NIKI STERNER - BLACK INK (2014)

Burn that fog off, baby

Let those waves crash over you

Swim out to the break as far as you can and don't come back...

Wipe that smile off, baby

Let that sadness come over you

Walk out to the desert sun and don't come back.

We're gonna hold each other's hands at the end of the world

Build an ark for the animals, little boys, little girls

We're gonna watch as it burns, we're gonna sail far away

Build a world out on Mars where the children can play...

Wave that train goodbye, baby

Let your remorse wash over you

Run down those tracks as far as you can and don't come back...

Brush those tears goodbye, baby

Let some relief pour over you

Give yourself to the formless and don't come back.

You didn't come here to make money, to chase fortune and fame

You didn't come to take lovers and forget all their names

You didn't come to be different because we all are THE SAME...

The feeling of rejection swirled inside of him like a riptide, threatening to drown out any other emotion besides abject despair and complete, terrorizing loneliness. Every morning at dawn and every evening at sunset he walked alone, watching others he felt no connection to drive around in fossil fueled cars and on death wishing bikes, all screaming for purpose and getting no response in return. 

The mirror showed a face full of lines and want; want for approval, want for comfort, want for love. He had experienced many different kinds of affection in his lifetime, but he was unsure he had ever been loved. Most people felt this way; lonely, dejected, separate from others as well as themselves, but he did not recognize this and felt no association to them. The world, full of puzzle pieces meant to fit together seamlessly in order to create a picture of unparalleled beauty, continued to operate under the idea of detachment. Everyone felt it, but no one knew what it meant.

For her, feelings were pools to sink into to hide, away from the harsh glare of the sunlight and opinions of others. Every breeze gave her pause, every look made her quiver in anticipation something would hurt her, or worse. She walked around knowing separateness was an illusion, yearning for connection and peace, running mostly into those who were too rough and too stupid to fondle such delicate skin. Her pools kept her safe, and kept her from experiencing true joy.

Her face showed sleepness nights and an ever growing need for validation, from someone or something or the end of the world. Her eyes were tired; blood pooled darkly beneath them as a sign of impending doom. Her skin was pale and paper thin, like a doll someone made and forgot to play with. Aching and yearning for a touch, a caress, a whispered word in the night, she stayed up for hours reading words and dreaming dreams where she was choked with sea water and tendrils from pea plants.

Inside one is the key to love, affection, and validation;

Inside the other is the key to protection and peace;

My mother came from Boston, bred into a family that never spoke about their emotions and pair-bonded based on hedge funds and educational backgrounds. She ran away when she was 17 and never looked back, despite losing a trust fund which was whispered about at the dinner table once I had gone to bed and the wine was being poured in billows. 

My father came from Santa Cruz, a child of the sun and the cold, meager waves that crashed onto the shores in a hippie town. He doesn't know who his father was or remember his name. His mother died years before I was born, and he never spoke of her. I saw a picture, once; she looked like my mother. Long, dark hair and eyes like lipid pools.

Freudian. 

The two of them did the best they could in the balmy Southern California wasteland we can San Diego; Dad worked for the gas company and Mom worked part time at the local library. Neither of them ever seemed to want for much, content with just themselves, each other, and me, their first born and only son. We had a small apartment they still keep, a balcony with a tiny garden where the marigolds I planted in 7th grade still bloom.

Most children rebel against their parent's attempts to control; I never rebelled, per se, but I knew that their staid life was not for me. I enrolled in the Navy the minute I turned 18, anxious to travel and see things I could share with my parents in an effort to get them to break out of their routines. I could never understand how two people could be so content to simply drink wine and grow flowers and sleep 8 hours a night...

The Navy was nothing like I thought it would be. I sat at a desk for 6 hours a day and wandered the decks of ships by night until I couldn't think anymore, passing into dreamless fits of sleep, waking shiny with sweat, laden with secrets I could never remember come dawn. The women were classless, obsessed with climbing ranks, and most of the men were boring automatons who were there for the free college money and sign up bonus. I grew restless; weary. I felt different from these people; never superior, just...different. I yearned for something formless; nameless. I yearned for...life?

In Panama I found something I had never felt before; a sense of peace and belonging. When the ship set sail, I stayed on land and became a deserter. I stopped writing home, stopped calling old friends on mobile phones. I started walking the city from dawn until dusk, learning Spanish and catching murmured tales of Noriega from the elderly. Much of Panama City was covered in glittering high rises, sophisticated women, and the wealthy elite. I took lovers and wandered in and out of the streets before dawn, watching the sun glitter off of windows that shined as the sun burned the fog off of the coast.

Eventually I walked past the architectural facades and began searching the grasslands of South America for gauchos and tiny spots I could camp on, trying to make the last few dollars I had last as long as I could. I sent a telegram to my mother in my last civilized stop-I had spent what I considered a vast sum on a room with running warm water and a bathtub to luxuriate. A tele came back with fierceness, to come home. My father was dying.

I flew back home, flagged for UA by the Navy on my passport. I knew the ramifications of my actions would have to be dealt with. Not now, I said. Just...not now.

My father laid in a hospital bed tangled in tubes and with wires telling the world his current physical status. The message: delayed. The meaning: unknown. I sat by his bedside with my mother's long, dark hair grazing my hand as she clutched it. Tears fell, hot and heavy, on her knuckles as she wept for a love she was not ready to release yet. A man who had given her all the excitement she ever wanted, all the security she ever needed. A blue blood who's blood ran red. 

It's hot, too hot in this room.

You can't sleep in this humidity, it chokes you while you rest.

