[thedeprevist]

The Deprevist
Er…maybe “Shattered Little Mind”
Or…****.
I don’t know.
2007


chapter one.
October 4, 2007 3:45am
There’s moonlight sifting through the blinds and across my face, across the amorphous swirls of smoke trailing from my cigarette. To my left resonates the cold and ugly red glow of my digital alarm clock, 2:00am, I get the feeling it’s somehow giving me cancer. Maybe it is. I know the cigarette is. Maybe all of it, the cigarette, the alarm clock, the moonlight, maybe they’ve all conspired together to pollute my system with their horrible invisible hands and give me cancer. I do have cancer, I just don’t know it yet. I am cancer.
The carpet’s cheap, stained, and too short to stretch to the edges of my room—it leaves about a foot gap of naked wooden underbelly on either side. It curls up at the edges like burnt paper, the only thing keeping it from rolling in and devouring itself is a few strategically placed pieces of furniture, an old desk piled high with books, letters, a manuscript for a story that will never be published, old coffee— crap, all of it, and an empty space the size of four fists that will soon be covered up with more crap. There’s a bed in the corner away from the window, a spring mattress that whines when you lie down or move around a little, a bookcase with two collapsed shelves, and a dresser half-empty. Plaster walls decorated with a hole the size of my fist— that’s not a coincidence- spider webs and abandoned tacks where posters had once hung, and a single line scrawled in black sharpie above the desk: “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly.”
2:00am is a nasty time, a nasty place to be alive in. It’s so beautiful out with the moon, full, except for a minor imperfection staining the edge like a cosmic neon light that’s begun to fade, stars poking through wisps of overcast on which the skyscrapers, those sleeping Gods of our post-industrial universe, remain looming black shadows like fading memories of their daylight calamities. The moon is especially bright tonight, almost painful. Everything seems brighter tonight. The stars are a riot of burning pinpoints of white-hot light off in the fathomless cold myriads of space, I feel them acutely tonight as if they were all extensions of myself.
All that beauty, and yet, at 2:00am I feel like ****. I am an exhaustive wreck of flesh and bones and so much metal. There’s shrapnel in my guts and glass in my veins and I’m numb to everything but that torturous loneliness which pervades these long nights; I fight it off like the biological plague it is. Its painful companions surge up in revolt— hunger, sleeplessness, ennui gang up on me in glaring focus and I fight them all off. They remind me that tomorrow, or, technically today, is the sixth of a fast that has gone on too long for my body to handle, another long month without human touch, contact or even interaction. My sanity is living in the small bumps and pushes I get in the crowd when I walk around at night, the two kind words of the grocery store clerk, the little hostile visit I pay them every week, and the sensual memory of Eve, who I haven’t seen in months. I haven’t slept in three nights. My eyes are beyond heavy and I’m beginning to see ****. I push back my body’s nagging pleas, with some effort I make them silent. **** their incessant naggings. They will not overcome my will. I will beat them into submission. I’m on a binge of depravity4. I’m a deprevist.
I pick up my pen again and set it down to a speech I detest writing. It goes like this: From the beginning it must be said that I have always retained self-control, and every decision I made was of my own volition. Anyone who was there from the very beginning can testify to that. And ever since the incident, I have and will continue to do so always, weighed every decision against the archetypes of logic and reason. No response given during the several elaborate examinations I undertook (by personal choice) was made without that strenuous analysis. Therefore, to say that my responses were unfit or improper is not to find fault within my own machinations, but within the machinations of logic and reason themselves.
Bile for my own words causes me to drop the pen again and turn away from the paper. The speech disgusts me beyond measure, partly because it sounds pretentious and ridiculous, and partly because I shouldn’t have to make it in the first place. A few minutes pass and I still can’t force myself to turn around and finish it. I stare at the space under my desk instead, seeing vague images in the darkness like an insane person or someone in a trance. I can’t write it, I’m too hungry, too tired. They surround me with their needy whining voices, begging and pleading and jumping up around me. They stuff my mind with their need, constant, devouring, need.
When it becomes too much I decide to go out. Leaving the apartment will help get away from them. Out of my own overbearing company, the clean night air will help distract me. I smash the cigarette against the wall with relief. I hate smoking, I couldn’t imagine a more disgustingly submissive activity. I smoke to hurt myself more, burn my lungs with its pollution. If I ever light up a cigarette and feel even a tinge of relief or enjoyment, I put it out and wait for the addiction to fade away. Another testament to my strength. My body will submit to my will, all the better if it kills me.
