Fallen

The trees stood proudly about Roger Frost like soldiers presenting for inspection. If not for the light shooting through the little holes in the canopy, the glow of green emanating from the leaves would have made the time of day obvious. The scenery was tinted like light shined through an emerald. He deftly maneuvered between the platoons without taking notice of their stances. It was nearly noon and Roger had already traversed ten brisk miles that day. He felt happy hiking with his home on his back.

Being in the wilderness pleased Roger. It tapped into the wellspring of contentment he had in being a simple man. Simplicity for Roger meant detachment from the frivolous trappings of life. He had become accustomed to owning little and learned to like it. When at home by himself, he often imagined what life would be like should a sudden catastrophe force humanity to live without the aid of technology. He fancied himself a survivor, someone who could adapt quickly and preserve himself even in dire situations. While everyone else would be running around crying and pulling their hair out, Roger would be rubbing sticks together with a smirk on his face. He would offer a neighbor a piece of cooked game and go on to be the one to organize a communal farm. He would humbly put human affairs back on their proper track.

Though it was early spring, the ground beneath Roger's feet had the familiar mush of ever-decomposing leaves. After absorbing a brief morning sprinkle, the trail was slick. Roger used his worn walking stick to maintain equilibrium when the wet earth tried to induce him to do otherwise. All was silent except for swishing of his persistent pace and the huffs of his rhythmic breathing. Occasionally, he heard the crackle of a squirrel bounding through vines and saplings. The only sensation that interrupted his thoughts was the sporadic tug of stray spiderwebs disturbed by his neck and face. A pinprick of guilt dripped within him for ruining the labor the tiny spinsters.

Nature had not always been his element. As a child, Roger was a homebody. He spent much of his adolescence under the watchful eye of his mother. Such an accomplished hypochondriac was she that she channeled her overflowing sickness onto her only child. He was kept in his room for fear of contracting a malady from his suspicious peers or harming himself in their thorny surroundings. From his bedroom window, Roger loved nature as a courtier loved his fair maiden.

Trailing behind him strands of silken nets, his gaze was fixed on the ground shortly in front of his feet. He was preoccupied by the hazards along the trail. Although less nimble than he was in his youth, Roger knew well the ways of stable movements. Without remaining alert and compensating for the scattered rocks and roots, he would crash to the ground. The added weight of his supplies ensured he would be torn open by a fall. He appreciated how in nature nothing laughed when a person tripped. The sound in the forest before and after a tumble was the same. The natural world took no notice.

Despite all of its briers and burs, the natural world seemed preferable to the constructed one. The constructed one always seemed to fall short of its aspirations, while the natural one never boasted and, thus, never failed. Roger's childhood home was depressing for all of its disrepair. The shabbiness was a drain on its inhabitants. The doors always squeaked. The paint peeled. Drafts were common in the winter and leaks in the spring. One could not help but feel dilapidated by association to the ragged lodging. From inside the Frost house, the outdoors seemed glorious. He spent his youth daydreaming. Roger frequently pictured himself exploring the woods from behind his sweating bedroom window.

On a safe swath of the trail, Roger took notice of the natural world. There was a subtle, acrid smell in the air that always accompanied rain in the woods. Decomposition was being encouraged by the same water that was also nourishing roots. In the middle of observing how the odor reminded him of ones he had smelt in public restrooms, Roger noticed he did not feel well. Nausea had creepily begun to stir in his belly. Thinking he may be on his way to dehydration, he paused on a mossy stump to slake his thirst. He drank the tepid water in gulps and panted after holding his breath. He rifled into his pack for the bag of nuts he had brought. The salty crunch was disagreeable to his taste. He frowned and swallowed them down in haste. Roger ran his tongue around the interior of his mouth to clear away the remnants of almonds. He looked off into the distance and became enamored by the sight of doe. She was serenely grazing on sprouts—dropping her head down, lifting it to listen, and dropping it again. Roger lost himself in the vision of the animal. He was brought back to his affliction by the abrupt flicker of its tail.

Roger did not realize the exceptional decay of his surroundings until he went off to school. In kindergarten, he was made aware of his relative impoverishment. He was ridiculed for his tattered clothes and belittled about his disreputable abode. Apparently, his family had developed a reputation in his all-too-small town. His plump, glowing teacher did what she could to mitigate the influence of his peers. She injected him with platitudes about the importance of invisible values—that it was what was on the inside that counted. Roger numbly wondered to whom it counted. He was immune to her kind encouragement and took heart from the plants outside his home instead. At times the trees and shrubs are bare, but they always revive. They grow and become worthier than their beginnings. For all of the tenacious heckling he received, Roger refused to feel guilty for something that was to him as natural as autumn.

Shaken to attention, he returned to his mission. With one last gulp swallowed, Roger grunted his way back to a walking stance. Feeling for the netted pocket and finding it, he slid the bottle into its place. His throbbing feet pushed against the interior of his tattered boots. The seams of faded thread began giving way years ago. For all the abuse they endured, they never completely gave way. After succumbing to wrinkles and puckers on every step, they always sprang back to shape with every stride. He hiked onward with a tighter calloused grip on his walking stick.

Inspired by nature, Roger embraced his condition. Instead of lamenting the relative poverty of his family, he took it as a season. He was going to prove to himself—not his classmates—that he could overcome his privations and thrive in an extended summer of vitality. Overcoming to Roger did not mean scrambling to fill the bare spots but embellishing further the areas in the self that were already adorned. If he was not wealthy, so be it. He was full of life. He had the power to alter his surroundings. As soon as his mother was distracted, he expended all of his energy as often as he could in spasms of revolt. He was fueled by spite towards the injustice of his situation. He lived to destroy barriers. He laughed at worldly trials and sought out difficulty. He thumbed his nose at suffering. So thoroughly had he treasured pain that he started to feel himself invincible. 

His steps became less rapid than they were earlier in the day. He had difficulty blocking out the sensations bubbling in his abdomen. Roger's pain began to localize in the right side of his lower back. He tried to reassure himself that he was experiencing the usual cramping that occurred in the midst of backpacking. He pushed on and concentrated on his path. In most areas, it was only distinguishable by a thin ribbon of muddier soil. The leaves down the center of the trail were more trodden and, thus, less distinguishable than those on the periphery. The difference between being lost and on track was a preponderance of darker brown underfoot. He appreciated how singularly disinterested in humanity nature was. She offered no sign posts on her own. She showed no partiality; she did not play favorites. Trails had to be blazed or else one would wander aimlessly.

Roger aged from being an audacious teenager to a meek man in the span of a weekend. Roger's mother became more lethargic as wrinkles sunk more heavily upon her face. As a consequence, her son was afforded greater liberty. He would escape his home whenever her guard was down. Roger set goals for his adventures of increasing extremity. First, he wanted to spend a night alone outdoors. Next, he wanted to hike to a river twenty miles away. He was intoxicated by his freedom. Roger was enraptured by action. He would push over rotting tree trunks and kick mushrooms. Chipmunks scurried at the sound of his cathartic grunts. He could be a mountain man, an explorer. The apex of his expeditions was a fifty mile trek with nothing but a knife, compass, map, blanket, and two pounds of deer jerky. He was seeking to find his limit. Roger wanted to be independent; he wanted to be sufficient unto himself. He wanted to be separate from the weights the hung on him—the truths about himself that were out of his control. In preparation, Roger studied books on local vegetation and manuals on hunting. At the end of his greatest mission was a feat of immense daring. Old locals liked to tell stories in the town bar of a thirty-five foot cliff above a nearby lake that had since been cordoned off due to frequent injuries. Having a notion of the coordinates of the site, Roger struck out to conquer his part of the world early one Saturday morning. 