I get up and walk around and look at her body in the pale sunlight of the morning, covered in tangled white sheets with tiny feet sticking out of the bottom. The heat never seems to bother her.

The view from my window is empty; devoid of all movement and pleasure. No sense to look outside.

She whispers words to me at night that don't make any sense in the morning. I like to think and misinterpret them while I write; I will bring them up later and start a fight.

I swallowed the last of my coffee and tipped the waitress on my way out. She smelled vaguely like crushed lilies and had a pleasant smile. Hospital corridors are cold, lonely places. It doesn't matter what type of shoes you wear; they always squeak when you walk. The smell of death and old flowers littered the air. My mother breathed artificially; tubes and wires and electrodes hooked up everywhere. Paper thin skin and blue veins like deep water. I kissed her hand as ritual and left her to the nurses. Death is a funny thing; the more you fear it the faster it comes. I can tell when I crush someone's trachea whether or not they've been waiting for the moment. They exhale with defeat instead of defiance. Three things appeared at every scene I walked into: black stockings, designer wallets, and feathers. Bird feathers. I don't know where they come from; certainly fancy hotel rooms and mansions don't have birds nesting in their attics and anterooms. Perhaps I bring them with me. 

A harbinger. The waitress wasn't there the next day when I came in for my coffee. It made me sad, just a little. I swam around in the feeling, trying to build it up enough to where I could actually flinch in pain, but it never came. I hadn't felt in so long. Hospitals all smell the same... Different people liked different things. Some wanted things to look natural or accidental, to collect insurance or inheritance money. Many wanted things as gruesome as possible and asked me to stretch the pain out. "Torture them," they'd say, especially the women. "And the partner?" I would ask, and shoulders would shrug. "Do whatever you see fit." The rain has a way of cloaking you; it seems to confuse people and you can slip in and out of places much easier. The only unfortunate side effect is footprints; but I wear a shoe much larger than my foot. Seems to throw them off when they suspect something. I try to do it in their sleep. There is always a moment of realization, but I try to be respectful when their eyes light up and lips part in the beginnings of a scream. "This is on behalf of Mary," I would say, or "Steven" or "Alice" or "Bob". Whoever had the money to pay me to even things out was the name I would say. Scorned hearts know no boundaries when it comes to exacting revenge. Black stockings are the trademark of a whore. I always asked for them when the dancers came calling. Once, I took a trip to the ocean. I hadn't seen it in so long I forgot what the salty air smelled like and how it felt to walk in sand. I wore shoes that fit. The sun shined on me and I didn't dart for the shadows. There were ducks in the ocean. I had never seen that before. I brought a picture back and put it in my mother's room. She hadn't opened her eyes in months. "I'm going to take you away from here," I said, and I swear I saw her eyelids flutter. At peace. There was once a woman I tried to save. Her name was Tracy. Her boyfriend left her for her best friend and she wanted him dead, like they all did. "I don't care what you do, just kill them," she said, eyes puffed up and red. Her hair was the color of chocolate and her lips were plump. I had trouble imaging who would leave her. I shook my head. "I don't think you've had enough time to think about this," I said, leaning forward. She wiped her nose with a tissue and looked at me. "What?" she asked, her eyelashes rimmed with tears that glistened in the afternoon sun. She blinked and a tiny star fell onto her cheek. It distracted me. "You're too young; naive. You'll regret this. He wasn't your husband. No life-long bond was broken. He's a wretched, dirty thing. Inhuman. But deserving of death? Is that the burden you want to carry for the rest of your life?" She looked at me and twisted her face into a grimace. "He has to pay," she said, pointing at her heart. "He has to pay for this." I broke his legs and put his new girlfriend in a coma. That seemed to appease her. The waitress at the diner looked a little like Tracy. But Tracy smelled like expensive French perfume, not lilies. A gift from her father, I'm sure. Sometimes I wondered where she was. Married in Connecticut, perhaps. Or somewhere on the French Riviera spending someone else's money. That was the last time I tried to talk someone out of what they wanted. It left me with a metallic taste in my mouth. I'm no one's savior. Let their decisions be their burden to bear. My money piled up under my mattress. Almost, I breathed. Almost. I liked to observe the situation before acting. Walk around darkened homes and glittering hotels to get a feel for the people involved. Who were these deserters, these breakers of tender, bruised hearts? Cheaters and adulterers. My crucifix was tucked under my shirt and jacket at all times. Preacher man. The stockings were almost always in a pile next to the bed; few women wore them to sleep. The thigh-high type pinched when you tossed and turned; garters cut dents into soft, supple skin. Designer wallets where always either on the dresser or still in the gentleman's pants pocket. Hermes seemed to be a favorite.  I would run my taped fingerprints over the items, look at the photographs and art upon the walls, and sometimes gaze out of the windows to the outside world before judgment began. My lips never parted until the eyes realized what was happening. My tools where those of rope, tape, blades, and bullets. Feathers followed me like a calling card. But this night was not the same.

she woke up early on sunday morning, put on her panties and lip gloss and kissed him goodbye while he slept

he woke up to an empty bed and a sense of sadness.

he wanted to walk through rose gardens and eat ice cream with her on sundays

even though ice cream always made his stomach hurt.

but she was gone, always gone, shortly after dawn before the cars woke up and started honking their way through the city

gone just after the birds started their day in the wet, swimmy fog of the acrid lemonade sunlight of 6 a.m.

