Journal of the Lost (Shorts)
Journal Entry: Fri May 23, 2008, 3:24 AM
I explode from the nightmare into the dark of the bedroom. Trembling and wide eyed I survey the abyss of blackness for demons rushing from the folds of night. Nothing stirs; it is all in my head.
Her hand reaches from the sheets spreading much needed warmth across my back, soaking into my soul. In the past I used to hit the sidewalk and try to walk away the nightmares before returning to sleep. Tonight I simply return to bed, the smell of her hair more comforting than any stretch of cement and asphalt.
The movement of the mattress stirs me awake as I feel her shaking violently hours later. I move to take her in my arms, no sounds escape her lips. Tears gently fall upon my shoulder as I hold her until she calms. An hour later we fall asleep in each others arms. No need to speak, nothing but out nightly ritual. I love her for that.
Two months ago we found ourselves on some random internet site, struggling to stay awake in the middle of the night. Strangers with nothing much in common except for the desire not to be alone as well as the need to stay in solitude.
We also shared a love for poetry. I found myself falling in love with her words within minutes. I wanted to be able to understand how a mind could so perfectly put together emotions and feelings while never losing structure. She wanted to know how I remained so free in writing and yet capture so much power. Neither one wanted to concede that we felt like our writing was nearly as good as the other. We danced like this for hours, trading poems and trying to find words to express how much we were able to soak up from the others writings.
This went on for weeks. We danced online like phantom children in the fog. Connected but never physically close. Soon the poetry opened the door to conversation and we set out on an exploration of our minds. Gently asking and answering questions, afraid at any minute that one of us would scare the other off. We soon found that we came from two completely different worlds. Yet our fears and disorders seemed to share common interests. We both loved to be alone, to shut out the world and just live in solitude. Our rooms were like our fortresses, even though we shared homes with others we rarely went out to visit.
Insecurities also seemed to rule our lives. For completely opposite reasons we both felt as though we were not good enough. I felt my failures in life out weighed any hope I had of progressing in society. She felt her families’ disappointment in her would never allow her to breathe free.
In time we discovered that neither of us felt like this world was for us. Our greatest common interest was in not wanting to be alive at all.
We shared our views on religion as well as our hopes for what waited for everyone in death. We also shared our thoughts on what we expected after life. The wants and the beliefs didn’t match up very well but we both knew that there really were no answers. We were both long passed the dramatic aspects of suicide. We didn’t want to make a scene; we didn’t want to be remembered. We just simply wanted to slip silently from this world into the next.
For both of us the reasons why we hadn’t were the same. Friends and family. There is no easy way to ask people to understand how you feel. It’s a hard thing to try to explain and everyone is so quickly put off by the topic that they either walk away swiftly or burst into emotions thinking they did something wrong. No one seems to understand that it is a choice made over time. That it is not a conclusion that is rushed to lightly. It is not a consequence of actions either made or not made by parenting. There are so many things people misunderstand about suicide propagated by religious as well as media outrage and horror.
I explained to her how once I had someone tell me suicide was a selfish act. I thought that was quite funny considering I felt the exact opposite. I felt that people who opposed suicide were the selfish ones, wanting to keep their loved ones alive for the sole purpose of having them to physically be around. Would you keep a dog or a cat caged in your back yard even if it could tell you that it felt trapped and tortured? They didn’t have much of an answer for that.
We never talked of getting together, we never chatted about anything regarding us. One night I had awoken from a pretty nasty nightmare and after I took my walk I realized I wasn’t going to be able to shake this one when I tried to go back to sleep. I found her online, sitting in a chat room all by her self. We talked for a couple hours before she logged off and I returned to bed.
I sat in bed, in the dark, afraid to go back to sleep. Around three in the morning there was a knock on my window and I looked through the blinds to see a woman standing on the grass, head bowed, and eyes searching the windowsill.
It was her.
I opened the window and started to say hello when she gently placed her finger against my lips for me to be quiet. She climbed inside and shut the window behind her. I just stood there baffled and self conscience of the disorder and mess in my room, yet unable to move.
There was enough light coming through the sides of the blinds that she was able to see where she was going as she made her way to me. She slipped off her coat and laid it over the chair at my desk then gave me a hug. We stood there for a while, not saying a word, not needing to.
Finally she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me down next to her.
“I thought maybe you could help me sleep tonight.” She said.
We lay down, facing each other. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. There was no sexual anxiety or fear. No expectations what so ever.
In the morning she was gone. I thought maybe I was going insane before I realized my computer was on but the monitor was turned off. I hit the power button expecting to see my screensaver but instead what waited for me was an open note pad message saying simply, “thank you.”