The canopy shielded Roger from the afternoon sun. Nevertheless, he began sweating profusely. Steps were more laborious. He appeared like a wounded animal. His stride was hindered by limp to favor his right side. He paused to close his eyes and heard the rustle of a breeze. Mercifully cool wind tickled his neck. He let his head drop until his chin touched his sternum. He gulped air like water trying to calm himself. When the bouquet of decomposition reentered his nose, a geyser of vomit erupted upwards. The violence of his reaction surprised him. He hunched over, dripping. He spat to cleanse his pallet and rubbed his right side with his hand. Concern began to leak into him mind. Finding a nearby stump, Roger sat again. He fumbled for his water bottle. He noticed the disagreeable taste of the iodized water more acutely than before. He suppressed the desire to purge once more. He had no appetite and his energy levels were diminished. He focused on the glossy black ants milling between his boots. Some toted white granules of an unknown substance in their mandibles. They seemed directionless, walking and turning at random times. Where were their trails? Closing his eyes helped him suppress his mounting misery. He put all of his attention into his ears and listened to the leaves flicker. Roger lost track of time. Although it was barely dusk, Roger desperately wanted to sleep. He beckoned to unconsciousness as his saving grace. He held out hope that the next day would bring with it renewed health.  He thought of how he had forgotten old lessons and began to repent.

It took him fourteen hours of weaving between tree limbs and plodding through undergrowth to get to the makeshift fence that blocked the cliff. Roger slung his pack off his shoulder and let it tip over. He stamped down the chicken wire with his boot and approached the edge. Roger peered over it. His head spun with the sight of the chasm. The slope of the rock face was carved by skillful use of dynamite prior to the quarry being flooded. He retreated and scanned the periphery. The sky was billowing with clouds like smoke against the cobalt blue of dusk. The landscape looked surreal: dense forest butted up against a barren crater. A path that had been cleared for the transportation of minerals was in nature's reclamation process. The individual hickories and oaks looked melancholy in their singular insignificance. Roger felt his own insignificance complemented. He judged himself a wild thread woven into the tapestry of the wilderness. Before him was the gauntlet of death. Fear thrilled Roger. Adrenaline introduced a new lightness into his joints. He was primed to fling himself into the crater. He could conquer the gap, surpass the shore. After a deep inhalation, he rushed forward with the frenzy of youth and fell with the weight of pride. 

The scent of pine filled Roger's nose as he entered a thicket of coniferous trees. His feet reveled in the relief the discarded needles offered in their carpet-like plushness. The increased comfort only made his nausea more distinct. A bead of sweat trickled into an eye, causing him to blink. Time had slowed to the pace of the sap trickling out of sores on the trunks about him. He wanted to be still. He fell to his knees, smashing scurrying insects in the process. 

Just prior to Roger's leap, his right boot found a pocket of loose rock. The gravel shifted with his weight and absorbed a crucial part of his energy. As Roger flew forward and began to fall, he realized we would come up short. The queasiness that accompanies a great drop was multiplied by his terror. An embankment below was quickly approaching. He had time to regret his idiocy before the impact. After two futile kicks into the air, he struck the outcropping. The muffled sound hardly interrupted the quiet evening. He fell forward, breaking bones and losing consciousness. A crow flying overhead bore witness to Roger's misguided courageousness. There he lied for hours. A sensation of coolness was the first memory Roger had after his plummet. So close was he to his target that his hair had draped into the cold, still water. It was thoroughly dark outside. At first he could discern nothing of the extent of his injuries. Pain reverberated throughout his body. He lay sobbing in a contorted heap. The chat he fell into kept the impact from being fatal, but lacerated his skin extensively. Roger could not manage to get to his feet. His legs were not working properly. Drowning in a pool of distress, his mind was not fully functional either. 

Roger began to whimper aloud as he clutched his abdomen. The pressure building in his side was getting the best of him. For the first time, he began feeling anxious. He had not seen another man or woman for days. Death was before him again. Far from home and far from help, thoughts of helplessness began sparking into his mind. He snuffed them out as best he could, knowing he needed to remained focused at returning to the trail head. As he was thinking of how idiotic he had been to strike out alone and unknown into the woods, the pressure was released with a pop. Roger opened his eyes to see his denim-covered knees crumpling pine needles. Was he cured? Had it been gas? He felt suspiciously relieved. Filled with gratitude, he released his concentration and allowed himself to rest.

Sprawled on the bank, he thought the thoughts of a dying man. Remorse welled within him. Roger previously was certain he was ready to battle with nothingness; he thought he could free himself by leaping into the abyss. Facing mortality would let him become more than human. Now, his fragility screamed through his nerves. He was neither alive nor dead but on his way from one to the other. Tears dropped onto the rocks of the bank as unanswered questions cascaded through his mind. What had happened to his strength? Why was he dying now? Was he to fade away and become absorbed unbeknownst to anyone? Where was he to file his complaints against reality? In his state of complete helplessness he was deserted with his dread. He could not bear the weight of life on his own and neither could nature. Roger had been alone too long. His solitary confinement was self-inflicted, brought on by hubris. He needed a companion. He knew now that there was no kinship with the universe; there was no brotherhood with impersonal matter.

The external world showed no sympathy with the internal world. Planets twinkled and stars lit up the clear night sky. He tipped over, exhausted. In a fetal position, Roger tried to sleep. Being immobile felt slightly better than moving, but his discomfort had returned in a new guise and kept him awake. He imagined what his insides looked like, what sort of fatal stew was brewing within him. With shaky fingers in the morning, Roger tried to shovel the last of his almonds into his mouth. Before he could bring his jaws together, his mouth rejected the intrusion. He convulsed in a fit of dry heaves. Roger suspected his organs were shutting down. The release he felt was merciful, but not indicative of recovery. He thought it strange that his biological defenses would lead to death's victory. Every individual function was suspending itself to prevent damage spreading to other functions. Taken together, the totality of his body was killing itself in an attempt to save itself. How was it that the body chose now to die after he had spent so long in trying to live? 

There was nothing more to do. Life was leaving him as involuntarily as it entered him. Roger's blood mingled with the chalky white rocks. On the shore of an artificial lake, he awaited his end. There was only a choice to make: repent and resign to his limitations or refuse and revolt. He had attempted to spurn the world with singularity, but now knew he had gone too far. The wisdom imparted by suffering allowed him to discern between genuine and false freedom. If this was what it took to stop him from running, so be it. He passed out of consciousness again. The whir of a motor jolted him. A retiree came noticed a motionless figure while he was trolling for bass that had been introduced to the lake years earlier. He pulled Roger into his boat, and later up the shore and into his truck. They sped to the nearest hospital, along fifty miles of painfully jostling country roads. Technology in the hands of doctors saved his life. Roger's body healed together with his spirit.

The natural world he adored as a boy was superseded by the God he called upon that desperate night. Both were wonderful for the way their superficial ambivalence masked a deep-seated, complex goodness. Rain falls on the just and unjust alike; a loving God allows the innocent to hurt. Neither forgot; both were always working to incorporate everything. Unlike nature, God did not operate by cycles. To live forever, one had to die twice; to die forever, one had to die once. Either way, a person never returned. Roger had been partially correct. The world ought to be spurned, but not completely and not by beating it at its own game. The human and inhuman world were irreparably heterogeneous, containing good and evil, life and death. Purity could not be had by immersing oneself in either world. Everyone has a sense of the fundamental ambiguities mixed throughout each. Roger was right not to succumb to the onslaught of his peers who were impoverished in a different way. He erred leaping for his own salvation. One drowns as surely in lakes as in tears. One needs to find other streams to be renewed in.

Roger, confronted by mortality again, refused to despair. His thoughts became focused with excitement. He prayed to God that He existed. He needed God to exist. He knew the only necessity in life was necessity itself. People need something fixed and changeless. It is why they were quick to look to laws and definitions. Roger wanted the law. He wanted to be held accountable. More than that, he simply wanted to be held together. He could not endure the thought of vanishing into nothingness. If he was to never exit the wilderness again, how could he ever be said to exist? Nature would not remember. She would devour him with her minions and bury him with her sediments. The memories of those he met in life would scarcely contain a note on him. Roger rejected the possibility. He was filled with hope at the possibility of an enduring record keeper. He prayed to God to give him faith as he lost his equilibrium. 

Fallen, Roger terribly wanted to be warm. Turning his dizzy head and lifting his eyes, he could see an opening in the woods on the horizon. The golden glow of pure daylight enticed him. He dug his fingers into the moist soil and pulled himself through the remnants of his stomach. His writhing movements were awkward but effective. He crossed the terrain by inches rather than feet, but crossed it all the same. For the first time in hours, he forgot about how awful he felt. He thought only of the heated honey of sunlight being poured over him at the end of his toil. Strain was not a lamentable state to Roger. It was the state of living, and he was glad to feel alive. Twigs and the shells of nuts clawed at his skin and ripped his clothes as he forced himself over them.