I make an effort to dress nice tonight, because I know where I have to be tomorrow and I don’t plan on coming back here before then. Even relative vanity is difficult with my wardrobe, a utilitarian selection of black and white shirts bought in bulk on sale, collar or no, and factory made black pants, tall and slim; not a design, pattern, detail, or any other idiosyncrasy in sight on any of them. My jackets I make myself out of what material I have thrown around, all poorly made with tatters and ends of purple or red where I ran out of black, lopsided collars and mismatched sleeves, sewn in thick ugly thread like winding scars. I take the best coat I own and fold over the awkward extra collar, find an unwashed white collar shirt that unrolls with a small galaxy of wrinkles in the hamper, slacks and a strip of fabric that’s just long enough to pass for a clumsy tie. I tear off a few loose threads that still dangle off the end, only to unravel a new layer of bits, and leave it before I tear the whole tie apart. My clothing, like myself, is defined by absence and fault.
I stuff a wad of cash in my front pocket— for them, not for me— and consider taking a tablespoon of nutmeg to help me stay awake before I leave. I decide against it. I grab the doorknob and freeze as a burst of paranoia hits me in the gut. What am I going out for? What do I plan to do? I reassure myself that all I want is to take a walk. I review every possibility of the action for that taint I spend so much time trying to avoid… when I’m certain that I have no intention of doing anything like that again, I feel stupid and exit the room, locking the cage5 behind me with a rustic clack about as reassuring as the crunch of styrofoam. The motion detectors are slow to respond, so I walk most of the way to the stairs in darkness. The fluorescent lights flicker to life as I reach the door. One of the bulbs at the far end of the hallway lets out an audible popping sound, and then the end of the hallway is black. No doubt caused by the constant trickle of water from above the lights— faulty plumbing. The rooms are small and the building is filthy, but these basement jobs are the cheapest in San Francisco.
I can hear pornographic moaning coming from an open room by the stairs on my way out, and a car passes on the street when I emerge from the building, but other than that, I don’t meet anybody. It’s cold out, my breath steams up in front of me and my knuckles immediately whiten. I jam my hands in my pocket and start up the incline this dump is on. The colder I am, the less I think about my stomach, and the more I crawl out of that introverted place I get sucked into only too often. The crowd at 2 am is a scattered assortment of drunks, psychopaths, and the occasional criminal. They thicken ever so slightly as I approach Union Square. The only sane people up this late are either deep inside bars or nightclubs, or stuck behind the greasy counters of 24-hour coffee shops and convenient stores. Sad little slaves half-asleep over magazines and in front of televisions, scared to death of anyone who’d come in this late. Chances are they’re all packing something behind the counter. This is a crowd I don’t mind being a part of— the insane and sleepless. On another night I might be tempted to visit one of these miserable venues to have a cup of coffee, but not tonight. Tonight I spend time with the city itself, and nobody else. Hello, San Francisco, painted sleepless whore, red neon like a bloody nose under too much cocaine, toxic succubus infested with crime and madmen.

This late at night, I’m a ghost, haunting block after lonely block of dying Earth with only my reflection in shop and car windows for company. My senses pick up, I hear and see everything. Every streetlight and neon sign is blinding to my finely attuned night vision. I look at every passerby as an invasion of my public privacy, nobody sees me when I pass in the shadows. The nightlife has long since drained from this part of town, it thickens up the street a few miles, where it coagulates like a tumor in this foul land of pain and poverty. Some kid in a suit stumbles out of a shady club on the corner. He looks around with wild drug eyes before hobbling towards a hot-red sports car. It only takes him three tries to fit the key in the slot in his intoxicated state. There’s a homeless man making noise in a dumpster in a nearby alley, he hears with almost supernatural clarity. He hears my ghost steps and peers out like an ugly cat.
The farther I walk, the more estranged I become. I crawl back into myself and make my way down the street by feral instincts. Bystanders and I pass in equal oblivion- I can only assume I continue to pass people, but I don’t really know. I’m startled to see a pale, walking skeleton staring back at me. It takes me a few moments to recognize my reflection, which in turn strikes me with an unhealthy breath of vertigo. I think my head is trying to escape my body. I think my mind is rebelling against myself. I’m dying either way.
I travel from where the streets are too clean, back into the dark, ugly, cobwebbed regions of the city. I recognize that I’ve subconsciously drifted towards their house, and in rebellion against my instinct I veer off and drift into an ugly neighborhood. Here, the night reigns supreme. The street is dominated by graffiti and fear: every venue is caged and locked, or else the night sweeps through and wreaks its havoc. Hookers, addicts, the countless homeless and deprived… You can almost feel the despair in this part of the city, the pure, wild despair. It’s terrible arms reach out to drag its visitors in, its minions set out to fuel its dominance. But I am a ghost to even them. I’m too different, almost incomprehensible. They see me, thin, sallow, cold, but they don’t see the restraint and courage these things represent. They see what makes sense to them: words like junky, addict, and strung-out are thick in the air. Their eyes sweep over me, untouched. They see me as one of their own, but I could never be anything like them. I belong and I don’t belong.