I wanted to scream to him "she doesn't love you!" but my voice belonged to a new decibel level now, and all that happened was doors opened slowly and floorboards creaked.

she usually had plans with someone else, brioche french toast with investment bankers and fashion photographers

sometimes with her girlfriends where she would tell them embarrassing stories of the puppy eyed boys she kept around for warm beds and free cocktails

suffrage really worked out well for us, didn't it, girls? nice knock-off purse. 

it's a form of abuse, you know; sleeping with people you don't love but who you know love you back

it's a form of abuse to use people, even if they like it

you get your rocks off at the expense of someone's feelings 

and let their adoring gazes and saccharine compliments feed your insatiable ego.

I wanted to tell him these things, but all I could move were the curtains without wind and the water pressure.

when someone leaves you on a sunday, the day of rest and walking in tandem hand in hand and syrupy pancakes and watered down coffee,

think about how you'd feel if their lips were on someone else's and they were laughing at another's stupid jokes

because that's what's happening, at a rooftop restaurant with their bug eyed sunglasses on and their Forever 21 dresses and platform wedges

it's better to be alone with your ghosts.

(in a cool, dark room)

how do you fall asleep? voices in the head, imagined caresses on your lower back

my father died full of secrets, full of torment (they say)

he was in a cold room, with other people and no one at his side

my mother says she still feels him against her back, late at night

her guilt a balm that she feeds on without spice or oil.

now radios turn on and off without explanation on her favorite songs

and I sleep fitfully now, knowing something must be said and done

but knowing I won't say or do them.

how do you fall asleep?

you're back again, I see, running marathons in my dreamscapes

I envisioned dirty dishes and rolling hills and the upside down triangle curvature of your back

I want to sleep like I did before all of this happened

easy, peacefully, warm and full of grace (in a cool, dark room)

his old room was too hot and too bright, his new room is too big and too cold

and those secrets should be told;

She woke up in the trunk of a broken down Chevrolet in the middle of what seemed to be an endless desert.

She had a sprained (but not broken) ankle, a throbbing head wound, and a strange, searing pain in her left elbow. During her 4 captive hours in the trunk she had also soiled herself and now smelled like piss and fear. Her blonde hair, which was usually curled or teased into a comical looking college Barbie-esque hairdo, was now stringy and matted on the side where she had curled herself up in her temporary 4 x 3 prison. She laughed to herself silently, teetering on the edge of insanity. No one would think I'm attractive now, she thought. 

That is how the minds of her type of women worked. 

The top of the trunk had opened easily, strangely, once she felt the vehicle stop. Yet...no one was there. All she saw was the expanse of dirt and rocks, a few lone cacti trees, and the sun. The blazing, vicious sun. All she did to get herself into this predicament was walk outside. Out of her apartment, down the stairs, towards the car her mother had given her which was never good enough. She had always wanted something bigger; flashier. That was her last thought before she felt the metal on the back of her skull and the hands on the flesh of her arms. She was out so fast she didn't even have time to be scared, until she woke up in the trunk. She had left her place about 8 a.m.; the sun told her it was now about noon, wherever she was. Her almond eyes became narrow slits in the sunlight; she raised her arm to cover her eyes and winced when her elbow cried in revolt. "Goddamn it!" she yelled, to no one in particular. The sound of her own voice frightened her; she jumped back and pressed against the car, searing the slice of midriff it came into contact with. She yelped and tears stung her eyes; her chest began to swell with self-pity. "WHERE AM I?!" she screamed. "WHERE ARE YOU?" Of course, the "you" she referred to was the kidnapper, or, kidnappers. Who stops their car in the middle of the desert and leaves the captive home free? Her instincts told her "he" was around somewhere, waiting; watching. But the open expanse of desert would not allow for such pleasures. There was nowhere to hide. She jumped back, delicately, being mindful of her ankle. She was tired of adding to the injuries already inflicted upon her. She bent and looked into and under the car; under the hood. She inhaled sharply. The entire engine of the vehicle was gone.  She touched her fingers to her lips. She was scared. * * * * * * * *  I watched the blonde broad for 3 weeks before Greg and I snatched her. She did a lot of pretty boring, normal shit; bars with friends, couple-type shit with her wannabe model boyfriend; shopping. The thing I got to dislike about this particular broad was her attitude, about everything in general. She walked around like she owned the places she went; huge, bug-eyed sunglasses on her thin, horse-ish face, hair all poufed up, glittery lipgloss all over the place; her sausage-esque legs poured into stretchy jeans made by designer labels she bought from discount stores. Greg thought she was hot shit, but Greg also thinks Starbucks doesn't burn their roast. Me, I grew to hate her. In 3 weeks I never, not once, saw her do anything of merit. Everything she did revolved around herself. She was the personification of the MTV generation; mindless, spineless, ego-driven. A consumer, not a producer. She went to community college and "worked" in human resources. I could see her fat ass sitting at a desk all day running background checks and judging people to make enough money to pay the nerds in her classes to test for her. It fit.

The only person she seemed to acquiesce to was her harpy mother. Her father almost came off as a non-entity; I never heard or saw him speak unless he was alone. Whenever Blondie went home to visit, he would putter out to the garage and listen to the radio, muttering to himself. I felt sorry for the guy. I almost feel like I did him a favor by making Blondie disappear. Blondie's mother was repulsive. But she was paying me to do what I do, so my thoughts on her end there. Greg thought her overweight, square jawed mother was hot. I told you, Greg has no taste. * * * * * * * * *  The sun had gone from hot to scalding in the hour since she had discovered the vehicle had been gutted. A hundred "fucks" had dropped from her lips and her head had begun to hurt even more under the pressure of the increased heat. She had moved inside the car to shield her from the sun; there was a warm breeze that would blow through the windows every now and again which would alleviate the stifling heat for a second or two, giving her an inhaled respite that didn't taste like scorched pennies or battery acid.

