Pockets

[MalReynolds]

The building is tall and the cross draft is strong. I wonder how far it will carry me and if I’ll fall in front of my apartment window or my neighbor's. I don’t think it will matter too much, if I’m facing the street.

It was a series of stimulating ideas. Ideas that didn’t matter much when I thought them but now were prevalent. What does it mean to you, I thought, If it all ended?

I realized it didn’t.

The cross draft is strong and there’s an iron fence.

No one I’ve talked to has survived a fall this big before. I assume it’s peaceful because I’ve never seen anyone screaming after.

I kick a pebble off the ledge. It’s just like swimming. Jump in feet first, no time to get used to the water. You do it little by little, you lose your nerve and you stop.

Do I want to stop? Do I want to think?

I’ve seen how it will end, and let me tell you, this is better.

Unless I land on that iron fence.

There’s a panhandler on the street I would pass every day on the way to work. He had glazed over eyes. I wonder if he’s seen it.

Maybe.

Friction, fraction, imitation of style – it’s all there. Just one step, just one plunge, and that’s it. If I kick my legs, I’ll hit the ground running.

I kick another pebble off. I listen to see if I can hear it hit the ground, but I can’t. I guess I’m too far up.

The traditional Santa Clause was created by a marketing executive at Coca Cola in the 20’s – down to the suit color. Red and green are corporate colors. Hello, giftmas.

Guy that made the Santa is dead now. I bet he died smiling.

I don’t drop a pebble. I drop my cell phone. I can hear it break. It sounds sad.

I wonder if my phone thought about the cross draft. They can do that now, you know, in addition to locating people and places, they can feel cross drafts. It’s a nifty Nokia feature, although Nokia doesn’t really have a cultural icon. Maybe they will. Devil is in the details.

This time, I drop my shoe.

And then my shirt.

And then my pants.

I leave my boxers on for posterity.

I question leaving my glasses on. I can see the ground pretty well without them on – it’s going to be that large, grey item rushing up at me.

I need a pocket, I think out loud. To put my glasses in, because I don’t want to drop them.

Instead, I hook them on the waist of my boxers and check to make sure the button on the crotch flap is done. It is.

I take in a sharp breath.

There’s quite a cross draft, but I don’t notice it as I fall. It’s pretty much one big cross draft when you’re about to meet the pavement.

My hair is a mess and the air rushing up my nose hurts a tad. I cross my arms briefly before uncrossing them, then I cross my legs. I want to look comfortable.

Big grey blob, hey there.

Hey cell phone.

Hey shoe.

As I get closer to the ground, I can feel the draft again, but there's good news.

It looks like I’m not going to hit that fence after all.

I bounce.

Twice.

And then I bleed for a little bit.

I think I broke a lot of things. I landed on my shoe, which hurts, I think, maybe a bit more than the fence would have.

The ground is cold.

I’m pretty cold.

My glasses bounce away from my body and I scowl.

I wanted those with me in case you do get to take it with you.

But they bounce away. I see someone staring at me.

Stare away.

I just wish I had a pocket.

[MalReynolds]

I try to reach for my glasses, but my arm won’t move, so I close my eyes before I get a headache. Everything is dark, and everything begins to fade away. I feel like I’m floating, like I’m on wheels, I feel transcendent, like new wave bands would have you believe they feel. Have I shamed Thoreau, have I failed to live?

Do I care about Thoreau now, at the end of it all.

I don’t want to open my eyes. I might be in hell. Christians say God punishes suicide. They say God loves to kill, why take His final gift of death from Him. No bow on that gift, no ribbon, just take it or leave it, only you can’t. Branch Davidians thought that suicide would bring them closer to God. People think it’s alright to pick and choose what parts suit them the most. Some like ****ing children, but I don’t think there’s any section that says that’s okay.

People give money to the church out of guilt, and the church spends money on themselves out of shame.

The only control is self, and after that there is no more.

This feeling of weightlessness is jarring, but I like it. It’s comforting. I’m surprised, to be sure, to still be able to think. I’m still a conscious being, even after death. I want to open my eyes and look at myself on the sidewalk, floating away.

It’s a strain to open them. I feel like I’ve slept through a tornado that danced all night over my head, which is pounding. Transcendent death, I thought, should not be this painful. I wonder if I’ll be in this state of agony forever.