The farther into this ugly corner of the city I go, the thicker its signs of decadence appear. The streetlights end abruptly, as does the line of cars parked next to the street. I see the frame of a car completely dismantled on cinder blocks, nothing but the steering wheel with its ironic security bar remain. In the alleys lie the huddled masses of homeless, seeking shelter in numbers deep in the city’s underbelly. This place is more like a twisted, industrial maze than a city, a jungle of steel and concrete that’s already deteriorated beyond repair. I see a fire exit ladder hanging by a single thread of twisted metal, where it patiently awaits a tragedy. I imagine the darkness intensifying, not even the neon XXX signs remain. Everything is lost and abandoned and dying in the streets. Everything and everyone.
It’s about 3:28am when I turn around to head back, when I notice that the iron cage for an electronics store has been smashed in and wrenched halfway off. The window is broken, and beyond it lays darkness. I stop to peer into the darkness from the other side of the street, and I’m convinced that something in the darkness peers back. The ugly abyss has nothing for me. All the despair this city has to offer can’t touch me, can’t come near me. I’m immune to its poison, but it’s not immune to mine. For a moment, I get the impression that the window and I are nothing but two abysses staring back into each other.

October 4, 2007 5:03 am
I leave the nasty part of town in favor of a park bench in view of their house, where I spend a few hours watching the bleak night reality merge with the commonplace day one. Suddenly the street begins to fill with people who aren’t insane, and in fact had lain entirely oblivious to the night world just a few hours before. The night populace retreats back into its corners of the world: every body goes back home, if they have one, or else they find a niche on the street to sleep, out of sight to the hoi polloi. Some of them I believe to simply disappear. At 4:10am, the sky takes on a lighter blue, and stars in the direction of the still-invisible sun become difficult to see. The early morning is a strange time, because it almost seems absurd. How can the lethal, mighty night world be consumed by the day? How do these realities merge, and why are they allowed to do so? It’s almost as though a revolution is silently waged every morning. Hierarchies destroyed and rebuilt with the passing of the moon, each paradigm destroying the other in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. This time also fills me with despair, for I know my solitude will shortly be obliterated by the daytime traffic. I feel panicked; I want to return to the apartment, maybe phase out of existence with the rest of the nightlife. This time of day makes me incredibly nauseous, I’m anxious to say the least. Every few seconds I glance at their window, no lights. I want to pay my visit and leave, but nobody’s awake. I feel the lump of money I prepared for them, considerably thicker this week due to money saved on food. My resolve is weak in my long vigilance. The lights turn on- I almost leap from the bench, but I control myself. I’ll wait another hour. A car passes on the street, the first to abandon its headlights. The sun’s rays are visible on the horizon, the first glints appear on the windows of surrounding office buildings. Lights flicker on, coffee pots spring to life. I tap my foot, I pace. Just one more hour. **** I hate the day.

chapter two.
The alarm clock cries 5:00am, but I’m already awake. I can’t sleep Monday night, because I know what Tuesday brings. I don’t have to be at the office until nine, but I have to wake up this early on Tuesday mornings. He likes to come early, and I want to be ready for him.
I nudge Mary gently, but she’s awake too. She rolls out of bed and pulls on a robe- pink with little hearts and bunnies on it, plush, lined, machine washable, a Christmas present, I believe- and shuffles into the bathroom with an audible sigh that mirrors both our sentiments. I get out of bed and step into a pair of slippers- maroon, deep-soled, birthday- and wake up Kayla, who groans sleepily as I lift her out of bed and take her to the bathroom for her bath. She senses today is different, but she’s too young to understand why. It’s an occasion on which I envy her. By 5:35am we’re all washed, combed, dressed and deodorized. We sit together at the dinner table over breakfast- orange juice, coffee, waffles, and eggs that my wife makes fresh and delicious- and only Kayla feels like talking. Between bites of pre-cut, syrupy chunks of waffle she recites a playground venture for Mary, who shows mechanical motherly interest interposed with motherly nagging. And, and then Davey, Davey got all the way up to the top of the slide- that’s nice honey, eat with your fork, not with your hands.