She remembered the hottest part of the day ended around 2 p.m.; which meant after another hour or two it would start to cool down and she could, perhaps, fall asleep. All she wanted to do was sleep again. Her last attempt left her soaked in sweat against the leather interior of the car. She needed to get back in the trunk-fuck the fact that it smelled like piss-but it was simply too hot right now. This newly remembered fact gave her a fresh sense of hope and pleasure. She felt if she could just get back to sleep again, she would wake up somewhere else... * * * * * * * * * *  It was pretty easy to pinch her; she left at about the same time for work every morning, and most of her neighbors were pampered housewife types who slept in 'til noon. I figured no one would notice her absence in the neighborhood anyway. What is one less blonde on a block of 20? Her mom asked us to do it quickly and quietly-grab her, shoot her, pretend to rob her and go. Insurance money-her mother had a not-so-quiet gambling debt she needed to pay off and another little secret: a girlfriend. "My daughter has been nothing but a nuisance since her birth," she told us. "I have no personal problem with my lifestyle...I'd shout it from the rooftops if I felt the need to, but if I'm going to divorce my husband, I want all ties with him destroyed. If our daughter is murdered in a freak, horrible act of crime, it lends plausibility to the fact I simply cannot bear to live with Harold anymore. He reminds me too much of "her". I can escape quietly, with pity, and go wherever I want. I can finally live for myself. Certainly, with the way my daughter has turned out, no one will miss her. She has the emotional depth of a cream puff." 

The conversation actually had me feeling sorry for Blondie before I started tailing her. 

Her mother gave me two grand in cash, all she had after her last loan shark payment, with a promise of 10% of the insurance settlement, which was somewhere around the $25K mark. Not bad for four weeks of work, in my opinion. Greg would only be needed minimally-his fee would barely cut into my profit, and besides...he did this shit for fun. I'd toss him a couple of comatose women every now and again and he was indebted to me for life. Greg: he of the temple of mediocrity.

And me, you ask? Why do I do this shit? Depends. Beats working in some stuffy office, kissin’ ass to a buncha suits, I think. Also beats slaving away in some restaurant kitchen, or some slick retail store, or waiting around to get my dick sucked on a college campus somewhere. It ain't the money, although I do okay; most kidnap and hit-for-hire assholes do shit like this for much, much less. I suppose, in my own way, it's fulfilling. Retribution-that's the business I'm in. Every person I've ever killed has deserved it-deserved death and much, much worse. Blondie was the only one I felt sorry for, until I tailed her. Once I saw who she really was-a spoiled, selfish husk of a human in her oversized sunglasses and holier-than-thou attitude, I knew she belonged with the others. Let her mother get her money-she can eat pussy and gamble the rest of her pathetic life away in some beach community where I hope she'll catch pneumonia and die early. Let her poor, rusted out shell of a father get some cash, too-maybe he can find a woman who won't find it necessary to waste his life along with hers.  And let me stay in the shadows, playing the punisher, gathering sins. * * * * * * * * * *  The twilight had begun to fall and the exhausting, endless heat gave way to indications the night would be quite the opposite. She looked at her dirt covered, urine stained tie-dye jeans and shook her head. What an outfit to die in. She thought of her boyfriend. They hadn't made plans to see each other tonight, which meant he probably wasn't even aware of her absence...although they did email each other all throughout the day with things like pictures of dogs and extra "LOLs” and "<3’s”. How silly it all was, in retrospect. They were supposed to go on a cruise next month-she had bought a new, ruffly bikini for it. "I HATE YOU!" she screamed, to no one. Tears fell, heavy and hot, as she started to sob. "Why is this happening to me?!" She thought of her best friends; they were probably out drinking without her right now. God, how she would kill for a drink. She had found a half empty water bottle under the driver's side front seat and was sipping it in intervals, but a cocktail with extra ice would both cool her throat and numb the pain in her elbow. She gathered it was about 6 p.m. now. She should be home, watching TV. What the fuck did she ever do to deserve this? What COULD someone do to deserve being stuck in a wasteland like this desert, with no way out? With a half-worthless ankle, a throbbing, cracked elbow, and a head prone to dizziness and confusion? Fresh tears spring up again. She shook them away. She needed to conserve water. * * * * * * * * * * After Greg and I threw her in the back of the trunk, I dropped him off a few blocks from his place and threw him a couple hundred bucks. "Aren't you going to need help getting rid of the body?" he asked, eyebrows knotted. I shook my head. "This one's special. I'm taking her somewhere she'll never be found." Greg shook his head. "You won't get paid for a while doing that shit," he said, but I didn't care. The day before, Blondie had gotten a phone call from her mother. "Sorry, Mom, I can't," she said, her voice syrupy with fake regret. "I'm sorry Dad's not feeling well, but I can't miss this test today-it's important. Can I come up tomorrow instead? It's not like he's going to die or anything." I closed my eyes. Shortly thereafter, I followed her to a hair salon and a discount department store. There was no test that day. There was nothing but Blondie being herself. I left at sunset and drove to her parent's home. Her father was in the living room, watching television, wrapped in a blanket, frail and washed out. At first I thought he was shivering, perhaps with sickness, but when I used my binoculars, I realized he was crying. On the table in the next room, there was a sliced cake, sad and beginning to dry. It was the poor fucker’s birthday. I had never seen anyone look so...alone 

I had driven away that night knowing Blondie and her pathetic mother were examples of the worst kind of human. Not my kind, the kind that repossesses life from those not fit to breathe it; oh no, their kind was worse: they exemplified the top tier of absolute selfishness. Blondie's mother was soulless; she allowed her own needs to overwhelm both her husband and her child, aiding in her husband becoming the shadow of a man and her child becoming a sentinel set on her own pleasure and nothing else. My hands gripped the steering wheel and my heart ached for a man I didn't even know. "Why'd you let them get to you?" I hissed, sad and angry and confused. "Why'd you let them turn you into this...?" I knew then that Blondie's mother would never get her money. I'd take Blondie out into the middle of the desert and let her rot, let her mother sit around waiting for insurance adjusters to give her what she "needed" to escape the life she made for herself, all the while her heart screaming for her lover, and her husband, the man she promised to love and take care of until death do them part wasting away to dust, like the sediment of the desert their daughter would die in, alone. I knew THAT is what I wanted to do.

