THE ONLY BAD THING THAT EVER HAPPENED AT
THE BOURBON HOTEL
by E. Brennan Hunt
The day after we found Damien I tried to go to work. Tired without coffee and increasingly anxious because of the crowd of people pressing in around me, their elbows and bags knocking me in the head.
A girl was sitting next to me. She wasn’t anything special but she was pretty. Her mousy brown hair hung loose and slightly dishevelled on her shoulders. She was wearing jeans, not too tight like most young girls but not baggy enough to appear unkempt. For a moment, I wanted to hit her. I imagined what it would feel like to press my hands around her throat, to watch her eyes roll back in her head. There was no precipitation for my ressentiment. Really, I just didn’t like her jacket, even though I never saw it directly, only as a reflection in the window. She was wearing a puffy blue jacket and I could feel the fabric of her jacket touching mine. I didn’t want her touching me, I didn’t consent to it. It was fabric rape. If she were to die in some horrible accident she would totally deserve it.
No she wouldn’t. She was just a girl on a bus wearing a jacket.
When the bus finally arrived at the Marine Drive train station and me and the girl stood to exit, I noticed she was actually quite beautiful. I wanted to follow her. She was taller than me by an inch or two and I had to walk quickly to keep up with her. I wonder what would have happened if I had caught up to her. Probably nothing. She would have disappeared into the Starbucks or one of the stupid stores and I would have proceeded to work. I will never know because a group of people cut between us and when I positioned myself to watch her she was gone.
All of the sudden the daylight was hurtfully bright. I hadn’t realized I had started crying. There was too much colour, too much shape. Every line was sharp and distinct. And there was too much noise. The more I challenged my mind to remain cohesive, the more exhausted I became. In that moment I asked myself if I would ever be able to feel anything positive again without the fear of what its absence would feel like.
On the way home there was a kid on the bus. He couldn’t sit still. He was crawling on the ground between people’s legs and spinning in circles. “Isn’t this amazing!” he kept saying to his slurpee drinking mother. I’m sure everybody on the bus thought he was retarded. I liked him. His mother repeatedly reprimanded him for not being normal. I felt sad for him. He was too young to comprehend what was happening. Too young to feel the need for restraint. For a while I felt like he was a part of me, a voice in my head. Maybe he was.
The guy in the seat next to me was writing in a journal. As I looked out the window I snuck a peek at his notebook. He had written a woman’s name over and over, Lauren. One sketch was particularly detailed, the L curling under itself and underlining all the other letters. I wondered who Lauren was and if she was somewhere thinking about him. He looked out the window, his eyes filled with dreams and sadness. Probably, she didn’t love him.
I stopped at the bar beneath my apartment, a lively sort of place where people dress in their weekend clothes and drink highballs with their friends. Sitting alone at a small table in the corner, I didn’t exactly fit in with the social atmosphere. I tried to sit politely, nervously picking at a crack in my table but everything was painfully loud. Glasses clinking. Shoes walking. It was overwhelming. There was a woman sitting near the end of the bar. She had short, almost boy-cut, white-blonde hair which, given that she was in her early forties was awkward enough, but contrasted with the red wine she brought to her lips, was nauseating.
I called over a server and asked if she could turn the music up. She complied but it couldn’t suppress the noise. I stood and ran to the bathroom, I crouched, leaned against a wall and cried. There were too many sounds and not enough tears. The noises multiplied and became jammed behind my forehead. I banged my head against the tile wall to dislodge them and it was working until somebody else walked in. I discreetly washed my hands and started toward home.
Even outside of the bar the voices of the people were in my head. Instead of decreasing as the distance between the bar and me increased, they grew louder and grew in number. Once I arrived home, I headed straight for the bedside table, avoiding my reflection in the mirror as I reached for a crack pipe. I had given up on trying to quiet the noise. I wanted to hear what the voices had to say, to discover how bad it would be if I let myself go.
While under the influence of the cocaine I had a dream about memories. Memories of things that never happened. Or, at least, I don’t think they ever happened. As I lay on the bed, drugged and half-conscious, I wondered how my mind could have convinced me theses events were real. But when I woke up I couldn’t remember any of them, so they must have been a dream.
There are times when I will catch my reflection in a mirror, an accidental glimpse while I am shaving or washing my hands and the image I see frightens me with unfamiliarity. Unable to recognize my face but logically understanding that the reflected image must be my own makes me want to smash that mirror and release myself. I hate that guy in the mirror, watching me, watching for what I don’t know but he obviously knows. If I could make him tangible, I might find a way to fight him. He’s always there, reflected in mirrors and windows and every polished surface.
Sometimes, rarely, I will regard that image not with fear but with a detached curiosity. I reach out to him and he reaches out to me in synchronicity. Two, identical, untouching hands on opposite sides of some glass. If I were to shatter that glass we would cease to exist for each other, which would be absolution enough for me, but there will always be another mirror.
Recently, I haven’t been able to make it through an entire day without at least three mood swings. And these aren’t the plastic, baby-safe type of swings, these are swings in an abandoned park, hanging from rusted chains, ominously warning of a face full of gravel that grinds beneath the skin.
The highs are no more tolerable than the lows, sometimes the highs are less high and the lows are less low so that I don’t feel such a dramatic force, but mostly, its as if a creature inside of me is trying to claw its way out, possessed by an evil whose birth will bring with it shadows and destruction.
In the middle, between hysteria and despondency, is an uncertain stability. A dizziness analogous to standing on a swaying bridge peering down at a turbulent river. There are times when I believe this is how my life ends… In exhaustion from trying to discern reality and fantasy. Reality being what remains when you can no longer remember your dreams.
I tried, for a while, leaving notes for myself. Neon coloured post-it notes with our songs and words and jokes and poems on them to remind myself there was a time when I felt better, to give myself something to hold onto until the pain passes. It didn’t take long for the shadows and tears to reclaim their dominance and all the colourful reminders of what was good were exposed as lies and ripped violently from whatever surface they were pasted to.
Everytime I hear a siren pass my building, andI hear them frequently, I assume they must be coming for me. If the siren is from an ambulance, I wonder what painful misfortune I must have suffered to put me in such a state of shock I had no recollection of it. If it is a police siren, it makes me wonder what crime I have committed, especially with the murderous thoughts currently roaming my mind. I forget entire portions of days so it’s not implausible that I committed a crime and forgot about it. If the siren is from a fire truck, I don’t really give a shit.
The next day passed without event. I was too sedated to get out of bed, but hour of staring at the ceiling relaxed my mind. Sometimes, like this evening, I contemplate the shape of a sleeping cat. They always look so much smaller when they are curled in on themselves, like a sphere of fur. A flattened sphere. Fragile. Vulnerable. Disembodied. Beautiful. Even people are beautiful when they are sleeping. They hardly possess the miasmic qualities they so viciously use to define their humanity when they are awake. No defences. No pretenses. If I were to become a serial killer, my pattern would be to murder people in their sleep.
For a minute I watch the cat, breathing and sleeping, his tiny head void of my thoughts. He is so small. I get up from the bed and step on his neck. Tiny bits of soft black fur poke out from the spaces between my toes. His body, his blood, is warm on the cold sole of my foot. I step down harder. Discomforted by this, he bites my foot in defence. In just return, I grab him by the neck and choke him with my left hand while pinning him to the floor with my right. It is disappointing how quickly he surrenders. When he had abnegated, I hold him a moment longer with a slightly loosened grip. He looks at me, directly in the eyes and he is not sad or afraid or angry. We bond in our shared contemplation of death. So I release him, I let him go. If his death is to be as inconsequential as his life I might as well spare myself the chore of cleaning up a crushed, dead cat body.