After draining the last of his pool of energy, he reached the clearing. He splayed out enervated on the glade of igneous rocks that were impervious to plant life. As Roger lay dying, he wondered what his body looked like to a bird in flight. It seemed to be the perspective nature always took on humanity. He was a fleck of compressed carbon and water. He was imprisoned within the consuming forest. He swore he felt a compassionate warden comfort him with a blanket of light. He strained to see, but the muscles in Roger's neck refused to obey his will. His head dropped onto a pillow of lichen-covered granite. Orange-red seeped through his eyelids like light shone through amber. He no longer felt pain; he was done dying. He only felt tired. He released himself from his body.

Roger, who had closed his eyes moments before, exhaled and died again.

Subterranean

When some people lose their minds, it is from misplacing them. Like a juggler who attempts to toss too many balls, their minds roll off into an unseen place when everything crashes and scatters. When other people lose their minds, it is from intentionally hiding them. Like a desperate man who tosses a set of keys into a field of tall grass, their minds become needles thrust into a haystack. James Griffin had thrown his mind into a thicket at sixteen and had not thought of looking for it until he was twenty-seven.

He sat numbly taking in the obscure shapes of women's bodies undulating in the blurred glow of black-lights. The view was further distorted by the haze of smoke that seemed to cake onto the surfaces of objects. The movements drug behind them a trail of the past, making even quick motions seem prolonged. His legs felt heavy with the weight of alcohol and his ears were stuffed full with the sound of disorientation. Deep, persistent bass massaged his temples while squeaky treble reverberated inside his ear canals. Abruptly, he heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering somewhere behind him. On the fifth consecutive night of the twelfth consecutive month he sat staring forward, doing his best to stay lost. 

With the sound of shattering, his mind called out to him. The sense that something was amiss was so strong as to seem tangible. He turned his head to scan the periphery, expecting to find a little girl who had tugged on his shirt in a show of attention-starved pleading. All he found were other men slumped in chairs with greasy hair pasted onto their skulls with slight smirks on their faces and forlorn women scurrying between them. Some action was occurring around the scene of the accident. The sight of swept up glass spurred him to recollect himself.

"Need to leave," he thought as he wobbly arose from his usual spot two tables away from the stage. Unsure footing caused him to slip back into the chair he tried to rise from. The atrophy of inaction bound him to the reclined position. The fuzziness of every perception gave his setting a pall of irreality. He felt lost in a dreamworld of shadows and echoes. He was unsettled by how absorbed the countenances of his fellow-patrons appeared. They were entranced. He struggled concertedly to arise again. One foot in front of the other, he shuffled away from his lonely table. Concerned he yelled, "Let's go!" over the noise of the room as he motioned towards the exit. "Shut up!" "Get out of the way!" "You wanna brusin'?" "Sit down!" all shot out at him from different directions. He felt something strike between his shoulder blades with a dull thud and heard again the sound of glass breaking behind him. The prod of pain heightened his senses further. "What am I doing here?" he asked himself as he stumbled further out of the doomed room.

The redish glow of the word "Exit" hooked him and drew him reeling forward. Imbalanced, he placed his left hand forward desperately. His wrist was compacted as he collided with the wall to the side of the steps that lead to street level. Heightened pain sprinted through his nerves when he could not prevent his forehead from striking the wall. He bounced off it like a ball and crashed backwards in a drunken heap. The back of his skull plummeted onto the dirty floor of the seedy subterranean establishment. Confused, he stared upwards and tried to make sense of the reflections of purple neon lights. "Where am I?" he wondered.

The ferrous taste of blood trickled over his tongue. He had lacerated his cheek when his teeth shut upon striking the old wood planks of the floor. No one took notice of his tumble. No one came to his assistance. The back of his head pulsated reminders of his accident. Vanquished, he squinted at the criss-crossed lines of the drop-ceiling above him. The bass again tickled his ears as it shook the ground. Lethargy covered him like a blanket and his eyelids drooped. "Business? Great! Never been better! Adult entertainment is recession-proof." a gruff voice explained nearby. "The owner?" James wondered as he forced his eyes open again. "My customers are sheep and me? I am their shepherd. I lead them to the uh pasture. Times are tough and I make it easy." The man laughs. "Sheep are more profitable than you'd think. The trick is sheering them just short enough so that they come back to you for shelter, cold and desperate every night after wandering around. You know what I mean? If you buzz 'em too short, they freeze. You gotta keep 'em chilled but not frozen. So I know just when to pull the plug, flip on the lights, and sweep them out into the world." the voice bragged. "Must be," James thought. The image of lemmings following a leader off a cliff came to him as his eyes shut again. "It's all a mirage. Think they're going home but they're going to hell. Need to leave." He thrust his lids open.

He commanded his arms to push himself up. The spinning room sloshed him around, but he would not be deterred. James tentatively arose and moved towards the stairs once more. He cast a final, forlorn glance towards the smoky roomed filled with his lost compatriots. The hot sting in his back kept him from urging them upwards again. He moved on. His toe slammed into the first step. His hand caught the railing as he braced himself. He stood erect and looked at the mountain of right angles that barred him from escape. "Easy does it," he encouraged himself. Slowly but persistently, he ascended. Every time he flexed his quadriceps to lift himself, there was a commensurate decrease in clatter ringing in his ears. The thumping bass accompanied him throughout, but the attempt to lull him into submission was futile. James was determined to depart.

Passersby grazed him as they excitedly went downstairs. "No! Don't!" he exhorted, but their euphoric laughs were too loud to be spoken over. "Like lemmings off the edge," he thought dejectedly. "Need to leave," he reminded himself.

Midway up the stairwell, the wood paneling started to gleam with the light that seeped under the exit he had entered so often before. "What time is it?" he wondered. He thrust himself against the door jam and spilled forward onto the street. Sunlight exploded inside James' pupils. The blow dealt by brightness made him dizzy with nausea. Again, he felt himself tumble to the ground. Rather than the hollow thump of hard wood, the sound of bone on concrete dissipated from his collapse. It disrupted the otherwise quiet summer morning on the avenue.

On his hands and knees, he sneezed. Something about the light made him sneeze. He snickered as a memory bubbled up into his consciousness. When he was a child and happy, he mother used to kid him about being allergic to the sun because he had the habit of sneezing every time he'd leave a building for the outdoors. His mother's face made him wistful and he forgot about where he had just come from. The smog of the city smelled clean to him when compared against the stale atmosphere of his hiding place. When he began to see again, he could discern the skewed shape of his shadow. His vision passed from the grey his forearm cast on the concrete to the plaid of his shirt. The colors had been tainted by a film of cigarette smoke, but still struck him with a vibrancy he had been without for what seemed like years. He focused in on the intersection of yellows and reds that formed wrinkled criss-crosses. The orderliness pleased him. "Beautiful," he though as he traced the fine lines of tightly weaved cotton.

The A.M. rays lazily reflected off of the street surface. James again raised himself from his knees to his feet. He stood still to gain his bearings and squinted in search of familiar landmarks. Before him was a rod iron planter filled with pink and white geraniums and a maple sapling. He followed the trunk upwards through the dark green underbellies of leaves until it gave way to the brilliant morning mauve of sunrise shining upon the windows of a high-rise. The grid work of glass converging higher uplifted his sight until his craned neck stiffened above the top floor.

The picture was serene in its clarity, like the sight one receives upon poking out of the water after struggling to resurface. Wisps of cirrus clouds converged like a stratospheric doily. Up beyond the meddling reach of people lived truth untouched and untainted. "Yet it shines down upon and among us if we would have eyes to see it. Why?" James sobered. His mind burned like a newly ignited wick. He considered the vision, its overwhelming size and the shame it put to shadows. The quality of his perception rejuvenated him. The serenity of the gently sliding shapes nearly overtook him and clasped him in a new sort of chains. The more he thought about what he was seeing and how moved he was, the more he felt he needed to tear himself away. "It's not too late." In a fit of compassion, James turned around to face the place from which he was freshly emancipated. "I must save them."