I let my eyes close and I can feel a sting in my arm. Some of the pain goes away, but there’s that dull thudding in my skull, a pounding in my brain.

Without the pain, without the strain, it isn’t hard to open my eyes.

I’m floating, but my body is gone from the street. I can see where I landed, it’s a mess of blood and clothes and what looks like a cluster of teeth, and the small shape of my glasses getting farther and farther away.

There are people all along side me, dressed in all white. They’re angels.

There’s a bump as I pass over the sidewalk.

And the clatter of wheels.

I look to the side as best I can without moving my neck, which I presume, if not broken, is at least strained.

I’m on a white sheet.

There’s a tube running out of my arm, up to a bag, which is hooked to a small metal pole, which is attached to wheels, which is being run aside me, held upright by an angle.

Inside, there’s a clear fluid. Below it dangles a bag of something red. Probably blood or marinara sauce.

The blood bank, a few weeks preceding my decision to leap to my destiny had decided to call me several times and demand that I pay them in blood. They always called when I was away, at work.

I found it funny, really, because I had false-positive tested for HIV three years ago. Either they were hard up and ignoring my records, or they hired a new guy. Maybe both. In any case, it was by federal law that I was not allowed to give blood anymore. Even a false positive is enough to send shivers down the spine.

They tested my blood, and it came out positive. They said they had to run some more tests to be sure, that it would take at least a few weeks until they were positive I was clean. I was positive I was clean.

In the time it took them to check, I blood-let into baggies and started keeping them in my fridge. I let some people know that I had some positive blood for sale. People will pay for anything these days. Word got out. Sometimes, people would call and ask if I had any HIV blood left. I explained it was a false positive. They paid me $200 a bag. Most used it as a faux-revenge method, others were less talkative about why they would want false-positive HIV blood.

I still get calls, even though this was a couple years ago. I thought about letting blood again and selling it, but the extra money on the side wouldn’t really do me any good. Money does nothing when you’re the king of the damned.

I wonder, briefly, if that’s my blood in the bag dangling beneath. I don’t stress about it.

“… are over here.”

“What?”

“His glasses are over here.”

The angels are talking about my glasses.

“Should we put them on him?”

“Dude, no.”

Dude is not very angel.

Wait, I try to say, but I gag.

“He’s gagging.”

I try to say, Who are you, but I cough.

“He’s coughing.”

“Well, don’t just stand there. Load him up.”

I fee weightless again, but in my stomach, I feel a pinch of despair that brings me screeching back to the Earth.

I should have shot myself.

I’m not dead yet.

[Chromer]

Very minimalistic Mal. Nice.

[MalReynolds]

Originally Posted by Chromer

Very minimalistic Mal. Nice.

Thank you. I'm going for a Chuck P style, jarring, fragments.

[MalReynolds]

They load me into the back of the ambulance. I can see in their eyes that I’m pretty messed up. My face is warm from blood, and every time I try to speak, it’s cough gag cough, or gag cough gag. There’s no speaking when you’re about to swallow your teeth. I keep struggling, trying to bring the pain back, trying to slow everything down, and all I can think about is ascension.

Ascend, dammit. Ascend!

I’m moving too much, and I feel another sting in my arm. I pray for a thousand more. Midway through the Prayer for One Thousand Bees, the shot takes effect and I pass out.

When I was in the fifth grade, you had to have a Tamogatchi. If you didn’t have a Tamogatchi, you were a ******, and if you were a ******, you had no friends. I wasn’t a ******, but I knew plenty of them.

There was a kid named Terry Branderson. He had brittle bones and had to walk around with canes. He would fidget with his Tamogatchi all goddamned day, and every time it would beep, or boop, he would ask someone for a high five. Even though his bones were constantly on the verge of breaking, he wanted someone to slap his hand.

I did it one day, without thinking, and his wrist shattered.

I was sent to the principal’s office.

After that, we weren’t allowed to play with Tamogatchis in school anymore.

They came and went, and all it took was the breaking of someone’s wrist.

Next year, if you had marbles, you were cool. If you didn’t, you were a ******. I had marbles. Terry Branderson’s arm was in a cast, still. He didn’t have marbles. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him, either.

The year after that, it was Pokemon Trading Cards.

The year after that, it was Razor Scooters.

The year after that, it was hip-hop music. They lost me at hip-hop.

I grew into my own person.