Afterward, not a single emotion is evoked by this event. No remorse. No guilt. Not even a desire to repeat the episode. I thought, this must be how the dead feel, the dead are better off, they have no consciousness of what they can no longer feel.
My last words to Damien were “get some sleep.” I could have said “ I love you , man.” I could have said “ You’re a great friend.” I could have said, “ Hey, if we never see each other again, please know that you changed my life in a way it will take the remainder of it to appreciate.” I could have simply said “goodnight.” But I said “ get some sleep.” As if I was ordering him to do it. Not the loving words of a best friend. Not even the pedestrian disinterest of a neighbor. More like he limp, indifferent demand of a retail store manager. “Get some sleep.” Commanded with some misplaced pretension that Damien Roy would ever, even for a second, stop to consider doing a single thing I ever suggested. Such an inane, innocuous request at three in the morning. Such a useless statement.
I wonder if anybody ever really takes the time to consider whether what they say to somebody might actually be the last words they will ever say to them. I wonder how much it would matter if we did. I wonder how many times I would have stuttered and stumbled and choked on my words and swallowed my breath if I had the slightest notion that what I was about to say to Damien would be all I would ever have the opportunity to say to him before he died.
To be honest, prior to that Saturday in October when I followed two first responders, armed with a portable defibrillator and a narcan kit, into the suspiciously quiet room across the hall from mine, I hadn’t given the entire idea of God much thought. I never bothered to care. I simply told myself there would be things about life that couldn’t be explained and, in spite of those things, I would probably be okay. I never counted my chips. I never thanked my lucky stars. I just did whatever I had to do to continue doing whatever I pleased.
There are easy days when everything falls into place the way it does in commercials for artificially scented air fresheners. These are effortless days I am able to float through. People talk to me and I respond. I still don’t get anything accomplished but I feel better.
At night, when I am waiting for my little blue pill to take effect, I lie very still and hold my eyes shut. Even in the dark, with the soft silhouette of the city filtering through my window, there is still too much stimulus. I can’t shut my ears to the noise. I tried earplugs but they magnified the sound of my breathing to a deafening level. The more I try to forget why I feel this way, the louder everything becomes.
Maybe one day, one of those sirens will come for me. And when it does I will shut my eyes so completely that even I won’t be able to know what became of me. The nurses will pass by my windowless hospital room, devoid of dangerous objects and say “ Poor thing, probably doesn’t even know where he is…” And they will be right. I will be on a far off beach with a guitar and a piano and a green coconut filled with dark booze and crushed ice and a red plastic straw.
“So, how are you?” She was trying to sound as if she cared but the effort was lazy and gave the impression she was only pretending out of some professional obligation. She scribbled on a piece of paper, probably trying to remember my name.
“Fine, I actually don’t need to be here.”
“So what brings you here, then?”
“I saw a doctor regarding some chest pains I was having. He suggested that I see you.”
“And what happened to cause your doctor’s concern?” Surely, I thought, she couldn’t be this ignorant. She had obviously been in contact with the doctor who referred me which meant she must have some idea about why I was there. Unless she believed I was an idiot, her question was an insulting attempt to manipulate me into some prewritten discussion.
“I would think you already have that information.”
“I just thought you might like the opportunity to explain the situation in your own words.” She was expecting me to say the usual shit depressed people say. I’m sad. I’m lonely. I’m ugly. Typical, I’ve already been categorized. These people never make any attempt to challenge the stereotype of psychiatrists. Middle-aged, caucasian people in wire framed glasses. Tall, thin, with a slight slouch of the shoulders, evidence of a vestigial childhood insecurity developed when being tall and thin begged ridicule at school from children eager to emphasize their awkwardness. Fuck, people were all so disappointingly common.
“The doctor said he would hospitalize me if I didn’t come. Really, there isn’t anything wrong with me, my life is fine. I’m a little upset because I lost a friend recently and I’m surprised I made it this far. I failed at life a long time ago.”
“ Failure is a pretty strong word. Do you consider yourself a failure?”
“The evidence would suggest that I am not a success.” She laughed. A short, abrupt laugh but a laugh nonetheless. You would think she could have done a better job hiding her amusement. Unless it was some kind of shrink trick, an attempt to make me more comfortable. But that kind of manipulation would require some interest in all this shit. You go to school for six years to become a psychiatrist, maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit. Then again, a good doctor wouldn’t be in this ugly office with those bad shoes.
“Remind me again what type of work you do.”
“I haven’t told you what I do.”
“I just like to make sure I haven’t missed anything.” She offered me an awkward and half-annoyed smile. Either she was manipulating me again or she had forgotten who I was. She knew I was new. She knew she didn’t know anything about me. Or she was fantastically stupid.
“Masonry.”
“Masonry. That’s hard work.”
“Yeah, I didn’t plan on it. I was looking for a change in my career path a couple of years ago and rather than work through the effort of actually trying to find a job, I got a buddy to hook me up. It pays the bills. Most of the time.”
“So, you’re having trouble at work?”
“I guess so. I used to be the best on the crew, the shit is like breathing to me. The pictures of walls move through my head faster than I can lay them. Construction is a simple language, logical. It comes naturally to me. Maybe because I was really good at puzzles when I was a kid. But lately its been a struggle. The designs get stuck in my head and when I try to force them out its a fuckin disaster.”
“What’s different now?”
“Nothing I shouldn’t be able to handle. I don’t know. I really don’t know. Everybody talks about how smart I am and I never believe them. Turns out, I could be right.”
So, your depression is affecting your work.”
“No, I’m not depressed.”
“What was the reason for your doctor referring you to me then?”
“He thought I was depressed.”
“Why would he think that?”
“Because he’s a G.P.” That made her laugh again. A little less restrained this time. Insecure and arrogant. In under an hour I had identified the two most important aspects of her personality. I doubted that she could say the same about me.
“You just said you’re not depressed.”
“I’m not.”
Look, please just tell me precisely what happened.”
I went to a doctor to get a note for E.I.. The doctor asked me what was wrong, I told him I was crying a lot and not sleeping. He asked me some ten question, magazine quiz then gave me some pills and told me to come back in two weeks. I went back, he gave me more pills. I went back again, he gave me more pills again. I asked if I had ever thought about harming myself, I said ‘of course’. He asked if I was having suicidal thoughts, I said ‘I am now’.”
“Are you having suicidal thoughts?”
“It’s a paradoxical question. In order to answer it you have to have thought about it. So, the only two logical answers contradict themselves.” She looked perplexed. She had judged me. I didn’t feel like putting in the effort to explain that not all construction workers are Neanderthals and that I, in fact, had a degree too, funnily enough, from the same school she went to. It was just easier to lie.
“I’m going to prescribe a low dose antidepressant, it’s a reversible
MOAI. Basically, it works by binding itself to an enzyme so that the enzyme can’t break down the neurotransmitters associated with depression. There are some dietary restrictions and you should avoid drinking alcohol.”
I had no idea what she had just said. My mind was a fucking mess. What was once my sanctuary had become overpopulated and ungoverned. I was trying to sort through all of my thoughts for some meaning or relevance. My head felt heavy and my eyes hurt from being constantly open.
Just pictures in my head, I told myself. That’s all. That’s all they are. It was a useless attempt to calm myself.