Samir sat inside of a box inside of someone's head.

He didn't know how he got there or what he was supposed to do with said situation, but it was a relatively comfortable box so he didn't complain.

Sometimes he would peek outside the box, through his host's eyeballs, and try to figure out what was going on. Things were mostly a blur and jumble, but occasionally he got to see some trees (he missed trees intensely) and his host had an amusing dog named Samantha who made him smile. She would occasionally pee on the floor which always forced Samir out of his box since his host would have to bend over to clean it, knocking Samir out and against the optic nerve. Samir didn't mind the cerebellum, but the optic nerve always gave him the creeps. 

Inside the mind, Samir was privileged to witness the synaptic fireworks of thoughts. It took him a while to identify at first, but soon enough he could interpret when his host was writing or painting or dancing or making love, all based on the neuron doctrine. Sometimes he would reach up, fingers spread, eyes filled with wonder as the lightning bolts of thoughts and actions passed before his eyes. Usually, though, he mostly napped and thought about trees.

She smelled like white flowers and musk, but it didn't matter to him. Her long, almost translucent hair waved like a mermaid tail down her back, the curve of her spine a slender "S" in his hands. None of it mattered.

She trailed her robes behind her, open, exposing her nakedness to the world inside of her home. There was no one there. The concrete floors and 20 foot ceilings held her suspended in sumptuous grief.

The winter rain clouds rolled in, two months too late, heavy with radiation. She would watch them glide across the sky, bedroom eyes just slits, wondering how her flowers were fairing at his home. She ached to caress their petals, feed them nutrients in the soil, whisper secrets to them as bees do. He would let them die. She yearned for the rain, heavy clouds brought her peace; the sun seemed to be for other people, people who were still whole.

She ate and bathed and slept in her sadness, kept it close like a secret. She let it take her like a lover at night, bent to its whims and wills. Her eyes would swell with tears, her chest rising and falling like waves on the ocean. Her sadness was a luxury; something she allowed herself to have like caviar or cake. She wasn't ready to accept the realization that NOW was the only moment that mattered; wasn't ready to let the past and all that it held go. For her, the past was something beautiful, something tender, something she sprinkled on her food and added to her bath. She rubbed it into her skin like a cream and wore it on her collarbone like diamonds.

The radiation swirling with the tides meant very little to her, at times, and then sometimes when it rained she noticed her skin would rise up in little bumps in the morning, and her joints would ache. She put a hydrangea outside and watched as all of its petals fell off in a single night after its first rain. Her lips pursed with tenderness; her silken hair glowed. Was entropy inevitable? She wanted things to stay the same.

He wrote her a letter in the spring telling her he'd moved; he missed her ever so much and was sorry for what had happened. It was a short letter; she put it on a shelf in her greenhouse and watched every day as the mist made the letters bleed; words into raindrops into puddles. Her greenhouse water was filtered, of course; most of the outside gardens in her city had begun to be moved indoors or tented. The natural rain, laden with radiation, simply destroyed everything it touched.

She could see herself aging, physically, on an almost day by day basis. She saw the drag of champagne glasses on her lips and the lack of sleep in her eyes and skin. Her aloe plants whispered to her, and their tonic became her own; she began growing greens and eating them constantly, peppering her sentences with leaves of basil and carrying mint to chew. Her eyes lightened; her voice seemed calmer, more feminine. Her translucent hair was cut, haloing her face like an angel. She hardly thought of him at all now, unless she was outside during the sunset or smelled the ocean on the breeze.

Soon spring turned to summer, the tides swirling in closed beaches, yellow ribbons screaming warnings away from the sand. He wrote her another letter, asking her to visit him in the fall. She put it in her greenhouse again, postcard suicide, but snatched it up before the first sprinkles fell upon it. She wanted to show him she was different now; and maybe he was different, too? She had not yet learned that loving someone does not mean that you own them, and no answers will come of looking for yourself in another. She packed a bag and boarded a plane, smelling of white flowers and musk.

When she saw him, her heart skipped a beat. The indulgent depth of her heartbreak rushed back tenfold, deepening her experience to such a degree she almost felt she was high on the emotions of the past. He saw her through the crowd and walked to take her bag; she wanted nothing more in that moment than everything he could never give her.

She returned home to her silks and robes and exhaled her pain all over them, feeling unfulfilled and like a self-saboteur and an orchid killer, as it seemed her misting system had committed harakiri while she was gone. She trailed her fingers over their limp leaves and tendons, crumpled pistons and petals, murmuring apologies and misting by hand. The pressure of the disappointment and responsibility inside of her began to mutate, become lighter, starting to float away as she became aware of the present moment as the only reality that mattered. Staring at a lady slipper, she noticed a  new layer of depth to its petals; a beauty she had never noticed before despite seeing it hundreds of times. In that moment, looking at something so fragile and so beautiful starting to decay, she realized that this was infinity. Entropy could be an illusion...or freedom.