You know, the same one that jumped off the building.

Would things have been different if I had liked hip-hop?

Have I shamed Thoraeus?

**** Thoraeus. He was a whiny ass.

In high school, you had to suck the marrow out of life. If you didn’t, you were a ******. I was a ******. The inverse, I guess, was having the life sucked out of you by an outdated systemic ritual that lasts for four years and prepares you for four more. Since I didn’t want to suck the marrow out of life, I was a ******, and no one would talk to me. Not even Terry Branderson.

Terry Branderson was hit by a bus my senior year of high school. Out of his back pack flew a Tamogatchi, Pokemon Trading Cards, Marbles, Pogs, pieces of Razor Scooters, R-Za CDs, burned out copies of “Walden,” and his college application. His entire life was in that bag. Was he his own person?

Would Thoraeus be proud?

If you have life, you’re cool. If you don’t, you’re a ******.

According to my ER doctor, I was dangerously close to being a ****** again.

I false tested positive for HIV, I told him. I’m pretty much a ****** already.

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile.

I guess the marrow of life got sucked out of him in this place.

“You were touch and go.”

Well then, stop touching and let me go.

He smirked at this. I didn’t. Let’s change roles, let me be the doctor, let you be the guy on the gurney. Somehow, I didn’t think he would go for it. It was a long fall if you wanted to be the guy on the gurney, and that fall hurt. Bad.

“You might get to use your legs again, with enough physical therapy.”

Pull the plug. I don’t want to walk.

“Sure you do. You have all of life’s joys to look forward to.”

That’s what you think.

“That’s what I know,” he said with a wink.

God, what an asshole. Dr. Life. Dr. Friend. Dr. Won’t-Let-Me-Die-In-Piece.

Dr. Asshole.

“Dr. Blankenship,” he corrected me.

Whatever.

“I have other patients.”

And my patience is running out.

He walked away. I couldn’t move my leg. It was raised. I couldn’t move my other leg. It was also raised. I heard him talking to a nurse outside my curtain.

“I can’t deal with him right now. Just dope him up. I’ll talk to him in the evening.”

My arms are on fire, but they’re raised above me, too. I can’t move my neck. I think I broke everything in my body. I didn’t know that was possible. I tried to remember back to elementary school, about how many bones the human body had. I couldn’t remember, but it was a lot.

I broke a lot of bones. I think some of them might be back on the street.

I’m in burning agony. I should have shot myself.

The pain is dull compared to the future, though.

In the fifth grade, instead of learning about bones, I was staring at Sally Sullivan. If you had a girlfriend, you were cool. If you didn’t, you might as well have a boyfriend. For real, not in the coy sense of the word that’s socially frowned upon but acceptable. I wanted her to be my girlfriend more than I wanted Pokemon Cards. More than two Tamogatchis.

When I asked her to be my girlfriend, she laughed in my face.

“I have a boyfriend.”

Oh.

“He’s cuter than you are.

Oh.

“He gave me a frog for our wedding.”

Oh.

I think that’s the first time I wanted to shoot myself.

“You’re a ******.”

I think that’s the second time I wanted to shoot myself.

Who are you dating?

She didn’t need to answer. It was probably Thoraeus.

[Chromer]

Pretty cruel nurse. T_T

[MalReynolds]

Regardless, because I was denied her affection, I constantly sought her hand for the remainder of fifth grade. It was in those days that whatever shame I had, I lost. I’m afraid to this day I still didn’t make an impression on Sally Sullivan.

Sally went to a different middle school. She also went to a different high school. The best memory I have of her was when she was talking to me face to face, denying me. The best memory I have of a girl who I loved was rejection.

I never stopped thinking about her. All this pain is bringing her to the forefront of my mind, the lobes competing for which has been hurt worse. I don’t know either. I think the Sally Lobe is beating out the Pain Lobe by a fair stretch.

In high school, despite being a ******, I got laid. I couldn’t think about the girl who I was inside. Instead, I thought about Sally. Where she might be. Who she might be with. But all I could remember was her from the fifth grade.

The first time I had sex, I imagined it with a fifth grade Sally.

The girl was Jane Branderson. Her brother got hit by a bus two years later.

I had an infallible pick up line when trying to woo Jane.

Hey, I broke your brother’s wrist. Do you like coffee?

“What?”

Caffeine.