There were three hours left until my next appointment. Again, I had decided to forego work for another day of wandering around Gastown, hating it and cursing myself for my choice. It was a day to be celebrated, my first colossal failure as a crew chief. I would like to say I gave up, laziness being more desirable than incapacity, but the truth was I couldn’t handle it anymore. I made my way to a bench nestled between a few large fir trees to sit and stare at nothing for a couple hours. I closed my eyes and tried to isolate myself from the world. But the outside world was not a quiet place. People were walking loudly, talking to their friends about taxes and Lululemons and housing prices and organic fruits. Or yelling into their cell phones set on speaker to someone else, also on speaker, and neither of them can hear each other so they talk over themselves, progressively louder, until one of them finally shuts up.
The air was warm on my face. The sky had broken from its morning grey into a circular blue decorated with the occasion thought of a cloud. I lied down on the bench and closed my eyes. I wondered how long I could lie there before someone tried to move me. Probably a couple of days. When they found me I would be so still they would have to check my pulse. They would ask my name, ask if I was okay, and I would just stare straight up, witness to the stars. Or the birds. Or clouds, or whatever needed witnessing in the sky that day. Eventually the paramedics would be called and cart me away and dump me at the northeast entrance at St. Paul’s hospital. And when no one was watching I would escape and try to find the sun. Because there is just more beauty in stillness and humility that there is in purpose and laboured motion.
The bench was exactly where I wanted to be. A place where I was free to speak my mind to myself. To organize my thoughts about Damien’s death. Without guilt or repercussions. To remember our friendship. To replay the good parts, skip the bad, to be together again with my best friend doing whatever we wanted regardless of reciprocation or reality. I wanted to find a way to stay there with him. Laughing. Writing songs. Planning our future. Dating imaginary women and spending an inexhaustible amount of imaginary cash. I was so empty without him. Benign. Useless. So alone.
At that moment everything changed. I was content, even peaceful, and with the next breath the world collapsed into chaos. The sun descended behind the trees, the air turned dark and cold. It was some sort of withdrawal. From what? Drugs? Dreams? Every breath I drew filled me with more sadness. I briefly understood completely that this feeling inside me was a permanent and terminal cancer.
“So, how are you?” Curt Hein. She wrote my name at the top of a sheet of paper. I didn’t remember telling her my name. She probably got it from the clinic doctor but, still, there were social protocols. For that matter, she never offered me her name either. It’s there, typed in shiny pretty letters on her diploma in its generic, collegiate, thin black frame on the wall.
A child had been there. There was a small, blue plastic chair decorated with a sticker of a puerile bear holding a bouquet of coloured balloons in the corner of her office. And atop the filing cabinet sat an aged, stuffed rabbit with floppy ears. The chair looked too small for a child and the rabbit too large. Children should not be exposed to such torment, forced to live in a world where nothing fits. I imagine she was proficient in dealing with her children. There was a comforting, maternal softness to her voice and her face. “What would you like to talk about today?”
“Nothing. There’s no point.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because nothing is going to change.” I watched the words forming in my head as if they were being made by some machine. Every sentence was a cliche and there was no way to stop it. Fighting it only made the machine choosing my words work more efficiently.
“Well, Curt, active participation in the conversation will actually provide me with a better overall view of who you are.”
“You wear glasses,”
“Yes I do.”
“So how can I be sure you view of me is accurate?”
“Clever. Is subjective data not adequate for the task at hand?”
“Not if I’m the one interpreting it. No matter how many variations I may come up with the results will always be the same.”
Her sharp, outlined cheekbones and long thin nose were features that probably took the better part of childhood to grow out of. Everything about her looked deteriorated. Her wedding ring wasn’t as shiny as it should have been. Her cheap, black shoes were scuffed all along the toes. Her hair needed a cut. The pink paint on her office walls was faded and there was a lighter pink triangle where a painting used to hang.
“I want to die.” Simple words stated so simply. But I wasn’t sure I meant them.
“Because your friend is dead.”
“No, its deeper than that. I have always wanted to die. When I was born my mother suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and the doctors couldn’t stop the bleeding. I was supposed to be a twin. My brother died and I lived. I’ve always thought I would have preferred it the other way around. Or, at least, we could have died together.”
“So you’ve had a close relationship with death from a very early age.” Not that early. I was never supposed to be a twin, I just liked to tell that story and she bought it.
“It’s normal for children to have those thoughts”
“Other kids told me I wasn’t normal.”
“what were your friendships like growing up?”
“I didn’t have any friends. During lunch breaks at school I would pretend to be sick so I didn’t have to go outside. If I did have to go out I would sit by myself.”
“How did you get along academically?”
School bored me. It was too easy.”
“You were obviously quite intelligent.”
“You haven’t asked me about my parents.”
“Would you like me to?”
“Aren’t you people supposed to ask about them so you can blame everything on them?”
“Maybe next time. We’re out of time for today.”
I was afraid the more I talked about my problems the more real they would become. Maybe it would have been better to have stopped seeing her. Maybe I should have just let the departed remain. But I couldn’t write and I couldn’t play music and I couldn’t talk to Damien about it. Besides, it was mildly entertaining.
“So, how are you?”
“Forcibly resigned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like everything I have been working on, everything that defined me has been taken away and there is nothing I can do about it.”
“You feel your friend took away everything that defined you.”
“ I know it’s all in my head but that doesn’t make things any easier. I feel like nothing is real anymore and it scares the shit out of me.”
“If nothing is real anymore, what is there to be afraid of?”
“C,mon Doc. Knowing the monster under your bed isn’t real doesn’t make it any less terrifying when the lights go out.”
“Okay, until we see each other next time, I want you to stop thinking about all the things you believed defined you and focus on what you are.”
“Oh yeah? What am I Doc?”
“I think you know.”
“no, please, enlighten me.”
“You’re very intelligent, Curt, and you’re aware of your good looks and the influence they have on other people. And you use that awareness as an advantage over other people.”
She wasn’t totally wrong. But I know what I see when I look in that Goddamned mirror and in reality would I consider myself good-looking. On a good day my physical appearance is more likely to raise concern rather than illicit attraction.
“If I had any influence I wouldn’t be alone, Doc.”
“You’re not alone.”
“yes I am.”
“No you’re not. But that’s another discussion for another time.”
I had a dream that night that I was drowning. Water. Suffocation. Salt stinging my eyes. I could feel myself being pulled, held under by the water, waves rolling around me, breaking somewhere far above me. I didn’t sink but the surface was unattainable. It seemed too much effort to try and break free, it would have been a useless attempt anyway, my body against a world of ocean. I wasn’t scared. Calm. I floated between the ocean floor and the breaking waves. It was peaceful, like being rocked to sleep. My breath, that moment, seemed to last forever. I didn’t hold my breath, I didn’t need to, I felt as though I could breathe underwater. Falling asleep. Loneliness without sadness. I want that dream again.
I gave up on showering every day since that was a task that required me to stand still and concentrate for twenty minutes. The standing still doesn’t make the thoughts slow down. Not even if I hold my breath and close my eyes. Instead they are transformed into noise that circles my head like different colours of paint being washed down the drain, at first brilliant and colourful but it isn’t long before the colours mix together into one insipid shade of brown every art teacher warned would be the result if you tried to fix a mistake by adding more colours.
“So, how are you?”
“Doc, what’s wrong with me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I am here for a reason, right?”
“Well, Curt, I don’t like to label people with specific diagnoses. In my experience, such diagnostic labels can provide patients with an excuse to prolong their unhealthy behaviors.”