She would show up at random times, never planned, never asked, but always appreciated. This was how we made our way.
I can still smell her on the pillows as well as in the room but as I open my eyes I know she is already gone. This isn’t about a relationship; there is no sex involved, simply a friendship between two people who share much more than materialistic commons.
….
Journal Entry: Tue Jan 22, 2008, 3:45 AM
I’ve taken way too many tonight. It’s going on five or six hours of this strange nightmare repeating itself in a million different ways as I lay awake with my eyelids drooping shut every couple seconds. I am completely exhausted yet I am not tired in the least.
Take as needed for pain.
Well the pain kept hurting so I kept taking them. I truly do not know how many. I had a mind flash sometime ago when I was looking into the bottle of tilting it up and just swallowing the whole bottle but that was just one of those strange little mind flashes cause I just checked the bottle and there are plenty of them left rattling around in there as I looked in and shook them about.
This nightmare world is not like the other worlds, it’s nothing like the other nightmares. I am not in control of anything, not even myself.
So many little stories, such horror and happiness.
I saw Brenda, my step mom. I saw her smile at me as we talked over the hood of a pick up truck. I saw the air force jet get caught up in the smoke of the burning town. They kept talking on the radio about how it was not going to be contained and was chewing through everything, destroying the whole valley. I saw the jet go down. I watched it as it did lazy little spins in the air, I watched it disappear below the horizon and I told everyone to watch and they might see the fire ball over the top of the obstacle behind them. They couldn’t see it at first but I could. It was massive. A rolling mushroom of smoke and fire that went off in two waves of explosions that we heard about twenty seconds later.
They only saw the smoke, but what a smoke cloud it was. It filled the sky even more completely than the smoke from the burning city below.
We had debris from the explosion rain down on us. Dead birds and pieces of charred aluminum and steel. I don’t know why we had half burned birds slathering the yard and vehicles in their death but we did. The one thing I did know for certain was that the fire in the city was alive. It was coming to kill me.
I saw the complete destruction of my family’s ability to be family at the reception to my wedding. The main table was up in the attic of some old white clapboard house. It was not grand, just the standard family in blue jeans and the wedding party in rented tuxedos type of affair.
I never saw my wife; I don’t know who she was. I only saw pieces of her as she moved by the windows of the attic which themselves were quite tiny and covered in slats to keep out the big rodents and birds.
Her elbow and arm was beautiful though, I must say. I also had the feeling she was quite amazingly gorgeous though she spent the reception in the attic at the dinner table with other family.
I was rolling around in my own mind, half drunk and more than half drugged (No I haven’t not drank anything tonight while taking the pills) and I couldn’t stop hallucinating completely fucked up things. I saw a family of deer stalk a bunch of fluffy little white bunny rabbits around my living room as I held a bow and arrow at the ready. I watched as the buck slashed its hooves at the couch as the bunnies ran behind it, jamming his snout into the opening until the couch pulled away from the wall and he lunged in and snapped his mouth shut around the soft fur of the rabbit. I watched him shake it like a dog until the bones in the body snapped and it lay limp in his mouth, blood oozing down his muzzle. Then I pulled back the arrow and shot the deer.
We put the deer in the oven to cook and it came out a man. Some people were horrified but I assured them if you ignored the look of a man laid out on a table with an apple in his mouth that the meat would eat just fine. You just can’t stare at the body itself. Idiots.
My cousin kept asking me if I would watch her kid so her and her husband could go out partying but I was totally fuckered up and didn’t know what was real and what was just in my head. I told her that I had forgot that she had asked me years before about this day but in my defense I had just gotten married myself.
She stormed off in an uproar and that’s when I saw the star. It shined up from the surface of the water like something God created just for me, just at the exact moment in time. It was awe inspiring to see, so perfectly shown in the still water.
That is when my brother came over to confront me about not watching my cousin’s kid. He was yelling and screaming and his loud voice was causing little movements across the surface of the water. He was fucking up my star.
I reached my left hand up and he stopped to stare at it. I held it above his shoulder then proceeded to twist his eyeball out of his head. I thought it would just pop right out cause everyone always makes a big deal about popped out eyeballs but I had to really twist this bastard to break it free of whatever moorings held it attached to whatever the hell it was attached to.
As he screamed I saw the reflection of my star in a tear that streamed down his cheek mixed with blood.
These are just two of I don’t even know how many nightmare worlds I have awoken to in the last couple hours.
I am truly terrified. Although they are not ‘zombie chasing you’ scary, for some reason they leave me wide eyed, heart pumping, sweat pouring horrified when I sit up.
If I could scream I would, but I am usually too busy crying.