be enough. And where was it ever written that belief must be dogmatic confidence? He could recall near Easter the lectures on Peter’s doubt. He recalled Abrahams initial reticence, and while that may be a poor example in favor of belief, it was not mandatory of him to share the confident faith of either his mother or his fellow parishioners. Nick just needed one person to love and understand him, which could be satisfied with Him. Nick could tolerate a cordial conversation where an elderly man lectured to Nick that he knew he was going to hit it big at the lottery because He told him so, because so long as He understood Nick; or to be more rational about it, as long as Nick believed in the slim possibility of Him; it was possible for Nick to feel a sense of hope. A hope that this near permanent weight could be lifted and Nick could greet his days with a greater sense of peace. That Nick could continue waking every day and not muse to himself it was worth bothering with the next mornings. To see shining golden rays, morning after morning, that promised a Warmth; that’s what Nick wanted. What Nick needed. And who knows. If Nick could muster up enough silence in his head long enough to believe, maybe over a long stretch of time, Nick could earnestly internalize that there was another world above this one. A world where good and evil surely exist, a world that has a narrative and an end. Nick was getting too far ahead of himself now, but he could feel a lightness in his chest and an energy in his fingers and no more tears moving down his face and and…

He finally recognized the sky was black. Nick took his phone out again. It neared 6:30. He’d only catch the end of the meeting, but knew from the few cars in the parking lot that people were in the church, and that after the meeting ended he could ask them what else the Church did for the community. If the Church was involved in any work with the homeless. If they were involved at all with any foreign missions. How he could slowly get involved with anything other people related.

As Nick closed the doors behind him, he made note of the immediate interior of the church. The building was humble with spare decorations in the lobby except for a few paper crosses dotting the walls, definitely different from Roman extravagance. In the middle of the lobby were another set of doors. The windows on them informed Nick they led to the main service area, as he could see a pastor or some other church authority giving a speech to the three or four heads in the pews. 

At the end of a walk by the bathrooms were a pair of stairs that led up to somewhere. Nick could hear the faint murmur of what he believed to be the speech from the stairs. Attributing the ability to hear the service from the stairs to good acoustics; not wanting to interrupt the service, Nick climbed up the stairs; and as he did so, Nick tried to guess at what exactly the meeting was about. Boosting church attendance? Plans with the choir? How to make the timeline of the Old Testament digestible? Christ’s sermon on the mount? 

Nick tried grabbing a seat on the second row as quietly as possible before slinking into his seat to ensure he wouldn’t be seen. He realized that everyone in the audience of the Church were elderly whites; and it wasn’t just the acoustics in the building which were responsible for the servicemen’s voice being audible from the lobby. It was also his volume. 

“…And I will stand here before all of you preaching the truth that Q is not merely an ally of our President but also a prophet of God, put on this earth to do His work. And that work is to bring to light the truth, and the depth of the Pedophillic, Satanic conspiracy that claims control of all of this once great country’s major institutions; from Washington to Hollywood to Wall Street. Every last damn one of them is full of Epstein’s looking to convert your children into their cause. But I don’t speak without evidence. We know the Lord said that The Devil does not do his evil openly. He puts on a nice face, hiding behind sheep’s clothing. Or a rainbow. It’s the LGBTEFG and every other last damn letter in the alphabet that’s the front of the Brandon-pedo cult, and they’re not even subtle about it. Hell, they’re waving their damn flag in front of every Starbucks that’s on every other corner on the map. And that barista with the blue hair, making your soy-macchiato? That’s who’s telling your kid  it’s fine for them to come out as they/ them. That it’s fine for them to be some crossdressing freak so long as they’re being themselves. Lord forgive me for my language, but you can count sooner or later they’ll be telling your 8 year old boys that it’s fine to take it up the ass from some Clinton foundation stooge. Because that’s what this war against the Church is all about. Grooming your children and grandchildren away from the DEMANDS of the Lord, into tranny, Pedo orgies in George Soro’s basement!”

The rant continued for some time, but Nick ceased paying attention after the first mention of orgies. He looked back down at the attendees in the pews, and while they appeared to be moving their heads in agreement with the speech, they were of the age where they could’ve also been simply nodding along to anything with a rhythm. Nick stopped being able to intelligibly discern what the man was raving about after a little, and could only make out a high pitched, white noise. He slunk into the back of his seat, gazing at a gaudy, large plastic cross with paint chipping away. Alone.