“I’m not making anything up, Doc.”
“I’m not suggesting you are. I believe your pain is a very real sensation but the attenuation of your discomfort lies in not overemphasizing it. Refusing to give your pain attention thereby reinforcing it can actually be beneficial”
“So ignore it and it will go away?”
“Well, not ignorance so much as a delicate balance of comfort without over-indulgence.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It doesn’t have to be. The mind automatically resorts to unhealthy thinking in response to trauma to the point where the response becomes depended upon. But if such defences are ignored the mind will begin to seek new survival strategies.”
“What if I go through all that and my mind replaces the current strategy with something worse?”
“You have a choice in the actions you take.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do.”
“What if I don’t want to die. I ignore all the thoughts I have of killing myself then somebody else kills me anyway? I might as well not resist. I make a choice and bad things happen anyway.”
“So now you don’t want to die?”
“I don’t see that I have a choice.”
“You might not have a choice in the details of your death but you can influence the outcome by making better choices in your life increasing the probability you will live longer.”
“I don’t want to be alone any longer.”
“Nobody is ever alone. Let’s pick this up again next week.”
The sessions weren’t working. I was never going to change. It was hopeless and I knew it and I didn’t really care. I was sure Doc didn’t care either. She kept me coming back because Medical Services paid the bills and they paid on time.
Maybe I didn’t deserve to get better. Or. More likely, there was no “better”, this is just who I had become. Without Damien nothing made sense anymore. The world had become confusing and boring. Nothing felt like it mattered anymore. I was simply passing time. Like standing at a bus stop on a remote street with almost no light and no guarantee a bus was coming. I missed Damien so much it hurt me physically. Everytime I began to remember Damien the memories weren’t what they should have been. He didn’t look like himself. And we didn’t love each other the way we did in reality. Maybe that was my new reality, one in which Damien didn’t love me anymore. And why should he? We were supposed to protect each other, always. He protected me and I abandoned him. It’s one thing to say goodbye to somebody you love, it’s an entirely different thing to know you were leaving them to die.
Nobody believed I was in real trouble.Nobody actually knew how afraid I really was.
Damien’s friendship was something so completely different from anything I had ever known. We didn’t waste time not understanding. Everything about ourselves was revealed in the short time we had together. Our conversations were coded, like poetry, with most of the meaning contained in the spaces between the words.
I wondered if I had kept trying, if I had kept reaching out, somebody would understand me. I couldn’t remember what it was like before. Before my head and heart were broken. I couldn’t envision a life that would have value enough to pursue it. It scared me that I couldn’t see how much was wrong with me. I let myself believe it when Damien told me I had a purpose in life. But that would now depend on pulling myself back into the world of the living. A world I didn’t fit into. A world where people drink coffee in paper cups and talk to their friends and wash dishes and buy curtains and go to their jobs. Ultimately, life would ruin me a lot more quickly than death.
Without Damien to reassure me, I was stripped of my spirit. I could see what I actually was, inconsequential. I didn’t want to live in a world where taking out the garbage was an accomplishment. I didn’t want to compromise all I should have been to become something simple.
At that point I stopped registering pain in the proper way. It no longer meant anything. It was still happening to me but something was preventing me from feeling it.
“So, how are you?”
She had a box of kleenex on her desk with pictures of squash on it and another with pictures of spices. I wondered if patients found squash less threatening than happy scenes of butterflies that usually decorate the cardboard.
“Your kleenex has squash on it.”
“Yes, I suppose it does.”
“The zucchini is a small summer squash, twenty centimeters in length. Both the green and yellow fruits as well as the yellow flowers are edible and can be prepared in a variety of different ways.”
“What are you saying, Curt?”
“I don’t think the pills you gave me are working.”
“What makes you think that?”
“On account of nothing has changed. I still hurt everyday, all the time.”
“It might be wise to remain on the medication if your moods are on a predictable cycle.”
“Yeah, predictable, split seconds of happiness that inevitably lead to pain. I can’t control the happiness but at least I know what’s coming next.”
“Happiness does not have to be followed by pain.”
“Yes it does. Its a circle and it repeats over and over.”
“It’s not a circle, it’s a propagating wave form. It has predictable, regular oscillations but the overall mood-wave follows a generally increasing path.”
“But I don’t feel any increase.”
“Then you’re stuck, you need to readjust the magnetic field that is your perception so that your mood-waves move like a line rather than a circle.”
“Those knobs are broken.”
“What knobs?”
“The ones that control my mood wave settings.”
“Well then, I give you new knobs, you just have to attach them to your machine.”
“Are they shiny?”
“So shiny you’ll have to put up a net to keep the crows away.”
I started to think I may have been wrong about her. She didn’t see me looking at her. She was pretty, how had I not noticed that before? She was writing on a pad of paper. I liked watching her write. I stopped myself before my thoughts turned inappropriate, looked up at the ceiling and cleared my throat. She looked directly into my eyes.
“Tell me about this week.”
“I came across a magnet in a bookstore with the words printed on it “Shoot for the moon. If you miss, at least you’ll be amongst the stars.”
“This magnet upset you?”
“Of course it did!”
“Explain.”
“Set aside for a moment the generic statement behind it, the inaccuracy is appalling. The moon is much closer to the Earth than the nearest star, best case scenario, if you shoot for the moon and miss because you fail to account for all sorts of physics, you will become trapped in a low level orbit where you might be rescued but not likely. Worst case scenario, you plummet back to earth and burn or float aimlessly through the dark void of space until you suffocate. And, technically, we are already amongst the stars so why should we shoot for the moon in the first place?”
“Maybe the point is since there is nothing to lose it can’t hurt to try something new.”
“It can hurt! If you miss and die!”
“There is something to be gained from every life experience, even the ones that are perceived to be failures”
“I’m surrounded by people I detest.”
“Try surrounding yourself with people you don’t detest. Go back to work.”
“I can’t go back to work. I talk to myself. I see things that aren’t there.”
“You may have to do some rearranging in your professional life but these are all limitations that can be overcome.”
“So where do I start?
“Wherever you can. Tell me all about it next week.”
On my way home I spotted a lamp tangled in some decaying blackberry bushes near the train tracks behind the Home Depot. I had to have it, to take it home with me. Damien brought home nearly every piece of crap we ever passed on the street. When I plugged it in, the lamp was too bright. It made the room too bright. I didn’t recognize my home. Or I did. I don’t know. It was different somehow, like I didn’t fit in it anymore. I got scared. The light sharpened the corners of the room and changed the colour of the paint on the walls. Somehow the lamp had taken away my home and replaced it with a substitute. I didn’t know where I was but I knew I wasn’t in my home anymore. Like a child seeking comfort from a monster I threw the lamp across the room. It hit the wall with enough force to shatter. It was darker now but the room was still changing, still moving. The broken glass caught my attention and I went to it. It told me it had a secret to tell me. My body wasn’t mine anymore. My body sat on the floor in front of the broken lamp. I thought I saw Damien standing in the darkness but I couldn’t be sure. My left hand reached into the pile and picked up a long piece of the glass. My right arm turned and offered up the soft flesh of its underside.
There was no fear, no crying or confusion. And when the bleeding stopped the possession was over. My body settled itself, exhausted, and with some concentrated effort I was able to clean the blood from myself, vomit and retire to bed in my clothes.
