XII Consequences - Dave Cherry

Jason began weaving in his lane a little. If he had an accident now, Emily would have to drive away and pretend that the evening had ended where they met, back at the bowling alley. Maybe he would get himself killed? If she’d thought that was likely, she would have doubled the dose of rohypnol in his beer. The idea was briefly amusing but she had only thought to grind up a single-milligram tablet anyway. Besides, with Jason’s luck, he would have wiped out a family of five and somehow inexplicably survived.

Brake lights on steadily now. He slowed down to 40mph, then 30, like he’d begun to look for something. And there it was, a break in the ranch fencing just wide enough for one vehicle to pass. Jason turned right through the gap, his truck jerking abruptly left to right over broken ground. The entrance was beset on either side by tall yellow and brown grass mostly concealing it. Emily could see that it was actually a small, concrete, single-lane bridge encasing a wide-mouthed corrugated-steel drain pipe. Before following him over, she stopped the car and began considering evidence and exit strategy. The drive was hard packed dirt and gravel; nothing soft enough to hold a tire impression. The way that Jason was headed, it led out to a gravel lot adjacent to a large multi-purpose barn.

For a moment, Emily wondered if it would be necessary to prevent Jason from escaping. Maybe she should leave her car wedged in the opening of the one-lane bridge? Just then she observed him have two near misses; one with a pump handle atop a well, and then another with the barn itself. He came to a stop hard enough to drag rubber on gravel and then sat there, conspicuously not smoking his cigarette. He was definitely flying the friendly skies.

Emily pulled up to his rear bumper, pulled on a pair of nitrile exam gloves, and popped the trunk. Show Me a Sign by Kontakt had just begun playing through the car from her iPod. With one leg out of the door, she let the song play for a few seconds before shutting down her engine. If she was going to receive a sign, that was surely it.

Next to Jason’s truck there was a wide-open bay in the barn. The kind with a giant garage door. This was clearly a shop judging from the band-saw, drill press, and work bench with parts everywhere. In the middle of the floor, lying on its side, was a slightly rusted 55 gallon drum. No doubt the drum that Alex spoke of. This was the spot.

With some pawing around on the inside of the doorjamb, Emily easily found a light switch. On came a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Now to move Jason. She opened the driver’s-side door and there he sat with an inch-and-a-half ash hanging on the end of his cigarette. He hadn’t even put the truck in park yet. So she put it in park, shut it off, and relieved Jason of his smoke. She wrapped his left arm around her neck and started tugging him out. He was surprisingly cooperative with his feet, setting them down on the ground one at a time. Then there was a split second of alarm when he suddenly contracted his arm into a near headlock and used his right hand for a grope at Emily’s breast. Having satisfied the impulse, he relaxed again and she led him awkwardly over to the barrel and set him down and against it.

Emily went over to her trunk and withdrew the brown paper bag with the gun inside and a small polishing cloth. She laid the cloth out on Jason’s lap and proceeded to fieldstrip the gun, placing the pieces in his lap. With the slide and the receiver separated, she put the pieces into his hands one at a time and closed his fingers around them so to leave fingerprints in lots of internal places, especially remembering the body of the magazine. Then she put the gun back together.

It was important to be ready to leave as soon as the shot was fired. She put the cloth in the bag and the bag back in the trunk. She then started the car and left it running so there wouldn’t be any unexpected difficulty getting it going. Show Me a Sign resumed beneath the sound of the engine.

Emily stood still for a long moment to survey the scene and make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Unconsciously she racked one into the chamber. Even the bullet casings would have his partial prints on them. There would be plenty of alcohol and a little rohypnol in his system; but they would be chalked up to recreation.

Satisfied that it was time, she came around to kneel behind him and began practicing poses. It seemed she would need to hold his head up by the hair and, to maximize gun-shot residue on his hand and forearm, she found she could glove-puppet the arm by trapping his right index finger in between her index- and middle-fingers. She need only squeeze with the tip of her index finger. Hopefully the caliber would be small enough to trap the bullet inside his skull. It was a .380, significantly larger than a .22, but she couldn’t guess.

Moments like these change a person. There are things in life that you can’t undo. Powerful things. But Emily was completely clear about her motive for being here. This was not retribution, not vigilante justice. It wasn’t even about justice. This was about mercy; mercy for every future victim and for Jason himself. That’s why there would be no waiting for him to come around. No torturing him, no terrorizing, or making him feel afraid. He should go out just like this, without as much as a whisper.

If not, then the only predictable future for Jason was one of endless harm done to others. It would be fifty years of rapacious, predatory behavior. He would be an abusive husband and father. He might continue raping women when the instinct overcame him. In short, he was completely devoid of Kant’s categorical imperative. No instinct to choose the good, and no ability to keep choosing it. People like this don’t stop unless something stops them. There was such a thing as a person who simply needed killing.

All those people spared. In this respect, everything was really very simple. She took the slack out of the trigger and began squeezing. This could change her, it could change her whole life, but her mind was made up.