He nimbly hopped downwards and reached the landing. "Hey! Everybody! Come quick and see the sun! It's daytime! What do you think you are doing rotting down here in the dark? This isn't real! Can't you see you're stuck in a trap, pinned down by your own appetites?" The fingers on his left hand fumbled for a light switch by the stairwell, but none was to be found. The patrons began to bark at him and the waitresses threw daggers at him with their scowls. A barrel-chested figure emerged from the mist of the flock and glided up towards him.

"Come on buddy, no disturbin' the customers," the man uttered as he lifted James up by the armpit and drug him back towards the day. His ankles clanked against the edges of the steps as he scrambled to regain his footing. The power of the mysterious man surprised him. "Would have been easier to have been kicked out before," James observed.

At the top of the steps, the strong man ejected James. In the midst of his flight, James reached for the man's lapel. Feeling the smooth fabric between his fingertips, he grabbed hold tightly and pulled the bouncer forward with him. They both crashed onto the sidewalk as the door shut behind them. The bouncer shielded his eyes, finding the sun oppressive. James rushed alongside him and raised the husky man who had been made weak by his new setting. He took him by the arm and pulled up slowly but firmly.

"See?" James asked with a smile. The bouncer blinked in disbelief.

Falling

It was as though someone hit the reset button on Erik Winters. He awoke high in the air. He was in the stratosphere. Erik was so high up that when he looked at the ground beneath him, he could not tell he was falling. The mottled patches of greens stayed the same size; the meandering ribbons of brown appeared unchanged for what felt like hours. His stomach, not his eyes, told him he was falling. The sensation forced Erik out of his confused malaise.

He remembered that he was an astronaut. He remembered that he was in the cabin of a space shuttle. He remembered a malfunction and shared panic. The sundry lights, dials, and instruments were all functioning as though nothing had changed. Constrained by a harness and pushed firmly against the back of his seat, he struggled to glance at the rest of the crew in his peripheral vision. They were all still. Everything was still in Erik's world, except his stomach.

He called out to the seven others by name, but received no response. The words he uttered were muffled, as though someone had stuffed cotton balls in his ears while he was sleeping. Erik looked back out of the windows to find the landscape barely altered. All was green and brown. He focused on a tiny speck that flickered with light. He noted the charcoal grey trail that slithered and dispersed from it. When he realized it was a fire, he began to panic. "I'm upside down," he thought.

Something about the fire set Erik off. The distant danger awakened him to the present one. His fingers immediately began to fumble with the central clasp on his restraint harness. He pulled halfway up on the releasing mechanism when he realized the futility of escaping. No parachute could save him. There was no joystick he could reach for with which to steer himself to safety. His thoughts expanded outward and he realized the futility of doing anything. Goals are luxuries for people with time. Erik had at most a minute longer, and that did not suffice for time at all.

His mind shot off images and half-formed thoughts in quick succession. He felt dizzy. He felt something warm drip onto his neck. He wanted something to drink. He wanted to have a conversation. Then his mind fixated upon the impending collision. Erik thought it strange how he could now relate to all the men and women before him who had been executed. He wondered what they saw moments before they stopped seeing. He knew no one had seen his impending demise through more than two and a half inches of glass.

Erik had never fully considered his own death before. Death was always something in the offing, something nebulous. It was even slightly agreeable to him while it remained theoretical. He assumed it would come to him when he was withered and prepared for it. It would cease his arthritic pains he thought. Now, death was plunging up towards him. Death was in the green specs of the trees and the scant taupe patches of dirt. It would be so quick when it struck. Everyone dies in an instant—breathes one second and not the next. It made him feel minuscule and he imagined what his ship looked like to the creatures living where he would crash. Could they make it out now? Would they bother to disperse or would they soon be breathing their lasts, too?

Erik felt the icy pall of isolation. More than being able to free himself from his demise, he wanted to free himself from his solitude. A man can freely choose to be alone, and we classify him as introverted. But when a man is forced into it—we classify him as imprisoned. Erik hated his powerlessness in a concentrated way. His ears burned with boiling over frustration. For all of his painstakingly accumulated strength and his exhaustively honed skills, the world would not bend to his will. Despite his share of human dignity, he would be ended as swiftly as a worm underfoot. The greatest insult, however, was that he had no one near him. He wanted to speak and let someone know he was scared, that he resented having so much unfinished business. He wanted to be coddled and reassured by a soothing whisper. Instead, the faint whistle of wind was all he heard.

He focused again on his situation. He pictured himself as a baby, swaddled by Mother Earth, tucked away into his place of submission. He was wrapped in a blanket of disorientation. What was this surreal truth that his life had become? Why was it his uniquely to suffer? Why would his body shortly be rearranged into fragments scattered at the bottom of a crater? How different this was than any cause of death he could have fathomed earlier! Yet, how identical the end was even if the denouement was original! One last exhalation.

He snickered to himself at the absurdity of it all. We don't know now, we hardly know backwards, and we don't know forwards in the slightest. He laughed at people's feeble attempts at foresight. He pictured a weatherman midway through a prognostication being struck dead by a falling light from the rafters above. Never saw it coming. That's the way it goes. We spend our time predicting the wrong sort of events. The only beliefs we can hold about the future with any spec of justification are our hopes. All else is vain or otherwise misguided conjecture. And what did he hope for all this time? He was living it no more than fifteen minutes ago. Erik then became distracted by the feeling of moisture pooling on his clavicle. 

The quilt-work of greens became tableaux and the hazy textures became clear. Erik had begun making out the shapes of individual trees when he started thinking about who he was. If no one else is to know who I am, it is all the more crucial that I die knowing. His mind raced across the most obvious attributes: man, 32 years old, astronaut, doctoral candidate. None seemed sufficiently encompassing. He thought about what he had been before: a punk, a rebel, a philanderer, a repentant, a humanist—mistaken. Erik thought that human identity is like a liquid that becomes more viscous with age. For all our attempts at improvement, at maturation, at becoming something we can be proud of—we always pour ourselves into molds that are porous. An astronaut? An astronaut! I'll seep right out of that before I turn 50. What can hold us? What definition has no holes? We slip through everything until we're caught by the impermeable sac of nothingness. He looked upwards to avoid discerning individual branches. Tears welled in his eyes.

Erik, who had closed his eyes a moment before, exhaled and died.

Old Man: Pride

Most of the time when I would go visit my old friend, he would be waiting on his porch. His eyes would be fixed on a point slightly above the horizon. White, wiry hairs corkscrewed out from below his wrinkled forehead and above his pale blue eyes. On a favorable interpretation, he looked placid. On an unfavorable one, he looked vacant.

As soon as I was within earshot, the gaze broke. He called out a greeting. Sometimes this greeting was in the form of a "Hey there." Other times, he would begin speaking about a topic as though we were already in the middle of a conversation. He simply supplanted the long-running monologue taking place in his mind with a new actor. Once he called out, "I have no time for prideful people!" I replied with a grin, "Well I think you can keep your appointment with me."

I climbed the graying wooden steps and crossed the creaking patio to take a seat tangential to him. The wicker chair crackled in response to my weight.

"Did you think the way something starts speaks to how it will proceed and finish?" He asked.

I looked down to collect my thoughts.

"My historian friends would agree with that suggestion. They always claim you won't understand where you are unless you know where you are coming from. In exploration at least, I would think that's true. It would be essential to get one's bearings and keep an impeccable record of your route. So yes, knowing the way something starts is important to understanding it."

He needed no time to gather his own.

"Apply that very thought to people. How do they begin? As itty-bitty babies. At their own request? No. Of course not. They're brought into the world unbeknownst to them. There's no choice in it for the living. No way to take credit for the start. Everyone is completely dependent to begin with. Show me the person who has given birth to herself, and I'll show you the person whose pride is well-placed. As for the rest of the arrogant dreamers, leave me be! For all of their accomplishments and accolades, they always start off as babies. The prideful live as though they've outgrown their dependency. But have they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone," he lowered his head and glared into my eyes, "at every point in their lives—is woefully dependent on a great many factors outside of their control. Your ticker has to keep ticking, the beams above your head and the planks below your feet have to maintain their integrity. Itty-bitty little cells need to keep performing their tasks without fail or else. Gasp! Heart attack! Boom! Structural collapse! Agh! Cancer! I could go on and on. My point is that no one is in as much control as the prideful person likes to purport."