I saw my psychiatrist the next morning. She was walking down the hospital hallway toward the clinic as I was heading to the bathroom. I had hoped this would happen, that she would see me and smile. Instead, I turned and walked the other way, quickly. The pain of rejection right now was too much for me to even consider she might acknowledge me with even an artificial fondness. Soon, my fear was that I made the wrong decision. That she did see me, that she wanted to see me and I rejected her.
Motivated by hunger and the desire to keep a roof over my head I began the agonizing search for employment. In recent weeks I had single-handedly provided conclusive evidence that it was in fact possible to survive on beer, potato chips and crystal meth. However, after substituting beer for malt liquor and chips for undercooked potatoes, the cuisine had become unfavorable.
I was never capable of working in academics, research or any other area to which my long sought after degree was supposed to entitle me. I was subjugated to minimum wage, minimum challenge and minimum stimulus labour. However, this coincided with my progressive dispassion and laziness. I limited my job search to within a five block radius of my apartment wherein I encountered a pessimistically high number of businesses employing the most desperate of the population willing to work for anything.
My resume needed to be altered. It wouldn’t do any good to go around touting a proficiency in laterally binding earthquake resistant, load-bearing walls and fluency in autocad and Java. Nor would my abilities to reduce complicated epistemological conundrums into eloquent and concise arguments warrant employment in an establishment where having a high school diploma guaranteed you an upper-management position.
Two days later I received a phone call from a coffee shop asking if I was available for an interview the next day. They wanted me there by nine a.m.
It was raining the next day. After years of living in Vancouver I had still refused to purchase an umbrella. I rarely went outside. And all those people carrying all those black umbrellas annoyed me to the point where I would rather be soaking wet than associate myself with them.
The manager who was to interview me offered me a coffee. I should have declined, I was still shaking from the despairing languish that preceded and the intoxicated high that followed my cutting incident. My hands were impossible to still.
The interview was a difficult event despite the fact that the questions were anticipated and should have been easy to answer. (“So, what makes you a team player? “ To which the truth, “I don’t actually like people so I keep my mouth shut and do what I’m told,” didn’t seem appropriate.) It required forced concentration to remember what the last question was. More than once I was afraid I was answering a question that hadn’t been asked and quickly had to resort to a generic statement.
It was an effort to talk to someone in such plain terms. The conversation didn’t make any sense to me. I was led to believe there was truth in sanity. But we were two people claiming normalcy as our default personality, having a conversation where neither of us said anything we really meant.
“So, how are you?”
“I got a job.”
“That’s good. What’s your new job?”
Something was wrong. The kleenex box was on its side. It shouldn’t have been like that. It was in my head. If I fixed it I would be giving in to my delusion. I looked away for a moment.
“I count change and steam milk.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
Her lamp was sitting half off the filing cabinet and the shade was slanted. Somebody had done this.
“No. I don’t know.”
“Well, its something positive.”
Maybe the lamp and the tissue box were a test to see what my reaction would be. I hate being tested.
“There was something positive in that?”
“Yes. You can pay your bills. That’s life affirming action.”
The lamp-kleenex scene was beginning to feel like dejavu.
“Yes Doc, poverty is awe – inspiring. May not be able to eat but I can keep my phone on for nobody to call.” It wasn’t supposed to be a joke. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing at me for being cynical or if she genuinely thought I was trying to be jovial. Nobody usually laughed at my sarcasm. Most people found me abrasive.
“There seems to be a habit of all- or- nothing thinking in you evaluation of accomplished tasks.”
“I haven’t accomplished anything.”
Maybe none of this is real. The kleenex or the lamp. Or any of this at all. My brain is broken.
“Why is that?”
“Because I never ever reach my goal. Either a project is abandoned before it is finished or I reset my original goal before I’ve reached the end.”
Maybe this is a movie only the prop person made a mistake.
“That’s not all-or-nothing thinking?”
“I suppose. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel accomplished by achieving a goal I’m supposed to achieve. All there can ever be is the fulfillment of expectations. There is no pride in behaving as required. I don’t want to be congratulated for paying a bill. These things shouldn’t be difficult. Just because I’m defective doesn’t make them a triumph.”
Maybe I moved the objects in the office. Why would I do that? And when. If I did it last week she would have fixed it by now.
“Curt, any prevalence over a hardship is an accomplishment that merits acknowledgement. It doesn’t mean you can’t keep progressing with other ambitions.”
“It might.”
“Might what?”
“Might prevent me from progressing.”
“How’s that?”
“If I am satisfied I may not want to progress. Satisfaction will lead to complacency. Why continue with personal development if I am already content with simplicity?”
“Isn’t it possible that simplicity and pride might make establishing your goals easier?”
“Yes. But if I’m happy I might forget that the person I am isn’t the person I want to be.”
“If you’re happy, what difference does it make?”
“|It’s a waste of potential. My life is enough of a waste as it is. If I have more character to develop, it would be ridiculous to stop in such an embryonic phase. You don’t have an abortion because pregnancy made you happy enough.”
Fuck the lamp and the bookcase. Why did I care?
“Your determination should be commended. But you need to find a way to enjoy life.
I might begin to enjoy life if death was less stressful.
The next morning I had a morning dream about my doctor. That she was in my fantasy made confronting wakefulness all the more difficult because not only did I have to face my life, I had to lose her as well.
In the dream it was her birthday and she was having a party. I don’t think I was invited, but I was there, barely noticed by her. She was smoking a joint and asked if anybody wanted any, I thought if I spoke to her she would have to reply. When I said I would partake, she passed the half-burned joint to some guy I didn’t know. He barely noticed me too.
I woke up terrified, unaware of where I was. My body began to tremble and I could feel tears pouring down my face and hanging in thick, tentative drops before falling to the floor.
“Where am I?” I repeated, staring up at a bright white light.
“You’re with me” Damien Answered. I turned my head to discover the hard features of his face above mine. His dyed hair brushed back as if he had rushed it. He knelt on the floor sitting back on his knees, “You’re safe.”
“I can’t move my body.”
“Yes you can. I need you to help me.”
“I can’t help. I’m dying and there is nothing I can do about it. But if you stay with me I won’t have to die alone.”
“Curt, I need you to do this for me.”
“I can’t Damien! I can’t!”
“Yes you can! I’m not even really real, right? I need you to forget me and live properly now.”
“I can’t! I can’t live completely without you and I will not forget you!”
“You have to, it’s the only way everything will work! If you don’t forget me I will destroy you! I will hurt you every day and I will never let you die!”
“You’re lying to me. You’re lying to make things easier.”
“I’ve been hurting you to protect you. But if this continues I will start hurting you to punish you.”
“Get out of my head you fucking liar!”
“I’m trying to Curt. I don’t want to stay here. It’s loud and bright and nobody says what they mean. It’s a boring and confusing world. I never wanted to be a part of it. I finally found a way out, but you have to finish this.”
“But…”
“I will visit you sometimes.”
Damien was only trying to see me happy again. It was never my goal to be happy. Happiness, to me, is like God. It’s an idea people depend on to bring them comfort and make life easier but its not real. I would rather be sad and know my sadness is real. If I believed in God, he would leave me too.
I think it was one of my parents who told me once, if you really want to know the answer to something, all you have to do is ask.