Removed from her own sense of self for the first time, she felt the silken corolla on each groove and ridge of her fingerprints; she smelled her own perfume mixed in with the stalks of Mignonette a few feet away. She watched a symphony of sparkles emerge from her hand, her arm, her skin. She felt the endless expanse of an ocean of something (consciousness? awareness?) behind the lids of her eyes, her lips, her heart. This moment, she thought to herself. This moment.

Every day she awoke now became something different, something more aware, more present. Silence became a melody to her ears, solitude was a blessing. The winds blew radiation into the trees and people's skin started to peel and their cars started to decay. Her concrete floors and 20 foot ceilings kept her suspended in safety. 

His last letter to her was a lament, an over-apology for hurting her again and not being able to give her what she needed. She wrote him back, her pen scratching secrets on orchid scented paper. "You owe me no apologies, although I appreciate your words," she said, feeling a sense of peaceful stillness heavily, pleasurably, in her heart. "I loved you then and I love you now, but in two different ways. I asked for things that were not mine to ask for; expected things I have no right to expect, demanded things that are not mine to demand. For that, I am sorry. But now all I want is to live without restrictions, without choking myself on the past and living away from the present. Just know that I love you, the past is over and done with. Oh, and stay out of the rain."

It was a hot summer evening in Baltimore, and Ryan Anthony Abbot was 6 years old and wearing brand new white shorts and sneakers. He walked proudly alongside his father into the air conditioned mist of the cigar and liquor store, savoring the bitter yet comforting smell of aged tobacco he had been smelling since he was just a toddler. His father liked to start every weekend off with a cigar and a tumbler of whiskey, neat, and he had brought Ryan along on his cigar pickup trips since the ritual started, roughly four years beforehand. Ryan tugged at his white shorts and reached up to take his father's hand. "You ready, kiddo?" his father asked, blue eyes twinkling in the night air. He smiled up at him and nodded. 

Matthew Marc Abbot, Ryan's father, was an accountant, but what he REALLY wanted to do was sell luxury yachts. He was a great accountant; very organized and the type who easily spotted flaws and areas of improvement, but he rather disliked the staid world of finance; it would be so much more fun to live life on the WATER, showing the men who REALLY knew how to run things just how to savor their moments off to the fullest extent. The fresh ocean air; the sunshine on waves sharper than ginsu knives; the purr of effective machinery...

Alfred (nee Aadarsh) Nakul was working his 8th straight day in a row at Vendome Liquor, and he was tired. Studying for his bar exam was the last thing he wanted to do after a 9 hour shift selling rich people shitty cigars and scotch all day, but it's what he had planned for that night and the next 11 nights ahead. He watched placidly as a father and small son (the Abbots, he realized calmly) walked in and headed towards the cigar closet in the back. Maybe if he wasn't too tired after work, he'd stop in for a quick drink at the bar down the street and harmlessly flirt with the brunette bartender he was thinking about asking out after he aced the bar exam. He smiled faintly thinking about catching a wave of her thick, gardenia scented hair in his fingers and watching her make his drink; the way her fingers gripped the sides of the bottles marked with beads of sweat...

Christopher Kimball Thomas Jones was angry. He was angry that his father had left him when he was a child. He was angry that his mother was never home, working all day and night to support him and his three half-siblings. He was angry he kept making mistakes and holding himself back, angry he kept listening to the voice inside that told him he was fine, it was everyone ELSE who needed some improvement. Christopher Kimball Thomas Jones was supposed to be rich, the first-born (and illegitimate) son of a man who had made millions before his 30th birthday...yet here he was, fresh out of a holding cell for assault and battery (his girlfriend would drop the charges) and sweating in the heat of the summer air. A drink what was he needed to calm him down; and a bottle would be a welcome offering to his friends back at George's place, who had so thoughtfully let him smoke their speed and stashed his gun last night after the fight. 

Ryan watched silently as his father went from tiny box to tiny box, picking up and rolling and smelling and weighing cigars of various lengths and colors. Ryan thought the image of his father smoking a cigar was impressive, like a commercial, as Dad was big and tall and tan like a movie star. As a matter of fact, Mom was always saying how much Dad didn't look like an accountant, whatever an accountant was...

Touching a Romeo y Julietta and bringing it to just below his nostrils, Matthew Marc Abbot inhaled slowly and wrinkled his nose, noting the humidity in the closet had been off the last two visits, and thought he should bring it up with Alfred. Alfred had a good attitude and Matthew could tell he would eventually do something "quote unquote" worthwhile with his life. He just FELT it. Shit, Alfred might even buy a yacht from him one day...he was pretty sure Alfred was going for a career in commercial law, which paid well. He looked at Ryan, standing silently at the corner of the closet, tugging his little white shorts and smiling faintly at him. What a trip having a kid was, a little you that looked at you with such idolization and love and devotion, no matter what you were doing. He smiled at Ryan, and extended his hand. "Come here, kiddo," he said, before the bullet exploded through his right eye and splayed blood all over the shiny, multi-colored cigar boxes and Ryan's white shorts.

By the time Alfred's wits caught up with him, Mr. Abbot was crumpled in a heap at the feet of his little boy, who was staring in shock, covered in blood, at what used to be his father. His eyes were wider than silver dollars, and his face looked like it was covered in strawberry jam. 

Raising his hand at his father's command to come to him, Ryan had momentarily thought about his favorite toy at home (a convertible robot Ryan had named SIR KEBOB because haha) and his mom's chocolate chip cookies (she made them every Friday while Ryan and Dad went out for his cigar). When the sound of the bullet reached his tender ears, he was already recoiling in fear as he watched his father's face explode. "Dad?" he thought, the snap of the bullet echoing in his ears and synapses. His father's face at his feet held no remnant of the man he was before his death.