Pop!

And a low peal as the bullet struck a steel girder.

So much for trapping it inside his skull. Instead it had exited through his upper left forehead throwing up a finer than fine red mist. Before Emily had fully processed what had happened, she actually inhaled some of it and tasted that sweet copper in the back of her throat.

It really was a defining moment. Not because it changed her, but because it didn’t. She felt exactly the same. Like a baby bird, astonished by its ability to fly for the first time, with no practice. The bird marvels, “Wow. I can do that? I can do that.” It doesn’t change the nature of the bird, but it changes the nature of the bird’s world. It has an entirely new reality on this basis. Being able to pull the trigger on someone revealed itself as a part of Emily’s substance, and it gave rise to a new reality. Hung up on the moment, she thought to herself, “I’m only 19.”

She laid the gun down carefully, walked over to the doorjamb, and hit the big green button beneath the light switch to lower the garage door. Back to the trunk she peeled off her gloves and put them in the brown paper bag, closed the trunk, and got in. As she fastened her seat belt, a thought flitted through her mind, “Will I ever find someone who could look at this and understand me?” She shoved the thought into the back of her mind along with the reminder of her tender age and gently drove back to the pavement of the highway.

After a half-hour drive home it was 2:00am. Her dad would be up in 4 hours and she customarily beat him to the shower. Quickly she stole up to her room to retrieve her bathrobe, then back down to the living room fireplace. Everything had to go. In went her blouse, skirt, socks, flats, and of course the brown paper bag with the gloves inside. She squirted everything with just a dash of charcoal starter from the kitchen pantry and tended the little fire until all was ash. She had been careful not to wear anything synthetic.

Finally came a long shower to freshen up and get rid of any residual cordite smell. She turned the water up as hot as she could stand it and brusquely put her head in the stream to trigger that gush of endogenous morphine. The joy of being alive in the now was spectacular.

Emily retreated to her bedroom, passed her hand over the light switch to turn it off, and moved quietly into the most treasured part of any 24 hours; meditating on her bed after a shower. There was something divine about the warmth of your robe and bed comforting your body; and the contrast of your head lying in the cool pool of your semi-wet hair.

Dave Cherry

Isolation

There are three forms of isolation that are fundamental in my mind. There is physical separation, mental illness, and lack of language. Their commonality is the feeling of being apart from; the inability to relate to others freely and with ease.

Physical separation is the easiest to understand. All sane people have a vital need to hear and be heard, to understand and be understood. Even animals without reason display it with their sounds and social behaviors.

Even drone insects are compelled to make sounds and touch their feelers together and it’s true of all living things that no one thrives in a vacuum. Nonhumans die prematurely and humans descend into mental dis-ease where no illness existed prior to their segregation from others. Solitary humans, the elderly without family or anyone who finds themselves alone through circumstance, will more often than not keep a pet. It only approximates communication with others of their kind, but they will convince themselves that their animal understands them; and it makes life more bearable.

 Mental illness brings with it a permanent or semi-permanent state of isolation. Untreated, even those who are aware of their situation cannot compensate for the fact that, in their reality, the world cannot be trusted to be as it seems. If they could share this reality with the person sitting next to them, they could hope to be understood. But they can’t. Not even with their psychiatrist or therapist; the professionals can only sympathize, not comprehend. In the best case, there is medicine that can provide corrective lensing for their kaleidoscope. In the worst case, they live in a near constant state of suffering and cannot experience that sense of ease and comfort that comes from two-way sharing.

Lack of language may plague some of the sane or insane equally. There is recourse, it has a remedy, but not all seek it and fewer still find it. In the simplest case a person may be inarticulate. They will probably understand far more than they are understood. Everyone experiences this in childhood and the pain and frustration of being left out provides the motivation to practice conversation and the practice of reading. In the absence of guidance, many grow into adulthood without growing into adult relations with others. And the isolation continues.

Lack of language extends to emotional life. When a man lacks the language of the heart, the woman who loves him will always feel somehow widowed, somewhat bereft. He may love her deeply, but the inability to express the length and breadth of it is a special kind of suffering, for them both. He may turn up with candy and flowers but, like the old woman and her cat, he is only convincing himself, fooling himself into thinking that he’s in a partnership.

Everyone has some area of their lives where they are isolated by not understanding or being less than understood. It brings pain, and the pain brings striving. The striving is life, whatever the handicap.

The Musician - Jeffrey Benzing

He sat with a lonely trumpet wobble. The horn tipped toward the concrete with stale breath going through. His lips sputtered and a note would fall out – he’d jam a finger down and it turned blue, the note smearing over, a quiet bend like he played it wrong.

            The corner was there all day and he sat with it – crowd shrugging by in the morning, heels clicking, not hearing the time when they went off to run the world and keep coins for their coffee.

            He gave them Freddie Hubbard – the B-flat a little off, the C-note just a breath, but he put his mouth to the brass, lips puffed like a blister, 20 degrees blowing by with a whistle, and he hit the harmony, a clear note held out with his hand shaking, body propped on a crate, a Burger King cup set out with three dollars stuffed in. Pennies from Heaven.