“Hey! Hey, can you hear me you almighty piece of shit? Huh? Can you hear me now you self righteous son of a bitch? That’s right, you’re a piece of shit, son of a bitch and I don’t give a fuck if you’re listening to me because I don’t give a shit if you’re real or not! What do you think about that you omnipotent faggot? C’mon, show me what you can do… show me the way, show me the light. Speak up for once in this miserable fucking existence and explain this to me! How come you always expect us to speak to you? To worship and wait for you. Why do you expect us to do all the work? To fight over you, to die defending you. What kind of a God would ask us to do that? Sit back and watch while we fucking tear eachother apart! Rape our sisters and mothers. Nail our fathers to fence posts and burn each others homes! That’s your big plan? Well, fucking make it make sense! Explain it to me! Explain how taking Him away from me makes any sense. How the fuck does it help the world? It doesn’t, does it? No, it doesn’t so fuck you! You probably don’t have a plan. You probably don’t know what the fuck you’re doing at all! Tell me why Damien had to die now. When everything was just starting to make sense again. When everything was just starting to get better. When Damian was finally himself again. I can’t do this without him! A lot of us are really fucking fucked without him! Is that what you have planned for us? The children you love so much. Your big master plan is to watch our fucking lives fall apart? How does that make any fucking sense? Of all the people you could choose, he is the one, the one of us who actually wanted to believe in you! He actually gave a shit about all your fucking rules! If anybody deserves a chance to show that to you, it was him. He deserved to live longer than any of us! Explain that to me. Come down here and make killing my best friend make sense! You can’t, can you? No, because if anything you want us to believe about you is actually true, it doesn’t make any fucking sense!
I hope you do exist. Ya hear me? Yeah, that way I won’t spend the rest of my life hating some imaginary, fairy-tale, faggot piece of shit. That’s right! All knowing, all powerful, all faggot, sorry, motherfucking, sad sack piece of shit!”
Walking into my room and finding any other person on my bed would be startling. Walking into my room and seeing myself on my bed, attentively reading my copy of the New Testament was particularly unsettling. It was me but it wasn’t me. I stared in silence for a moment. Before I began to speak, the man on the bed raised his index finger to his lips and shhhhhhed me. At that point, I didn’t care if he was me or not, nobody shhhhhes me in my own room.
“Who the fuck are you? How did you get in here?”
“Wait, I’m almost done.”
“Dude, get the fuck off my bed!”
“Almost there… okay… Done.” The man points to the bible he is holding and smiles.
“Have you ever read this? This is the funniest book I have ever seen.”
“Look man, just get out of here. I really can’t handle this shit right now.”
“Are you serious?
“Serious about what?”
“You can’t handle this shit right now? Should I come back when it’s more convenient for you?”
“Dude, who the fuck are you?”
“Well, that’s the million dollar question isn’t it, Mr. Hein? Who the fuck am I? Why don’t you tell me, Mr. Hein, who the fuck am I?”
“Look pal, I don’t have time for this shit! Just get out of my room before I throw you out!”
“Time, Mr. Hein, you don’t have time? Listen to me , pal, you don’t have the first fucking idea about time. You treat time as if it is a line. You concern yourself with the divisions of time rather than its direction. You believe time and space are separate things.”
“Seriously, who are you?”
“Time, Mr Hein! Pay attention! You people accept some arbitrary convention that time is measured by the movement of hands around the little faces of your little clocks. You have synchronized your little clocks with the motion of your little planet in relation to your little sun. It has never been brought to your attention that your entire concept has no meaning outside of your little solar system. You have no idea about the nature of time.”
“Alright, good talk. Now get out of my room!”
“Sit down, Mr. Hein! I assure you most definitely do have time for this shit! For me there is no passing of time, there is only the eternal now. Your notions about time and space are fictions, Mr. Hein. The entirety of your universe, past and present is spread out simultaneously in space. Your hours and minutes and seconds, your days, your weeks, your lifetimes are imaginary. There is no series of points that can be divided. So relax, sit down.”
What else could I do? I sat in the chair next to my bed. I couldn’t come up with something to say.
“Listen to me Curt, if it were in anyway possible for you to grasp the truth about time as I know it, you would understand that we could sit here for as long as we want to. However, I have better things to do, so let’s get to the point. Shall we?”
“What point? What are you talking about?”
“oh come on,Curt! When you asked me to come here to explain things to you I didn’t think you meant every little fucking thing! That would literally take forever!”
“Asked you to come here? Who…’’
“On the street, Curt, On the street! You asked me to come here and explain my big fucking plan. Do you remember?”
“Okay… Hold on… You’re saying…”
“yeah.”
You’re saying that you’re…”
“Yeah.”
“But you can’t…”
“I am.’’
“Holy shit!”
“Haha! It sure is.”
“Oh my God! This is fucked up!”
“Excuse me? All of the sudden I’m your God?”
“No… Shit… I just meant…”
“Relax, Curt, I’m just fuckin with ya.”
“Okay, wait… If you’re here right now, who is… you know… watching the universe?”
“C’mon, Curt, Think about it. Obviously I’m not just here right now. I am everywhere, all the time.”
“So why did you come?”
“Seriously?”
“I mean, people must call you out like that all the time.”
“No, actually, most people usually show me a bit of respect.”
“So, are you here to punish me?”
“No, Curt, I’m not here to punish you. You seem to be doing that well enough on your own.
Go on, son, ask me.”
“Where is Damien?”
“That question cannot be answered in a way that you will find satisfactory. Ask another.”
“Are you saying you can’t tell me?”
“No, I’m saying you will not be satisfied by the answer.”
“Where is Damien?”
“Damien is everywhere and he is nowhere. You are asking about your friend’s location as an organic whole. A person, as you like to call yourselves. You assume that each of you are self-contained and independent entities, that each of you has a beginning and an end. You don’t consider the relationship of everything to everything else. Damien is only gone in so much as he was ever here at all. Your question presupposes that Damien is somewhere that you are not.”
“So you’re saying that Damian is still alive.”
“No, I’m saying that you can only ever know the universe as it appears to you or is made available to your imagination. Space is subjective and you will never know how objects are arranged in space. In fact, you cannot understand what I mean when I say space. There is no beginning or end. There is no here or anywhere else.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Indeed, to you it doesn’t. You believe in some sort of three-dimensional container. You believe in some set of relations in the universe that are open to question.”
“So the universe doesn’t actually exist.”
“Of course it does. It is impossible for you to have an intuitive grasp of existence.”
“So, if nothing I know is actually true, what is religion all about?”
“You tell me, Curt, I didn’t create religion, you people did. Fancy buildings and programs aren’t really my thing. In fact, most of what is done in my name has absolutely nothing to do with me. Most of your religion is totally contrary to my purposes. I’m not a fan.”
“You’re not a fan of religion?”
“Of course not! Bunch of exhausting work and endless demands. Weekly meetings spent staring at the back of people’s heads while some guy in a smock babbles on and on, claiming to have some idea about how I do my job. It’s all so pretentious and boring.”
“That doesn’t sound very Christian.”
“Who said anything about Christian? I’m not a Christian.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t be.”
“You humans created your own trinity based upon institutions that completely insult me. Religion, politics, economics. The holy trinity of terror.”
“What do you mean?”
“give me one example of human anxiety or suffering that isn’t related to one of those three.”
“Then why do you allow them to continue?”
“Mistakes are a part of life, Curt. Most of you are drowning in pools you created for yourselves as soon as you chose independence.”
“If we are all drowning, why don’t you save us?”
“I’m not a lifeguard. If I were to suddenly revoke your freedom to make your choices it would result in chaos. It is contradictory to the purpose of creation.”
“So you’re just satisfied to sit back and watch us destroy ourselves. That’s pretty sadistic.”