At this point in the performance, I felt it my place to play the contrarian. "I'll concede that a person does not begin in a meritorious way and that much of our continued existence is owed  in part to outside factors rather than those we are responsible. Still, if we slice all of that away, we get to the core of people. Even if the great preponderance of human existence is accidental, there is a sliver that is purposeful. The prideful simply grab hold of that sliver for all its worth, maximize it, and admire their accomplishments. How can that be so wrongheaded? If we all have our slivers and some of us take advantage of them and some of us prefer complacency, how is it more reprehensible to exercise our slivers rather than let them atrophy?"

He scowled at me. "I have not suggested that a person shouldn't take responsibility for what he can do. Nothing of the sort. Prideful people do more than take responsibility for they can do. They take credit for everything good and true in this world. I used to work for this woman. She waged a long battle to get where she was, I do not doubt that. She let you know—sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly—that she won that battle and rightfully so. In the process, she made sure you knew that she was above you and that you could not have won that same battle. That's what grates me—the inconsistency of it all. The old think they're better than the young because they've lived longer. If you give the young a little bit of time, they'll get to be just as old though. The strong can pummel you into submission, but what if they snapped a tendon way-back-when? Then they'd be scrawny like the rest of us. Yes, Ms. Swanson, you are the vice president and that is a laudable position to be in. But don't act as though you haven't caught a break along the way. We've all caught breaks and breaks have broken us. There are headwinds and tailwinds. The only sensible thing is to get off your high horse and walk alongside the rest of us."

"I think you underestimate how much of life is about the choices people make. You seem to think that because there are choices, and that the viability of those choices is often itself unchosen, that people should ease up on defining themselves by their choices—specifically the successful, rewarding choices. Why begrudge people a sense of accomplishment for utilizing their talents? Your pride is another person's self-confidence."

"That's not true. Self-confidence doesn't make other people feel small. We are all itty-bitty. Besides being a lie, pride is disharmonious. Don't play the fool, Victor. You know full well that attitude I am talking about. I think you just like watching me get all in a tizzy. You need to be more careful with the elderly. I'm fragile you know. A regular porcelain doll." He smirked and the wrinkles in his cheeks folded together.

"Right, right. You caught me. Humility is a great attribute. I'll take it over the opposite. Still, talking small and being small is not so good as talking small and being big."

"Fine, fine." He smiled at me, but I could not leave well enough alone. Now that I had taken up a position, I felt the need to keep defending it.

"And I think you fail to grasp a mitigating factor in making pride so bad. It is completely natural. Show me the person that isn't prideful and I'll show you a corpse. Everyone is proud of themselves. Some are just more public with it. Some are proud of being exceptional. Some are proud of being meek. Some are proud of being in between, of being the average man. There are people walking around with humble faces that hide a holier-than-thou attitude. I think it was Twain who said something like, "When a man keeps telling you he's trustworthy, it's time to check his pockets for the sterling silver." Wouldn't the same thing apply here? A person who says he hates pride is actually quite prideful and only hates pride in others because it takes up room his own pride would otherwise fill."

His head kicked back slightly with a snicker. "Such a clever man, you are! I knew there was a good reason why we're friends. I'll only say this much: something being natural does nothing to excuse it. It only explains the origin of the thing."

Energy pulsated through my body as victory was now at hand. "Says the man who earlier claimed where something comes from says a lot about where it's going. And if I agree, then from nature to nature and no one is to blame at all. We're born, live, and die naturally and nothing we are predisposed to doing is unnatural. The only unnatural thing is to poke your head out of the flow of things and criticize it for not going a different, unnatural direction. So you are the one out of line, not the prideful people."

He laughed heartedly. "Very good my dear sophist, very good! And good luck with all that. If you'll settle for only what it natural, you'd better grab your cloak and dagger. It's a mad world you'll be a citizen of." His hand grabbed for the steaming mug on the little brown table between us. He shakily took a sip. "Checkers?"

"Sure."

Old Man: Autumnal

I once knew a man who claimed that the surest proof for the existence of God was autumn. "The leaves don't have to be so beautiful," he'd tell anyone who would listen. "They could very well just go straight to brown. Leaves could change from green to gray to black. They don't, though. Nature grants you a reprieve."

The wispy hairs on this long white beard would wobble with the movements of his jaw. Although his eyes were clouded with the onset of glaucoma, they retained the sincerity of his youth. "Everything is ready to sleep or die around you, but the mood of the transition isn't somber. It's merciful. The brilliant reds and yellows and oranges are full of clemency. The trees are saying, 'Don't be afraid. Take hope from our vibrancy. Death is not the end—be emboldened for the struggle against the upcoming cold hardships.' Could nature on her own ever be so compassionate? Where else is she so wise, so loving? The rest of the year, she is capricious. She's manic. She gives too much or takes it all. Never does she seem concerned with her tenants. But in the fall, she coddles you and whispers the sweet truth—not sweet because it is artificial but because it satiates. She fills you up not on earthly goods—tasty berries or savory meats. She graces you with transcendent goods, those that can be stored forever in the soul. Berries shrivel and meats rot, but truth, goodness, and beauty—they are always with us as the perfect food for our aspirations. The leaves fall, but we remember their splendor as it was draped upon the jagged branches. Aren't you thankful for that juxtaposition? That something so awesome can be here with us even when the winds prompt us to seek shelter?"

Even though the notion was outlandish and far removed from the flavor of the usual apologetics, there was something in the way he spoke that made you want to believe. His voice was full of warmed gravel. His breath would push past the residue of years of speaking that caked on his vocal chords. "Some people tell you that winter is the most accurate of all the seasons—that it speaks the most truth of existence. After the flourish of spring and the vitality of summer, the living whimper and grow tired and hard. In winter, life proves itself to be the accident we always worried it was. In the distant future, the universe will return to normalcy. Everything will be cold and dead."

At this point in his speech, he'd place his heavy, knobby hand on your shoulder for emphasis. The warmth of his mitt would seep through your clothes. "But I say, "No," and he would grip you tighter. "I say it's fall that most captures the way things are. It tells you, "Your ambition outstripped your potential. You got ahead of yourself with all of that budding and shooting of vines. We'll have to put your in your place. It's going to be painful, but you can bare it." And every spring, the world gets excited and every summer it forgets its proper pace. And every fall we are taught the meanings of the stern lesson of winter—that stultification is necessary but that beauty can see us through."

Alex: Reconciliation

"Well, Alexander, it's obvious we need to talk."