His neighbors passed – some of them saw, some of them glanced down at the bedroll and the flannel shirt he balled up like a pillow.

Some saw a wall by the bank building, and they passed like he’d cut the bell off and blew the horn like a secret. He’d sit there and disappear, gut hollow, sun rising with a cold glint over the cityscape, concrete sprawled out with steel towers, hard-wired like beacons of glass and silicone.

            Then his breath got sure, notes stretching out, rising up, a sharp flare, then a falter, and it all fell down.

            At noon, he’d take his three dollars and he’d find potato chips and an apple like a shrunken baseball. He’d eat, sitting on his crate then he’d swab his horn out, blowing a morning’s worth of spit out, whistling slow, cleaning the empty stares, the shuffling past, the trouble and neglect.

            Then he’d throw the core in the street, chewed to the seeds, and he’d curl the chip bag, a quarter empty and set it with his bedroll.

            He took a long sigh and gave a blow. Against the wall he made a sound like a choir of angels, cheeks puffed for a congregation that won’t pass the plate. The notes came out sour, fluttering from a cracked lip, a snort like from Revelation. Like if he could get a drum, he’d make Jericho fall, let the bank spill out empty so there’s something to eat, and everyone that passes could see how he played and tore down a mess of lies and greed and cash stuffed to get fat later on and not share with anyone if there’s a hole in their gut.

            The bell shook, a hard attack, hand curled in a half fist and he thought what it would be if it toppled like that and he could sit and lord over the brick and take the riches and the things that got left behind and build them up so he could have his, and they could handle the scraps.

            He took a breath, a low rumble with the air settling low, lips tight with the bell lifted – a cold, deep breath – and he wouldn’t want it like that.

            The sun sank in the skyline, the wind settling with frozen rain, a hard spit of it, bouncing from the awning where he stayed dry. And his neighbors came home, faces sapped, arms frantic to put shelter up, something flimsy to keep their suit dry, cold jitters going by. The cars jammed with horns and discord, exhaust in grey clouds rising to cold slate.

            And he leaned on that crate, horn raised, playing a song for the A-train, rail cars crowded with a broken mood. The splatted, faltered notes clipped in the night, the breath of the city sucking noise and unease, letting the soul soak through like cardboard.

            And the streets cleared, the doors shut with damp shoes set by the coat rack, the hard sleet dropping down, with a dampened song sinking slow in the lamplight.

            And when his lip strained and he couldn’t play no more, he could sing – a low poet’s grumble laid on a bed of concrete, with the air of chimneys rising up in the night and breath falling out from an empty gut.

Jeffrey Benzing

Anytime the pen goes to paper, there’s isolation. Either you’re shut out and lonely or bored and have to put something down to feel like it’s worthwhile. Or else you’re in a crowd, and you’re trying to block the noise so you can get a thought together…and then go over it again and again, trying to build something out of it.

Anyone who spends time watching people – learning how they act, what they sound like – knows isolation. You see parts of yourself in them, things that draw you in, and things you don’t like. You see that fundamental recognition of humanity. But then if you want to do anything with it, you have to pull back. You have to spend the time by yourself and figure out what you want to say and why it’s worth saying.

Being creative means doing something your own way – or trying to anyway. You put something down you hope people understand, but you hope it’s also something they’ve never seen. Something they might not get the first time. Or something you might not have said clearly.

Then there’s the isolation when nothing comes – when you feel like you have to drag it out of yourself, and until you can, you’re nothing but out of touch. Time goes by, and there’s so much to see and miss. But if you want to get something together, you stay shut in, and you let it go. You put the pen on the page, hoping you can at least say how that feels.

Writing for most of us seems like a way to connect. Sometimes that means saying something light and amusing, or something nostalgic. Sometimes it means getting deep into what it means to be downhearted or lost and alone. It takes a hard stare in the mirror, and it takes a stare out the window. In both places, you see the things that set you apart, and the struggle is to keep out from the world long enough to write something that breaks down that wall and shows that even something like that isolation is something we go through every day.

Volume 2 Spring 2013

Hello Fellow Scribblers!

Since last we published, our group has grown, and our writers are getting better and better.  Last issue, we presented the theme of feeling like a fish out of water and not quite belonging.  It seemed the quintessential problem of the writer, this fish out of water idea. Until one Thursday evening, where everything read had the theme isolation running through it.  Being the fair person I am, I solicited ideas from members and we put it to a vote for a theme for this issue. Isolation was the winner and so here we are.

This issue brings together eight writers, some returning contributors and several new faces, to give you their views. As before, we have the writer's idea of what isolation means to them followed by their pieces. Once again, I would like to thank the eight who contributed, and my two editors, Jeffrey Benzing and Joe Oppenheimer, for their help. I couldn't have gotten this together without you. On to the writing!

See You Thursday,

Tina