“Oh, you humans are infuriating! You demand independence then constantly complain that I actually gave it to you! I think it’s pretty sadistic to continually blame me for all the problems you have created for yourselves.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you for anything. I don’t even believe in you.”
“I’m not asking you to. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.”
“How can it not matter? You only exist in so much as I believe you exist, isn’t that right?”
“Who am I, the fucking tooth-fairy? No, Curt, I exist whether you like it or not. You haven’t been designed to comprehend all that exists beyond the limits of your perception.”
“I guess I haven’t. Because if I had, maybe I could make sense of all the horrible, evil shit you do every day!”
“Evil is a human construct, Curt. A symptom of independence. I don’t interfere with people’s choices, the good or destructive.”
“But you allow it to happen! Horrible , unthinkable shit going on every minute of every day! How can you just let it happen?”
“If I were to interfere now the history of the universe would end before it is consummated. The purpose of creation would be unfulfilled. The entire point of what you refer to as everything would be lost.”
“No, no. That’s absolute bullshit! Some things are just wrong! It’s wrong to let people get cancer! Or to let them find their children dead in a field! Its just wrong!”
“Is it? Well, explain that to the cancer, or to the field.”
“No, no way! Don’t give me that “everything in its right place” bullshit! We are God’s children, isn’t that right? Humans are your children! Me and Damien are your children!”
“The Earth, Curt, the Earth is my child! I left it up to you people to raise my child as you see fit and for centuries you have raped and scraped and tortured her without any consideration for consequence. And each and every time my frightened and bruised and broken child shudders or struggles or screams or tries to catch her breath all of you shake your fists at the sky and damn me for it!
My perfect creation depends upon you having free will because I made you in my image. There is no point to a free will if the possessor doesn’t have the ability to make their own decisions. Tornadoes, hurricanes, war, poverty, disease, destruction are all a result of your decisions, not mine!”
“So fix us! Make us better! Step in and fix it all so that Damien doesn’t have to be dead! It’s that simple!”
“Is it that simple? Okay, Curt, you tell me where to begin. Who do you suppose I should judge first, huh? How about Damien? After all, he did this to himself, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Or what about the one who gave him that poison? He is the truly guilty one, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he should be punished! He should be in hell!”
“Wait, what about that one’s father? The man who twisted his son into a poison-peddling murderer.”
“Send him to hell too!”
“How far back should we go? Your history of torment starts at the beginning of time. Should I have wiped out the first human? But why stop there? I started the entire thing, should I be to blame?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on, for that matter, what about you? How many opportunities did you have to stop your friend from hurting himself. It was well within your power to stay with Damien that night, to keep him safe. Really, you made this happen!”
“Yes! Is that what you want from me? Yes! I did this! I was supposed to be there for Damien and I wasn’t! I wasn’t there when he needed me the most! I was never there for him, not like he was for me! We fought about that right before you took him away. I shouldn’t have argued with him! Why the fuck didn’t I stay with him! Why didn’t I stop you from taking my best friend from this world?”
“This world that you feel you’ve been left alone in.”
“Yes.”
“This world that feels like your own personal hell.”
“Yes! Everyday I spend here without him I feel like I am in hell!”
“Well, how do you know you’re not?”
“Excuse me?”
“Look around Curt. Look at what your existence has become. You said yourself, everything was getting better, Damien was being himself again.”
“Yes! And you didn’t give him a chance!”
“Didn’t I”
“What do you mean?”
“How can you be sure that I took Damien and not you?”
“What are you saying?”
“What am I saying?”
“Goddamnit! Don’t do that to me!”
“Funny choice of words.”
“I’ve had enough of this shit!”
“You? You have had enough of this shit? Your mind is an infinite number of eternities away from being able to comprehend the slightest notion of the degree to which I have limited myself out of respect for you. Your world is based on ideas about control therefore you all believe something is controlling it. Something with more power than the universe itself yet is guided by justice and love and mercy. And this loving and merciful being is to leave you to your own devices, allow you to succumb to temptation, allow you to become drunk and insane from greed. Greed that is the ultimate designer of all the suffering in life and then be deplored for it. You expect me to sit in the sky and watch you destroy all that I have created and make sure you remain free to do so with an appropriate degree of happiness.
Allow me to enlighten you, Curt. All that you think you understand about me is wrong. Your definition of God is wrong. Your idea that if I were to explain to you all the complexities of design you would be able to understand is wrong. I am not here as providence to care for you people. I am not only the Creator, the Sovereign, the Judge, I am Being, wisdom, Holiness, Justice, Goodness and Truth. I am infinite, eternal and unchangeable. I am all and all is me!
I do not direct events to the fulfillment of your purposes, I do it for my own. It doesn’t serve me to order the universe so that human virtue receives its proper degree of happiness. There is no connection between me and virtue and happiness. The wicked flourish in your world while the virtuous suffer poverty and affliction. Your human suffering is not a punishment that I impose upon you, it is a construct of your own self destruction.
I have not taken Damien away and I have not banished you to Hell. Nobody is someplace other than they have always been and nobody can truly understand where they are.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do without him.”
“You didn’t know what to do with him.”
“I’m serious, I don’t know how to go on without him.”
“You don’t go on without him, you just go on.”
“So what did Damien know that I don’t? How come he went before me? Why couldn’t we go together?”
“Go together? Go together where? There is no magical kingdom in the sky where lamb lies with lion and nations no longer make war.”
“Fine but you can send me to wherever Damien is. Or make me into what he has become. Or at least let me talk to him. You can do that, I know you can do that.”
“Curt, things are because they cannot be otherwise. I cannot change the course of events without causing chaos. There are sequences we can’t escape. Water quenches thirst. Food nourishes the body. Everything that is living must die. Winter must be followed by spring. If I were to alter the slightest development in anyone of you it would diminish the value of the universe and ruin the whole meaning of life. You are not an atomic individual. You are an expression of a whole that transcends yourself. There are no simple explanations. You have to be patient and give to faith what is faith’s.”
“So I just have to forget everything I think, everything I care about and accept that none of it matters because I don’t matter. And that means nobody else means anything either so I can fuck whoever I want, kill whoever I want and lie about everything all the time because nothing I ever do will change anything and there is nothing I can do about it. Great. Problem solved.”
“You cannot solve a problem by admitting you don’t understand it. There is a purpose to your being and consequences to your actions and you have no special power to decide correctly. Of course you can absolutely choose to do as you wish and remain blinded by superstition and ignorance. You will make mistakes. Its okay to make mistakes. Nothing happens without a purpose. Everything is what it is and cannot be otherwise. Still, you cannot give up simply out of fear.
“So help me. Tell me what to do. You owe me that much. Tell me what to do.”
“Curt, there are inexorable laws that cannot be altered. I hear the same cry again and again and again and I have to either ignore your voices or stand by and watch you be crushed with forces I cannot interfere with.”
“Why? Why can’t you? Just this one time. Just for Damien and me.”
“Because your world needs to be dependable. Everything relies on everything being consistent. If I started picking and choosing what I should change or leave alone you would be left in constant, horrible suspense all the time. My gracious acts would soon become the caprice of an inconsistent God. No advancements would ever be made.
Curt, you are going to be okay. Damien is going to be okay. Forget what you think you know, it does you no good. Forget about “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not”, it is not important. Consider only the fullness of life and strive for that. Life is meant to be an ever expanding adventure and if stop trying to face the challenges of life you will be doomed to sterility and stagnation. You have the ability to think and that is the only safe guide toward truth. And it is only worthwhile if it embodies the honest efforts of your Creator. You have to allow faith to come to terms with reason. All the rest will be as it should be.”