"I'm too tired to talk now."
"Running drains a person. You should sit for a while." Anna pulled her fingers through her dark brown hair.
Alex had never been in a situation like this. Anna's concern made him suspicious. Who chases down a stranger? A creep or a saint. Either way, someone off her rocker. "Where would you like to sit?" Alex inquired.
"There's a little park a couple blocks away. It would be good to be outside, don't you think?"
"What park is that?"
"Greenachre Park."
"Never been."
"Then that is where we'll sit and figure you out."
"And then we'll figure you out?"
"Nothing to figure out, Alex."
Incorrect. "We'll see."
The two walked together, Anna slightly ahead, without saying another word. Alex was frequently distracted by the sights and sounds of the sidewalk. As they neared the park, the sound of water crashing into water became more distinct against the ambient noise. Going down a set of concrete steps to a brick patio, the two faced a man-made waterfall and stream flanked by greenery. Anna pulled back one of the two chairs at a round black metal table. The scraping of its feet was barely audible against the roar of the ebullient stream.
"How are we supposed to hear each other down here?" Alex asked in a raised voice.
"It's not so loud. But first you need to calm down, then we can talk. Let me know when you're ready." Anna leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
What is this? Alex looked closely at Anna's face. She looks serene. Eye-liner. Must not have been a bad day from the start. What is she thinking? Her motionless countenance bored him soon and his eyes began to wonder. This is a nice place. A good use of tax dollars. A little forced, but one has to force nature back in once she's been kicked out. All the same, I should get out of here. Go back home to sleep.
Alex shifted his weight in his seat. Anna's eyes opened at the sound. "You act as though I'm keeping you from something. Where else would you be?" Anna asked loudly.
Alex leaned towards her to speak over the noise. "I'd like to be at home sleeping."
"Sleeping at noon? Long night?"
"I don't sleep well anymore."
"So you sleep poorly around the clock?"
"Around most of the clock. 300 degrees of the clock." His eyes wandered towards a strutting pair of pigeons.
"And the other 60?"
"I eat breakfast and look out a window in my grandfather's condo at the street below."
"Why'd you leave today?"
"Because my grandfather was annoying me."
"He was trying to help, too, eh?"
What is this? Bad idea coming. Was it weakness or curiosity. I need to be free of this. "I cannot be helped, Anna."
Anna drew forward in a confrontational air. "You've been trying to establish that."
"And you've been trying to demolish that." Alex frowned and focused his eyes intensely on Anna's. "What you and my grandfather don't seem to understand is that I don't want your sort of help. I don't want his advice and I don't want your--I don't know what to call it--interest? I don't want tough love or soft love. I don't want pep talks. I don't want to plumb the depths of my soul. I want what I know I cannot have, so what I want next is to not have what I don't want. So I fled my grandfather and I tried to flee you."
"Noted. And how is relieving yourself of the compassion of others supposed to be good for you?"
This is crazy. "Compassion?! If you were actually feeling the same things I am feeling, you would have left me alone to be by yourself. You'd want to pick up the pieces on your own."
"But you can't pick them up. You said you know you can't have what you want--unless you want something other than being well again."
"How is a man supposed to be well when he's under the microscope of critics?"
"I'm hardly a critic. I don't know your grandfather, but judging by how you have responded to me, I'd say he's not either."
"Critics have nothing better to do than to belittle vulnerable people from their ivory towers." Confronting her again with his eyes, Alex said, "There's no danger in being critical."
"You can't be calmed, can you?"
"Is this a hobby of yours?"
"You're evasive."
"And you're nosy. I'm sad and you're bored. The sky is blue and the ground is hard. Definitions don't get you very far. It's like looking in a mirror. Input equals output. You need some principles. Some propositions. Then you can get something other than what you put in. I'll go first. I'll propose that there are two sorts of empty people: people that want to remain empty and people who want to be filled by others. I'll admit that I am in the first category, and you--you're in the second. But you can't take something from nothing, and I have nothing for you. I am not a pet project. A few glib truisms or folksy adages are not going to set me straight because they aren't going to set straight the ways of this world. You, my grandfather, and every other gilded optimist need to face the fact that life is not what you think it is and you cannot make it what you want it to be by convincing us innocent bystanders that crimes are really philanthropic actions in disguise."
"What do you think this is? Do you think I want this to count as my good deed for the day--chasing down an arrogant man to put him in his place? I just wanted to have a nice conversation. First thing this morning my boss called me into his office and told me to pack up my things. He said it was nothing personal. So, I put my pens and pencils, my photos, and the gum I keep in my desk into a box. I dropped the box off and sought solace in a donut shop. Then some shadowy bastard picks my table to invade--of all the tables--while I had retreated into the safehaven of literature. Then I watched you jitter and dart off and I thought, "He has it worse than me. I should go help him." You think that's what a critic thinks before reviewing a book?"
"What makes you think you can help me?"
"What makes you think you can hurt me? I was looking to be of some assistance, but think of me what you will. I won't tell you off. I won't get up. I'll keep sitting here. It's on you to run off again. You've got to face facts sooner or later, though."
Anna watched Alex think. Again? "Take this thing on." "Face the facts." How have I tried to get away at all? I am living it. Rotting, rotting as the world continues on. I was something and now I am not. No one will listen. I cannot be helped. Did I try to hurt her though? Only to be left alone. Is that what I want? No. I want the past back. 6 months ago." Alex felt a wave of frustration crash over him. Pathetic to snivel this way. Have I no pride? Too much pride--that's why I snivel. A boy with a popped balloon on a string in his hand. She's done nothing wrong. Neither has Ernest. I should give her a chance. "I'm sorry. Sorry for being abrasive. I only meant earlier to take a napkin without bothering you."
"Didn't you think if you asked, you could've started something good? A little friendly banter, a smile? Wouldn't that push against the momentum of your day?"
"Right, right. Let's move on. I said I was sorry."
"Yes, you did. Accepted. Now, relax." Anna leaned back in her chair and felt a sprinkle of mist strike her cheek.

Alex: Pursuit

"What's it about? Selflessness? Saintliness? Martyrdom? I'm not interested in sacrificing for others. I have sacrificed enough. I have studied hard, worked conscientiously--I used to stay late to do pro-bono work--and others--OTHERS--have reaped all the benefits and not so much as left me the threshing floor scraps." Alex paused after reading the concern in his companion's eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't even know your name. It's been a while since I spoke with anyone besides my grandfather." Feeling bashful, Alex rose from his seat, placed his notebook in his left pocket, and apologized again.

"Where are you going? Aren't you going to ask my name? What about our competition?"
"I don't know. I don't want to know you. I changed my mind." He walked swiftly towards the door, leaving a nub of donut on the young woman's table.
"You haven't learned your lesson!" the woman yelled.

Although he heard her, he did not turn around. Sounded stupid. Bellyaching. Blathering. It wasn't even cathartic. It was embarrassing. What good could have possibly come from talking to someone?

Alex huffed along the sidewalk, darting around other pedestrians.Where to go? No place worth going to. Want to disappear. Want to be asleep. Nothingness. Grandpa's? Bah. No money. No car. Stranded. On an island. I am an island. This man is an island. Sinking. Sunken. A car stereo interrupted his thinking. The tinny sound of soft rock unnerved Alex further. Turn it down! Turn it down! Pay to get the a/c fixed and roll up the windows! Attacked--I am being audibly attacked. Tweeter shot treble-arrows. Others--these are your others. Inconsiderate, unaware, cattle chewing their pre-digested cud and crapping out the preferences of celebrities and the opinions of the supposed authorities. Ron Paul and Che Guevara. Paul and Guevara! Really!(Two months prior, Alex had observed a sky blue car with a bumper sticker for the libertarian and the communist sharing space on the same peeling bumper.)What is wrong with these people? Hardly anyone thinks for themselves, but they all think they do.

Alex was dealt a glancing blow on the arm by the shoulder of a shorter man hustling in the opposite direction. Absorbing the collision without altering his course, he continued his quick pace.

A familiar voice from behind entered his ears. "Hey! Stop! Mr. Napkin--stop!" Slightly out of breath, the young woman from Dan's Donuts placed her hand on the same shoulder that had just been hit. Alex spun around and looked contemptuously at his pursuer.

"What?"
"Never leave a person in a bad way."
"What?"
"Another lesson for you." She smiled. "You win, okay? You've had it harder than me. Anyone who darts off like you did must have had it hard for a while. What's wrong with you?"
Shame rose within Alex. What is she doing here? She followed me? Probably crazy, too.
"Nothing is wrong with me. I made a fool of myself and I didn't stay around for the aftermath. Sounds reasonable to me."
"Foolishness is fleeing from aid--amongst other things. We were going to lighten each other's days a bit with a little conversation and you left me more frustrated than when we began. I'll not stand for it."
"You're full of one-liners, aren't you?"
"Truth is brief."
"Exhibit C."
"I'm not going to alter the way I communicate for you. I can't help it if I'm full of profundities." Her smile was persistent and aimed at disarming him.
"Why did you follow me?"
"Because I am a curious person. A man who storms out of a donut shop after being invited to sit by a pretty young woman like myself must have an interesting story."
"Forgive me for not satiating your curiosity, but I refuse to be the subject of an experiment," Alex stated sternly.
"Who said anything about experiments? I was only trying to help by..."
"Prying."
"No. By showing concern."
"You have no reason to be concerned for me."
"Exactly."
"If your after a letter of recommendation for sainthood, I haven't got the time." Alex moved away.
"Are you made of stone? Calm down...what is your name?"
"What's it to you?"
"Stop it already. If you didn't really want to talk with me, you would never have turned around. I'll start. My name is Anna."
She's caught me. It's true. I am lonely.
"My name is Alexander."