If the daycare opened early enough for Mary to whisk her away before his arrival, he’d never see Kayla again. She’d be a closely guarded specter behind the towering protective statue of her mother. To him, Kayla wouldn’t even exist, Mary would make sure of that. Sentiments used to be different, of course, but those times are long gone. We could do without the dirty bundles of money he brings (which Mary thinks are stolen, anyway), and maybe we’d be better off without this weekly visit. Mary told me when it started that it was the compassionate thing to do. He obviously needs these visits more than we do, because, after all, we know how engrained his need for penitence is. But seeing Mary’s brooding, morbidly resolved expression this morning, assures me that compassion has absolutely nothing to do with it. If it’s not for the money, it’s out of fear. It’s for the reassurance of checking up on him every week to make sure that he’s still sane enough to function properly. At least this way he’s not left entirely to his own devices.
Mary’s just finished the dishes when he knocks in his silent, ghostly way, at 5:56 am. Mary tenses up, dries her hands, looks for Kayla. What waits at the door is as close to a skeleton as I have ever seen alive. He’s sickly pale, turning yellow, his lips are thin, cracked, and bloodless. His eyes peer out of blackish-gray wells of sickness, and there’s fine pale stubble on his head and pointed chin. His clothes hang baggy off his shoulders, which is scary because I know his jacket fit him perfectly when he made it, and worst of all he smells, not unpleasantly, but like decay, like wet earth, like a coffin underground for hundreds of years, mixed with the potent sting of cigarette smoke and something less natural. I open the door wider, Hi, Vincent, and I hold out my hand. He seems reluctant to shake it, his weak hand like long sticks in a paper bag when he does, Good morning, David. He sniffs the air slightly, and then coughs. The room still smells pleasantly of coffee and syrup, though I doubt this feeble apparition recognizes it as anything remotely pleasant. In fact, he seems on the verge of gagging.
I let him in and shut the door. His tense, bony shoulders slump oddly as he stuffs his hands in his pockets, always toting that peculiar toothy half-smile, and says hi to Mary. Mary holds Kayla protectively, emanating hostility; her short, disdainful utterance, Vince., doesn’t attempt to hide it. He nods humbly. I detect a hint of artifice in his mannerisms, and suddenly I understand. Every indication of ease in his posture is forced. There was a time before this hostility when he was called Vinny, and with some warmth at that. As well as he could, Vincent was trying to emulate his old self, but the best he could manage was a faint, artificial echo from down the winding, dark hallway of time that separates then from now. (Strangely, just now when I wrote that, I felt less like Vincent were at the end of that hallway, than I do like he was, somehow, that dark, winding hallway itself.) He says, how are you?, pretending not to notice the obvious slime in Mary’s voice. Fine, Vincent. I exchange a silent glance with Mary. Neither of us want to bring attention to his poor state of health, though the subject stuffs every silence with meaningful apprehension.
Vincent seems to recognize that there’s no conversation to be had here, and for a moment looks somehow hurt. He takes a folded bundle of ugly, crumpled bills (which appear to have been forced somewhat straight) from his jacket pocket, and silently hands it to Mary. Mary takes it and puts it in her pocket. Vincent stares for a moment as if he had expected her to count it, then looks down at the floor. There’s no saving this occasion: the silence is overpowering, the hostility is stifling, and the room suddenly seems too small to breathe in. Mary’s grip on Kayla tightens and she holds her a little farther away from him. Kayla’s silent, but her eyes are confused and unfeeling. She does not recognize this stranger, she doesn’t know what just happened, and she’s a galaxy away from knowing why. Then I notice Mary’s reason for pulling Kayla back so suddenly: Vincent’s eyes have come up off the floor and found Kayla. I see his eyes slowly move up and down the little jagged marks on Kayla’s neck which curl and point like little flames… The attention to her daughter makes Mary uncomfortable. At last she says scornfully, Jesus Vincent, what the hell happened to you? You look like a dead man. What’s going on? Vincent sags, this time without that fake effort, and gestures quietly that he doesn’t want to talk about it, or that he doesn’t really know, and for a moment I feel sorry for him. I break in, Vincent, when’s your court date? He responds unenthusiastically, Thursday. You’re going to court looking like this? With some inner resignation, Vincent meets her gaze and nods, almost whispering, yes, and though he looks like he has more to say, he is silent. Why can’t you just do what they ask? Mary pleads. She’s exasperated, but not with sympathy. Vincent understands this, and I see it cuts him like a knife. He shakes his head, moves back, opens the door. Next week, he mumbles, more to himself than us, and the words have special meaning. He’s not just confirming a weekly appointment, I think he’s addressing some hidden hope, down inside his pallid head, that sees the world with a different light than the one in which he lives it. Vincent the Hallway echoes regret and the forlorn hope of an Army General who denies that he has lost the war. To complete his sentence, Next week, things could be different.6