“So that’s it? That’s all you can give me?”
“For now. I have to give you questions. If I were to give you all the answers you might believe some of them to be wrong and then you would never be able to make a decision for yourself. Therein is the point, Mr. Hein. There is my big plan.”
“Will I ever see Damien again? Hello? Hey! Hey!
Tell him I’m sorry.”
The doctor’s phone went straight to voicemail. It was better that way.
“Hey Doc. I won’t be making it to our sessions anymore. I really don’t care who I am or what it all means. Thanks. Take care.”
Sometimes, when loneliness becomes overly possessive, the only thing you can do is place yourself at the edge of oblivion. That’s why oceans exist… So lonely people can forget themselves.
Potassium chloride. They use it to kill people sentenced to the death penalty. I had some. I had a lot. It was leftover from a science project I had done in my first year of university. The experiment was about how each compound had its own distinct spectrum. Potassium chloride emitted light in the range of four hundred nanometers. Purple.
I mixed what I had with water and stored it in an old ginger ale bottle. Purple, a mixture of opposites, hot red and cool blue. A colour associated with royalty. A symbol of mourning. Not an altogether bad way to die.
But my room at the hotel was a bad way to die so I went to the beach instead. It was winter and cold but the sun was making one of its rare appearances so I figured the cold wouldn’t be much of a bother. It was early afternoon at the beach.
Somebody had brought an old couch to the beach and had it set up in front of a fire pit. There was no one there. There was no fire. I didn’t sit on the couch, it wasn’t there for me. And it was too open to the public, I was going to need some privacy. A little way up the beach there was a small terrier running up and down chasing a crow. They were playing a game the little white dog could never win. The crow would land, the dog would run toward it, the crow would fly away.
I situated myself in an area secluded enough to be left undisturbed yet open enough that the sea was still visible. Potassium chloride is bitter, acidic and hard to swallow. It burns the lips, tongue and the throat. It was more difficult than I thought. I was afraid I couldn’t do it. I told myself all I needed to do was take bigger sips, quick and easy, like removing a band-aid. I wondered how much I would need to die. I didn’t know how much more of the pain I could take. There was a burning sensation in my chest and throat and I had barely swallowed a mouthful. The sun had set a long time ago and most of the people had gone home. Home to be warm and safe. And I stayed behind, on cold rocks, to die alone.
Sharp edges of chipped rock and crushed barnacles pierced through the fabric of my pants and it felt as though my ass had been dragged across a cheese grater. Despite the freezing rock and wind, I refused to move, I had to do this.
Damien is not going to cry. The Psychiatrist is not going to cry. The c-Coroner is not going to cry. So how sad can it be? I wasn’t that young and if I was it only meant having that many more years of bitterness and pain to endure and it would have eaten away all the good that might have come to me. Everybody would look back on this day and agree it was for the best.
I was hungry but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t face my absent life. I couldn’t spend another year, another week, one more day in a life I hated. I couldn’t go back to my empty room with its strange smells and dead shadows, gathered with mould in the corners.
Ten after Seven. I take another sip that leaves me feeling nauseous.
Across the bay the lights of the city illuminated the lives around them. I was too far away to be reached by those lights.
The tide had risen. The dark water was indistinguishable from the dark night but I could hear it slapping against the rock and feel tiny drops on the backs of my hands.
I closed my eyes. Ready. I put the bottle to my lips and little drops of toxic salt burned into the tender flesh of my throat, but I didn’t pull away. I tilted my head back and poured. And swallowed. And poured. And swallowed. My whole body felt as if it were on fire. When my throat hurt too much to swallow anymore, I stopped. The bottle was half empty. That was good.
I had to lie down, the pain was too much. My head was in the water and I was curled in on myself, making my shell. With the cold water rising against my face my body responded with a mammalian diving reflex. My heart slowed and the vessels in my extremities constricted. Strange, that as I lay dying on a dark beach, my body could still recall instincts from a time when mammals still dwelled below the surface of the ocean.
It seemed to take forever. I choked on the cold air, an inglorious precursor to death, stinging my lungs. The infrequent, vapourless clouds of my breath, taunting and pitiful, hung above me before disappearing into the frigid air. Wet hair clung to my cheek. Salt and sand stung my eyes. Waves lapped at my body and water found the opening of my mouth, the secret entrance to my lungs where puddles were already forming. There was a single warm spot on my calf where i had apparently cut myself on a rock and blood was escaping. My lungs made one last desperate attempt. A tremor passed through my body like the movement of hot air above asphalt. It was ending. I wasn’t afraid anymore.
In a split second everything changed. I was suddenly cold and wet and there was a pain in my chest. I didn’t want to breathe the air. Everything hurt. I was confused. I wasn’t supposed to wake up. I had gone away, I was safe and everything was quiet. But I woke to bright lights shining in my eyes and noises, voices hammering against my ears. Strange faces were talking to me but I couldn’t respond, my throat hurt too much. At first there was no recollection of what had happened. All I knew was pain. Then the memories came pouring back in, one on top of the other. I wanted to cry but my body wouldn’t let me. I was too tired and in too much pain.
The strange people in the blue and white uniforms tried to comfort me. They thought my sadness was a result of the attempted suicide. They couldn’t understand, it was living that upset me.
“Good morning, Curt, how are you feeling?’
I didn’t know him. I didn’t know where I was.
“I’m Doctor Martin. You’re at the hospital, you had quite the adventure last night. Do you remember what happened last night? Would you like to tell me about it?” I said nothing. “That’s okay, you just concentrate on getting your strength back. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow.”
A nurse came in later to give me some pills. She made me open my mouth and stick out my tongue after I had swallowed them, just to be sure. She told me I needed to eat, then she told me I was lucky to be alive.
People kept saying that. I was lucky. Whenever they came in to check my blood pressure or feed me more pills they would say “it could be worse, you could be dead.” How did they not understand that when one part of you is begging for death, the part of you that wishes to live is in constant fear that if you pull through you will head straight for the knife drawer or medicine cabinet. Or the potassium chloride.
Laying in my bed, waiting for my doctor to return, I found myself trying to get back to Damien again or at least the idea of him. But there was nothing left, if there ever was anything there in the first place. There was only sadness and pain.
“Good morning, Curt, you must be anxious to get home.”
“Doctor Martin, is it?”
“That’s right. Did you want to tell me what happened last night?”
“There was an accident.”
“An accident? You swallowed a half litre of potassium chloride by accident?”
“Yeah, it was a big accident.”
“What events surrounded your accident?”
“Time, Doctor. Accidents aren’t singular events. They are possible outcomes in a probability distribution extending to infinity, not separate from all the other possible outcomes. So, really, the common interpretation of an accident as some disturbance to what is perceived to be the natural order of things os completely ironic.”
“I can’t help you if you can’t be straight with me.”
“I was confused, that’s all. I had an idea then it happened.”
“Okay. Okay Curt. Do you feel like having one of these accidents again?”
“No.”
“And do you know what to do if you feel another accident coming on?”
“Yes, come back here.”
“Assure me you will do that.”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Okay then. I’ll get the paperwork. We’ll have you out of here in a couple of hours.”
When I left the hospital the sun was brilliant and warm. Probably exaggerated as I hadn’t been exposed to natural light in forty-eight hours. There was no anxiousness but there was no calm either. I went out into the world and there was no me. Only a body with no memories. Everything I had previously believed had been imaginary. Everything. Everything was gone.
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