Alex: Lesson

Exhausted from a prolonged session of anxiety and inactivity, Alex fell asleep. 

He awoke to the golden warmth of midday and the sensation of being struck on the arm. Startled, Alex opened his eyes and flinched. A frisbee sat at his feet. The owner, rather than risk the embarrassment of a verbal apology, avoided eye contact. I'd like to tell him to get a job, but he could tell me the same thing. Need to get out of here. Can't go home. I'd like some food. Something cheap and sweet. Dan's Donuts is only two blocks away.

Walking again, Alex's eyes actively took in the scenery. A person with bags in their arms was yelling at a departing taxi cab. Movers were toting a walnut dresser up a set up steps. The sound of heavy breathing grew louder and he was soon overtaken by a woman is business attire running with two inch heels. Looks dangerous. A courier breezed by him on a bicycle weaving between pedestrians, parked cars, and planters at a surprising speed. More dangerous. I wonder when he last fell. I hope he has good insurance. Better than mine, I'm sure. None. I can't afford to be sick. What a pitiful thought! I'll probably die of something easily curable--the first to die of malaria in the United States in fifty years. Just curl up in a corner somewhere like Sparkles and give up my ghost.

The jangle of the overhead bell announced Alexander's entrance to Dan's Donuts.
"What'll it be?" asked a gruff-voiced employee.
"One jelly-filled donut...and...a small coffee."
"Cream?"
"No."
"$2.34."
Alex handed the man behind the counter a wrinkled five dollar bill from his bi-fold wallet. $197.66 left to my name. Shit. While waiting for the coffee, he grabbed the day's paper off a nearby table. Taking it, his coffee, and donut to a chair by the window, Alex settled in. After trying his hand at the cross-word puzzle (only filling in 46 of the 120 words), and being frustrated by the want ads, Alex withdrew a small notebook from his pocket. He took his time and wrote the following entry:

Why is it animals so frequently find a way to die with dignity and I am not allowed to live with dignity? The worst part of all of it: I have no one to blame. It's just the system. It's capitalism and the conventions of employment. Last hired; first fired. 'But I am a better worker.' It doesn't matter. 'But I put in more hours." It doesn't matter. 'But I actually don't steal from the company.' It doesn't matter. I have no one to curse at. I have been vanquished by an ethereal phenomenon. Slayed by the mist of circumstance. And

As Alex was writing, he took an unfortunate bite of donut. A slug of raspberry jelly shot out of the back of his snack and landed on his notebook. Red slowly fanned out around the edges of the discharge. Damnit. Alex grabbed for a napkin from the tabletop dispenser, but it was empty. Figures. Alex looked around and discovered that most of the dispensers were barren. The only dispenser that bore white was at the only other occupied table. Sitting at the table was a young woman wearing black framed glasses, and nibbling a bear claw whilst reading a book. She had delicate features, a thin, sharp nose, and rail-thin arms. Wishing not to intrude, he reached across the table and plucked a napkin from its holder. The woman looked up.

"Excuse me," she said sharply.
Alexander walked away.
"I said, 'Excuse me.'"
Alexander turned around and replied, "What?" She kept looking at him. "It's been a hard day. I didn't want to interrupt your reading or your eating. You looked to be enjoying both."
"Oh." The woman's face softened. "Sorry, it's been a hard day for me, too. I came here for a caloric remedy."
Still standing some distance away, Alex smiled at her now softened face. "I came here for a cheap snack."
Upon turning to return to his table, the woman said, "Aren't you going to join me?"
"That's a bit presumptuous, don't you think?"
"I'd say it's standard procedure. A girl makes small talk with a boy and the boy wants to keep it up."
"I haven't been a boy for a while."
"Looks like you still are."
It was true. Alexander was wearing a pair of khakis that fell just bellow his ankle, revealing too much of his dark socks. He normally loathed being referred to as young or having his baby face brought to attention.
A boy. 27? A boy? No. Save for living in a place that I don't own. Save for pilfering food out of my grandapa's pantry most nights. Still--she is pretty. Alex retrieved his half-eaten donut, wiped the jelly out of his notebook as best he could, and returned to the stranger's table.
"Let's have a competition. Who had the worst day?"
"What does the winner get?"
"That depends on the winner."
"Oh?"
"If I win, you have to apologize for being rude and promise not to be for the rest of the week. If you win, I'll let you go back to scribbling in your notebook."
"There's not much in it for me then."
"How so?"
"It's not that I want to write. It's just that it's better than being at home or staring at the wall."
"Oh. Well what do you want? And it can't be anything big."
"A job."
"A job is big--and I don't have any of those to give away either."
Alex cast his his hazel eyes down away from her brown ones. Why did I say that? Too much.
"What did you used to do?"
"I was a lawyer at Myers and Stanton."
"Never heard of it. What happened?"
"I'm still trying to figure that out."
"Hm. Well, at least your still alive and," casting a glance at the donut in his hand, "relatively well-fed."
He raised the donut, said, "Relatively," and took a bite.
She smiled at him, revealing a sliver of her teeth. He reciprocated, showing none of his.
"Prizes aside, what happened to you today?"
This is strange. Who talks to strangers? What's her angle? "I'm sorry, but why are you doing this?"
"Don't apologize yet, I haven't won. Why am I doing what?"
"Talking to me?"
"Because you were impolite and I had originally intended on teaching you a lesson."
"Don't let my day stop you. I could use a lesson."
"Well in that case..." she paused and looked squarely at him. Her eyes did not focus directly on his, but as though she were looking at a spot behind him. "There's never an excuse grand enough to be inhumane to another human being. Humanity is the only way we'll get through our days."
"We need more than that," Alex retorted quickly.
"What more could you need?"
"A job. A way to provide materially for yourself."
The young woman frowned. "No. If your employer had been humane, she would have kept you. Any man who writes in a journal and indulges a stranger in conversation ought to be employed."
"He--Them. They fired me."
"Myers and Stanton both?"
"Good memory, but no. A couple of my superiors sat me down and cut me loose."
"Did you do anything wrong? Steal post-it notes or sleep with a client's wife?"
"I stole post-it notes, but no one noticed. No. They said it was nothing personal. They said 'times are tough' and that they needed to downsize. They wished me luck, shook my hand, and had security escort me out within the hour."
"Ick."
"Yes, ick. Ick, ack, and yuck."
"Sounds more non-humane than in-humane. Can't help the economy, you know?"
"Know? I live."
"Right. Well, anyways, unemployed or not--you have to treat people better."
"And if people don't treat me better?"
"That's not what it's about." She slid a blue and gold bookmark into the crease of her book and closed it.

Out of Character

Nothing about Bernard Calloway's appearance was sinister. Halfway through his life, he was six feet tall with medium length thinning blond hair, and gray-blue eyes. He was slimly built and featured a well-groomed mustache that he had been growing for over fifteen years. His voice was unassuming, slightly above the average man's pitch. Air scraped against the bottom of his top teeth upon its exit, giving his s's a breathy quality.

Despite appearances and sounds, anyone who knew Bernard judged him to be an exceptionally terrible man. In the workplace, he never returned the greetings of his peers. Neighbors loathed his habitual practice of parking over the left-line of the condominium's parking spots. When he went out to eat, he never tipped. When he walked down the street, he would turn around and accost anyone who brushed against him. As a manager, he was cut-throat. As a son, he was inconsiderate. He was a friend to none. When he was a child he enjoyed dumping his food onto the floor. As an adolescent, he enjoyed shooting cats with his pellet gun. In high school, rumor had it that he was to blame for the fire set in the boy's dormitory. He made right turns on red lights when he should not have. As a teenager, he made a game of seducing young women. As a man, he made a game of seducing married women.