FUCK FUCK FUCK, WHO SHOT THE FUCKING GUN??? Alfred's mind screamed at him while he ran around the counter towards the back cigar closet, the two other patrons in the store on the ground, cowering in fear and confusion. WHO HERE IS A KILLER? Alfred had only been in the back for a minute after the Abbots came in; the little door chime signaling a new customer hadn't rung, had it??? My GOD, how could this happen? The blood, the blood, the kid, oh my god, what does this mean, what do I do?

Christopher Kimball Thomas Jones laid on the floor of Vendome Liquor, frozen in the shock of what he had done. He couldn't explain it; he barely remembered doing it just moments ago. His skin was pimpled in gooseflesh, and the gun in his waistband was burning a hole through his pelvis. He was high on speed (it was speed, right, buddy?) and he also had no idea how long he had been inside the liquor store before he shot the fucking stupid looking tall guy in the cigar closet with the kid. THE KID, he realized, my god there was a KID IN THERE. Is that what started this? A father and his son? Holy fuck, Jones, he thought to himself. Get up and run.

Alfred threw open the door to the cigar closet and the kid, covered in gore and a palpable veil of shock, ran out, fumbling and almost falling twice before passing him, right through Alfred's grasping fingers. Blood was slippery.

Roger Steven Parsons was on the floor, pale and confused, when Ryan ran past him, three and a half feet of pink mist and a shock of blonde hair. "Someone WAS shot," Roger's mind whispered, and he jumped to his feet to survey the scene. The color rushed back into his face as he watched a pair of green eyes rise over the aisle two rows away from his and bolt away, towards the back of the store, around where anyone would go who was trying to reach the door. "Flee the scene of a crime, you mean," Roger's mind whispered, and Roger darted to action, ready to block the door from the perpetrator/witness/victim/et cetera. The door chime jingled as the kid (it was the kid, right? Green eyes didn't somehow fake you out and go out behind you, did he?) pushed his way out to the night sky, to freedom, to the hot summer air.

"THE CHILD!" Alfred screamed, staring at Roger (just a faceless patron before, now a brother-in-arms) while he moved towards the door in what felt like quicksand. Roger's eyes were trained on an aisle behind Alfred, and just then Alfred saw a pair of green eyes dart past him. Roger's muscles tensed for the oncoming impact. Alfred's head felt like it was floating away from his body like a balloon in the wind.

(DAD'S NOT REALLY DEAD DAD'S NOT REALLY DEAD IT'S PROBABLY JUST LIKE AT HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS REMEMBER THAT, STUPID, IT WAS JUST MAKEUP AND YOU GOT SCARED AND JEFFREY ANDREWS CALLED YOU A BABY AND YOU ALMOST HIT HIM IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD WHEN HE WALKED IN FRONT OF YOU BUT YOU DIDN'T DAD'S NOT REALLY DEAD MOM, MOM, WHERE ARE YOU, HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME)

Christopher Kimball Thomas Jones knew the wiry blonde guy by the door would try to stop him from leaving, and at that very moment he heard the voice of his father in another room, calling his mother a whore and lamenting how his son (his first-born son) was a goddamn accident and would grow up to be nothing more than murdering trailer trash if she kept up her bullshit. He left shortly thereafter. Christopher Kimball Thomas Jones felt the gun burning a hole in his gut and he reached for it, hopped up like a rabbit on Adderall, his hand slipping on the grip as he noticed the tiny bloody footprints in front of him. "Another kid without a father," he whispered, and bowed his head as he impacted slowly with the wiry guy blocking the door, hoping his neck would snap in two as easily as his girlfriend's wrists. No luck. He felt the Indian crush into him from behind and grab for the gun, and he wished with all of his might that someone would shoot him before the police showed up. 

In the light of the dawn, I surveyed the landscaped metropolis from the sanctity of my rooftop. My garden had taken a year to complete; now leaves fluttered in the cool breeze, flowers aching to bloom in the embrace of the sunshine. My hands (weekly bathed in paraffin and now wrapped in silver threaded gloves) sat at my sides like two wounded lovers, yearning to caress my calendula.

We all knew the bomb was coming; America had stopped producing goods years ago and after we borrowed all we could from China we went to Russia, the last country who held us any good will. Our presidents were all fools, tweeting pictures of Air Force One and showing up on talk shows hosted by MTV stars; whoever was actually running the country at this point was probably safely sequestered in a bunker somewhere, 20 feet underground and drinking molten gold and eating swordfish. Too lazy to revolt, all of us simply sat around with our iPhones and iPads and iCars and bought $15 cocktails at bars named after dead authors telling ourselves we were living it up.

My garden sat heavily upon the roof of my building, a building I bought after I sold my last application, a silly little thing that allowed voice memos to be tied to photographs. Japanese girls love making voice memos for photos, and when you’re Big in Japan…

Once the hub for the Flower District, my building was 6 stories of 30 foot ceilings and grey slab floors, bone chillingly cold in the winter but blessedly cool in the summer time. After my last girlfriend revealed herself to be the type to fuck one’s driver and "close friend" in a coat closet at a charity event (for children), I retreated into the word of nitrogen and phosphorus and magnesium, planting everything I came across that winked at me. Much the way lonely people take to pets to replace the people in their lives who have betrayed them, I took to plants, singing secrets to them at dusk and promises at dawn.