After the climactic event, I didn’t call her. She didn’t call me. I think she knew I wasn’t thinking straight. She was perceptive. I didn’t even go to her brother’s funeral, although I heard it was quite the revelry. The coffin fell into the hole, the automated lowering device breaking. After the coffin hit the bottom, there were reverberations of Terry’s bones snapping during the bounce.

His mother cried. His sister cried. His father cried.

I laughed.

Atlas shrugged.

The nurse came in and gave me a shot. I begged her for enough to put me under for good. I wanted to break like Terry.

“No.”

I’ll pay you.

“No.”

I have money. I have a checking account.

“No.”

Then go to hell.

And then I fell asleep again.

In high school, I was the mascot for our basketball team. I didn’t like Thoreau, but most of the players didn’t know how to read, so we got along. I didn’t talk to them. They didn’t talk to me. I ran by the sidelines and danced wearing a tiger costume. It was a mating dance. Women are innately attracted to the strange and unknown.

Most wanted it with the mask on.

It wasn’t a problem. I was overheating from the games anyway.

They made puns after.

“Tiger.”

“Animal.”

“Freak.”

Good enough for me. I ran the gamut. I probably picked something up. Hepatitis was common around the school. My senior year, I got tested. I was clean. No one ended up pregnant.

I was clean.

I was also sterile.

They mean the same thing, but are so different.

A hospital is sterile. It’s a germ free environment where people are sent to recover from illnesses, accidents, and sometimes very long falls.

My testicles were sterile.

Life, I remember thinking, is funny.

But not HA-HA funny. The quiet funny you see when the sofa is the wrong color, or the ottoman is a foot lower than the chair it’s paired with. A funny feeling that subsides inside you but you don’t mention. It goes away. It becomes normal. Life is funny.

Life is normal.

I had no family come to visit me. I had no family left.

Tectonic plates shift and grind. They bring down houses. They bring down crossbeams on my parents while I’m out of state visiting an uncle. They bring down roofing shingles onto my baby brother. They send dust into the air, choking my dog. They shake an entire neighborhood but bring down only one house.

If my family hadn’t been so religious, if they hadn’t been so zealous about God, Jesus and Omens, they might have let me back into their lives. I was sixteen. They saw me living as an Omen. The only one of my mother’s children to survive the Earthquake because I was out of town. Coincidence or Omen. I thought Coincidence.

Not that they would want to visit me. I tried to kill myself. They wouldn’t like that too much. Their minds were still trapped in a thousand year old text. Mine was free.

But then again, mine was on a gurney being supported by two rock hard pillows.

My mother wrote commercials for the radio. She knew exactly how to cram thirty seconds worth of words into one paragraph, complete with location, bonuses, deals, extravaganzas, festivals, dates, times, explosions, fireworks, whatever was needed. She could sell them. Up to fifty a day, which took less time than you would think. She spent the rest of her free time repenting.

My father worked construction. He was rotten at it. He had several house frames fall over, but he inherited a bundle from his parents when they died. He refused to do anything but carpent. Following in the exact footsteps.

Except Jesus didn’t die in an Earthquake.

If God loved you so much, he sure has a funny way of showing it, Mom. Dad.

Jared. Baby Brother. Soft Skinned Friend. Person who could grow up and out of the mould they had set. Person who could grow up with me. Take the weeds out of life, throw them to the wind.

Baby Brother. Tiny Mass Covered With Roofing Shingles.

His death hurt me the most.

Like a baby, he would grab my finger when I stood over his crib. He would coo. I could see in his eyes that he was different. Different from me, different from Mom, different from the ever-loving Father, different from the Holy Spirit. He was like me.

He could have jumped with me. I wonder if he would have.

I wonder if we could have been friends.

My father built our house.

Inherently, I blame him above God. I blame God less for the failure that was my upbringing. I blame open wires for my sterility. The only thing I can blame God for was letting me live.

If He has a grand plan for me, he needs to let me know.

Because as soon as I can walk, I’m heading to the roof deck.

As soon as I can walk again.

When I wake up, I’ll ask Dr. Asshole how long it should take. I’ll be interested in recovery. I’ll be interested in starting new again. I’m just depressed. I’m just a statistic. You can boil me down and I’ll fold, just let me walk again.

Like rhymes to the mariner.

But Life, Life is funny.

Life is Normal.

Life had more in store for me.