For all of his misdeeds, Bernard had an uncanny way of benefiting from situations. He was ever mindful of avenues for advancement. He took credit for returning a dog that had been reunited with the owner's anonymously, earning him $50 in reward money when he was ten. Bernard cheated his way through college. He took many pennies throughout his life and left none. Years ago as he was making his start, he would "rent" items from stores--buying them, using them temporarily, and returning them for full refunds. He forged the signature of his ailing father on a check in order to procure the funds necessary for a down payment on his first car. He pilfered the jewelry of his ailing mother years later to pay for three new Calvin Klein suits. He caught the eye of all of his superiors by making his coworkers look incompetent. He once blackmailed a vice president of a rival company into giving him insider information that, when acted upon, earned him his first vacation home. Even after amassing a small fortune, Bernard would not hesitate to relieve a lost wallet of its cash. It's what they deserve for being so careless.

Virtues became vices in Bernard's heart. Normally, to have egalitarian leanings is commendable. In his case, it was despicable. Bernard loathed all people equally. Being a highly competitive person, he viewed everyone as a rival for the world's limited resources. He justified his maniacal behavior as being natural. We are all struggling to survive. My way of struggling is more efficient than average. I not only keep myself going, but hinder others along the way. Bravery is employed on both sides of a war. Bernard was proof that it took courage to fight for evil as well. He risked apprehension and punishment in order to win the greater rewards of underhandedness.

He maintained his ways at home and abroad. He relished the anonymity that traveling afforded him. It is preferable to take advantage of a person you would never see again. There's less mess. On a business trip during his fifty-second year, Bernard acted out of character. He had packed his belongings into his overnight bag, complained of the smell of smoke in his non-smoking room (which he had put there by smoking a cigar upon his arrival) while checking-out, received a free breakfast and a discount on the room, and made his way to the street. A mob of people was clamoring for a taxi, so Bernard opted to move eastward to catch a westbound car earlier. Two blocks down, passing under emerald awnings and by wrought iron patio furniture, he stopped in front of an apartment complex.

A flustered woman with a small, wheeled black suitcase in tow descended the concrete steps and stood next to Bernard. She pulled at the ends of her shirtsleeves and ran her fingers through her hair. Exhaling loudly, she smiled at Bernard and said, "Some morning, huh? Something always comes up when you're in a hurry."

"That's the way it goes," Bernard responded as he turned his attention back to the busy avenue. He stepped off the curb and hailed the approaching cab. It decelerated and turned towards the customers-to-be.

"I'm sorry, but do you mind? I'm terribly late already. Could you, please?" In the cloud-filtered morning light, the twinkle in her eye she used to flash men was hardly noticeable. Still, the look was enough to disorient Bernard. Unlike the strangers he usually wronged, her humanity was convincingly established by the delicacy of her voice. Unlike the people that knew him, she had not assumed the worst of him. She simply and humbly asked him for a favor after recognizing her need for assistance.

Bernard stepped back. The woman opened the back door, slid her bag in, and followed after it. He watched the cab weave through the congested street until, after a right turn, it left his field of vision. He walked down another three blocks to a corner where a car with the white sign reading "Taxi" glowed, idled. Bernard cut off a man approaching it with a number of bags in his arms. As Bernard climbed in and shut the door, he heard the muffled string of expletives flowing from the burdened man outside the window. He stared back at him coldly.

"LaGuardia," Bernard commanded the driver.

Domestic Disturbance

The body has a curious, involuntary response to a disagreeable situation. In the creation of taste aversions, the body associates two contemporaneously (rather than causally) related events. When one eats a bowl of mint chip ice cream and shortly thereafter vomits and breaks out in a cold sweat, the body draws the conclusion that the mint chip ice cream is to blame. Every subsequent time a person so much as smells mint chip ice cream or sees the light green shade, one feels a tide of nausea rise inside her and she wishes to flee. Though the stomach flu was the real culprit, the mint ice cream is judged guilty by association. The creamy, clean sweetness has the same taste as it always did, but it's examined through a different lens.

The mind has an analogous, though admittedly less documented, response. Emaline Sortiere developed an aversion to her husband of 26 years somewhere in their second year together. Emaline Schlager married Lloyd Sortiere in the fall of 1928. Both were admittedly desperate for matrimony as the age 30 doggedly pursued them. In accordance with their yearnings, the two of them were blind to the premonitions of discord.

Lloyd was deceptive, though without the intention to be so. A man of few words and simple pleasures, he often gave the impression of being a sage. In truth, he was little more than an old, often sad, child. His inner waters were murky with unhappy tempests while his surface presented undisturbed. During their courtship, Emaline admired his affective consistency and Lloyd admired her talent in the kitchen.

Emaline was inconsistent to a fault. On a drive in his Chevrolet in the spring of 1927, Emaline vented at how "crusty" Bach's Organ Fugue in G Major sounded. When asked for clarification, she answered, "I think organs are simply dreadful instruments. So brash and abrasive!" In the winter of 1927 when the same fugue flowed in over the dining room radio, Emaline pleaded with Lloyd to buy her a phonograph of that "wonderful music."

Their marriage began as a symbiotic relationship. Emaline would tend to all things domestic; Lloyd would provide for all things material. So long as he kept her well-stocked and properly ornamented and she kept him well-fed and properly dressed, all was well. She could imagine that he wanted to be with her in a way the romantics wrote of in their poems. He could imagine that she wanted to nurture him in a way his alcoholic mother never managed to do.

All self-loathing people have disdain for their own company. Some self-loathing people have greater disdain for the company of others. Though neither understood it, only Lloyd belonged in the second camp. It due to this constitutional difference that he could stomach his dull, tedious work-life, and she was given to fits of depression in their dull, tedious home-life.

On a foggy early summer morning in 1930, the mind of Emaline Sortiere forged an aversion to Lloyd that would cast a pall over the rest of her life and sour what little sweetness was available in his. Lloyd had for the past month been putting in long hours at the office on a project not worth disclosing to persons outside the workplace. Emaline initially tried to make the best of her superabundance of time. She marked several items of off the "rainy-day list," including sewing a different set of curtains for the guest bedroom (canary yellow with little green star bursts throughout) and repairing a pocket in her favorite winter coat (long, black and red tartan). She picked up and put down several of the outdated magazines around the house. The diversions were insufficient to keep a nagging sense of disappointment at bay. This is not how marriage is supposed to be. He needs to be with me.

Emaline had been anticipating a pleasant Saturday and dropping hints about going on a picnic. Unfortunately for her, Lloyd had a major deadline and a callous boss looming. Early Saturday morning after he covertly crept out of bedroom, Lloyd wrote a brief apologetic note and promised to return in time for dinner. Infuriated upon discovery of the note, Emaline resolved to make a picnic lunch for herself and to go to the city park without him. Not thinking clearly about how far off lunchtime was, Emaline took to making a sandwich and introspecting. Wondering how it was the idyllic marriage she had patiently waited for all her life had eluded her despite the bold-faced fact that she was now married, Emaline sliced through the tip of her left index finger as well as the heirloom tomato. Shades of red mingled together on the wooden cutting board as she shrieked. Gripping her hand tightly with the other, she cried to release the torrent of pain and commiserate the ruination of her once beautiful hands.

My pointer! The pointer is the most important finger! It will be so ugly now! Damn! Damn! Damn! It's all his fault! If he would have stayed with me today, I wouldn't be so wounded! Oooooo! If he would have come home at a decent hour a few times during the workweek, maybe I wouldn't have needed to go on a picnic so damned much! Am I to be blamed for being lonely? A woman can't keep herself company--her husband is supposed to. People aren't supposed to be alone! He was so much more caring before we married!

Gripping the finger tightly within an increasingly bloody white dishtowel, Emaline collected herself and walked next door. She proceeded to ask her neighbor to take her to the hospital, where she received a topical anesthetic, stitches, and a bandage. Later that evening, she refused to explain to Lloyd the reason for the gauze on her finger. Her fingertip scarred over as did her heart.

Ever since, the mention of Lloyd's name prompted Emaline's blood pressure to rise. A nearly imperceptible grimace darted across her face whenever she heard his voice. Seeing the initials "LS" on the backs of certain models of automobiles made her left eye twitch with rage. Emaline blamed Lloyd for everything wrong with her life, except for her red hair--whose fault was her fair-skinned father's. Doors squeaking, nails chipping, boredom pervading, breasts drooping, paint fading--all were the products of Lloyd Sortiere. In their subsequent interactions, Emaline would vacillate between yelling at Lloyd and ignoring him. Lloyd stayed loyal to her because through it all, she never stopped making dinner.