My fingertips, even bandaged, smelled always of mint and freesia, my skin tawny and oddly tanned from my habits. Every dawn I stood here, silently waiting for the sun to rise, watching for the glow of a hydrogen bomb on the horizon.

Floor to floor I hung tapestries and canvases and framed photographs from swap meets of people I didn’t know. Have you seen those boxes of glossies around at garage sales and swap meets? Bought from post offices when mail is left so long it gets auctioned off and sold to people like me who want pictures only of those they have never met. I turned coriander paste into oil paint and muddled pansy petals into vodka for watercolors. As time passed, I noticed the warehouses around me closing down, windows boarded over, parking lots deserted and depressing. “Putin still refuses to negotiate…” the news mumbled, same thing every day, every night.

My ex-girlfriend sent me an email, telling me she was moving to Russia before the borders closed to give her acting career a chance there, with its superior economy and more Euro-centric view of art. But you don’t speak Russian, I thought, and I don’t know how they’ll take to you fucking their friends in closets two weeks after you (lied) “I love you”. I deleted her drivel, thinking of how horrific her limbs had looked entangled in the arms of my friend, all muscles and bad tattoos. My own body (tall and long and lithe with delicate hands and bulbous bones at the wrists and hips) resembled a Schiele painting. I often sat in my marble bathroom and stared at myself, knowing I looked more like an orchid than a man.

The nights used to howl with activity, the warm hum of neon an auditory backdrop to the pimps and hookers and party kids, all traipsing around, looking for something that could make them feel again. I’d sit in different windows, staring out, my hands wrapped and feet bound, smelling like roses and honey melons. Now the nights are silent, pregnant with possibility, aching for the release of an explosion. 

How many more nights do I have here, alone with my thoughts, before the bomb dissolves me in air? Will someone find these words later, buried in the collective unconscious under 500 pounds of rock and soil? Love letters to tangerines and artichokes, secrets of the heart pressed into petals.

The bullets hitting the side of my Humvee sounded like tin cans falling to a plastic floor. I momentarily thought "they're leading us to the gallows, my boy," before I jumped out. Bullets whizzed by my head, skimming my arms and left knee, exploding in florets of pain quickly drowned by adrenaline. 

The Humvee ran into a wall in the marketplace and dust rained down, blanketing the men running to it in a fine mist, obscuring their features even more than the wraps around their faces. My knee cried out in defiance and I hobbled into a dark crevice crowded with shocked faces as they screamed and pointed "American! American!"

I could be tried for war crimes, like what the fuck was that, war in itself is a crime, isn't it? I hadn't done anything I wasn't told to do, but my morality was looser and laxer than most men's, I suppose. I knew that and my commander knew that and everyone on our squad knew that. I was the harbinger of pain for those who cooperated; the angel of death for those that did not. It meant little to me...life and death are just two sides to the same coin...

Hands grabbed me, slipping off of my uniform, covered in gore. My knee could barely withstand any pressure, I was hobbling...scraping, falling, falling down and what felt like asleep except I was trying to grab at the last shreds of consciousness as if they were my mother's hands, pulling me out of Lake Eaton so many years ago while I spasmed and thrashed...

(I remembered New York in winter...the snow falling softly and slowly to the ground ready to be trampled by people already late for their 20th appointment that day...)

When I woke up, my lips were so swollen and numb they felt like they had been sliced off. My hands were tied behind my back, pinned against a makeshift pole. Legs spread eagle, hips potentially dislocated? No, I could still move them with relatively little pain. Good, good...my knee might not be recoverable but this position could be worked around, if I could just get up.

I pushed off of the ground slowly, on one foot, and tried to stand. My throat seized with dryness and I began to cough, painfully and silently. I heard muffled footsteps approaching, scraping the sand of the floor.

"You're going to die for your crimes," a man said in Pashto, coming from behind me. I jerked my body in his direction, terrified I had not sensed I was not alone. This caused a ripple of pain to caress my left side, my face contorting in a grimace while the faceless specter behind me laughed. "We all know who you are." A blow from the voice left my head feeling like it was swimming in a gallon of bleach and cream. I fell into the darkness yet again in a fog of pain and confusion. "The gallows, my boy," I thought, drifting away...

(I remembered the sunlight at dawn in the Appalachians, an acrid lemonade color that always reminded me of sickness and my ex-girlfriend Jenny's stupid ponytail holders she always left in my car after we made love in parking lots, drunk on booze and youth...)

For two days they starved me, giving me water but nothing else. Water was enough-I had no inclination to eat. I couldn't move my right foot anymore; I had a feeling my entire leg was going to get gangrene and kill me, if these ragheaded fucks didn't do it first. I spoke both Pashto and Farsi and screamed threats from my sand filled coffin. They did me no good.

On the third day, a little boy came in and sat next to me. 

"They want to know where the bodies are," he said, huge black eyes glistening in the dim light. "The bodies of our fathers and brothers."

I eyed him back, partially delirious. "We burned them, kid. There are no graves to be found in a desert." 

On the fourth day I was tossed into a pit and set on fire. I saw the eyes of my murderers glowing with satisfaction and anger and righteousness, not understanding that war is simply an extension of politics and power plays by people who had never held a weapon or felt a man's life slip through their fingers in the dead of night. I felt my skin blister and pop, felt my breath be sucked away by the flames, felt my memories exploding synaptically in my head. I remembered New York in winter and Jenny's smile and all of the crimes I had committed, and then I surrendered to the greatest wave of pleasure each of us will ever get to experience in this life filled with pain and bullshit and ATM fees. I let myself go, became the flames in my funeral pyre, then the flicks of ash on the wind in the desert.