Calloway pushed the blade further into the ground with the step, leaning his body to use all his weight, “ya know,” he started, grunting, “what your problem is?” a cigarette bobbed up and down between his thin lips as he spoke
Max watched the blade cutting into the earth, “What?” He asks, arms folded.
“Ya still holding out for hope.”
Max cocked his head to one side, “Having hope is my problem?” He scoffed.
“Uh huh.” Calloway grunted and leant into the handle, “Let that hope go, boy.” He flicked ash onto the earth beneath his feet, embers flickered orange and then gave up.
Max disagreed, shaking his head. “A bit of hope is what a man needs.”
“Nah, Max.” Calloway let the shovel drop down to the ground with a thud, and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, “We all die in the end.”
“Morbid.” Max rolled his eyes.
A flicker like the embers from his cigarette sparked in Calloway’s eyes for a moment, “What do ya think I’m doin’ ‘ere? Digging for goddamn gold?”
Max looked at the hole Calloway had been digging and sighed with irony.
“The world needs the hopeless.” Calloway drawled on, taking a swig from his bottle of water.
“The world needs more hope, that’s what it needs.” Max said adamantly.
Calloway waved Max’s words away casually, “This world is just a big cosmic joke.”
“Well I for one,” Max dug the toe of his shoe into the ground with an irritated kick, “think there is something more to all this.”
“Something more? Something more than what?”
“Than this!” Max gestured with his hands open in front of him, signifying everything.
“You know why the world is a cosmic joke?” Calloway asked, picking up the shovel again and heaving the blade back into the earth.
“Because it’s all a big accident, blah blah. You’ve told me all this before.” Max faked a yawn.
“There is irony everywhere.” Calloway said matter of factly.
“What are you on about, Cal?”
“There is more hope to be found in the hopeless.”
Max scowled, “That makes no sense!”
“Exactly.”
Letting go of Hope.
I remember as a teenager standing on the top of a grassy hill, In the woods out the back of my parents house. I went there with friends and I went there alone. You could see the train tracks and watch steam trains on a Sunday. I remember this land being there before my eyes, and old couples that walked past would comment on the beauty. “What beauty?” I always thought silently. Because as the steam trains rattled past, and the birds chirped their way to sexy time, and the worms dug their way in the soil and pooped out nutrients after eating up the autumn and winter debris, nothing, absaloutely nothing could quench my lack of thirst for life.
And now? Now I wish I never saved myself. I wish I didn’t go to hospital for treatment. I wish on that fateful night that my self harming got found out that I didn’t say a word about feeling unwell, that I remained tight lipped. I simply wish I let go, that I never tasted water and found thirst. The raw pain persists, and when I think I’ve purged it all out it comes back or something new just as intense, or more intense comes along and punches me in the stomach. Thirst or no thirst the pain persists. If I could turn back time, I’d kill myself long before I had a glimpse of hope. Hope and I don’t get along, I know she’s a lie and yet I try to keep in some sort of relationship with her. No matter how distant we seem to get.
Its time I let hope go. We can’t work. I don’t like her friend chance, I’m too much of a coward.
I, the coward
It is through cowardice
That I wake tomorrow
There is no bravery in my step
I only take sidesteps
I wasn’t ready when I was born
I think that’s why my heart was already torn
Even from the womb I knew
I couldn’t be what you do
Gutless from the day I drew breath
Seeking courage
“I saw him in the shadows, Sir.”
The man Scar spoke with had alcohol on his breath, fingerless gloves on his hands and his dirty fingers shook and poked at the wall they stood beside. “I saw him a few times, I should have followed. But, I never could be that man, Scar.”
Scar was named so because the entirety of his left face was scarred round the edges of a tablet screen. The tablet screen just looked to have been shoved into his face willy-nilly, but it was surgically put there. His face constantly glowed on that one side, the screen full of scratches and cracks. This was the only source of light for the two men as they stood in the alleyway between the pub and the backs of poor filthy houses. “I was supposed to follow.” The man repeated, shaking even more. “I couldn’t do it.” A tear streamed down his dirty face.
“The truth is we chose the Devils way.” To prove his point, he scowled over at the street sign that read, ‘Djinn Avenue.’
“He was God, and we could have followed.” The man bellowed.
“God isn’t that powerful, neither is the Devil. It’s just Good and Bad. Beauty VS ugly. Dark VS light.” Scar said.
“You deny the shadow we saw in the mist?” The man asks, wiping a tear from his eye.
“I don’t deny the shadow. I deny his power.”
“Is that why you didn’t follow him upstairs?”
“I’ll go upstairs when I damn well want.” Scar’s face appeared to glow all the brighter as the irritation showed itself in his stance, and the other side of his face grimaced.
“You said you couldn’t be like him, that you wished you were.”
“The shadow is courage I never had.” Scar says sadly, “The shadow is only God because I never had the courage to go upstairs.”
The man started to pace, “I’ve seen the obscure man, the one with the…”
“Mirror?” Scar asked knowingly.
“Yes.”
Scar smiled for the first time, “Both the Shadow and the obscure man have mirrors.”
The man looked dumbfounded, “There are no mirrors upstairs.”
“The mirrors only show us what they want us to see.” Scar said matter of factly, almost like he’d rehearsed that line.
“What,” The man’s voice shakes a little, “What happened to your face?”
Scar smiled, but it was a smile upheld by sadness, “I wanted to be emotionless. I tried to become a robot.”
He laughed, “Insane, right?” He pointed to his glowing face.
“I can’t say it’s anything other, I’m afraid, sir.”
“I thought I could follow God easier as a robot.”
The man lit up a cigarette and looked at Scar, took the sight in as he inhaled a big hit of smoke. “You talk in a very confusing way. Do you believe in God or not?”
“God is merely a word that is interchangeable. God isn’t some spirit in the sky, it’s not some creator, it’s not what we’ve been taught.”
“What is God then?”
“God is an anthropomorphism of courage, of kindness, of natural events that bring joy.”
“So who or what is the Shadow?”
“The shadow is who we wish to be. We don’t follow the shadow actually. We become him, and he ceases to be a shadow, we live with courage.”
“So who is the obscure man, who always stands at the end of Djin Avenue?”
“The anthropomorphism of bad deeds, evil, natural disasters.” Scar carries on with himself, “We lack courage, so we don’t become Gods of our lives”
“Why would I want to become a shadow?” The man frowns, “you make no sense.”
“You don’t want to become a shadow. You want to become courage. Courage or God whatever you want to call him, is only a shadow because you, we, haven’t realised his potential. That is, we haven’t become the courage we sought.”
“Are we the obscure man?”
“Yes. It is us standing at the end of Djin Avenue.”
Therapy. Version 2. Or Crack.
“I see you’ve cracked.” The therapist says, tilting her body on the big computer chair.
“Haven’t we all?” I ask
“No. Do I look like I’ve cracked?” She asks, tilting herself forward and spinning in the chair to show me her entire body.
“The night is young. I can crack you if you want.”
“And how would you do that?” She asks.
“Headbutt you.”
“Then you’d crack more and we’d both just be a gooey mess.”
We both draw smirks on our shells.
“You are being inappropriate perhaps, Miss Therapist.” I etch a grin on my shell. “Do you remember when we all had cracks, out of the virtue of being human?”
She draws another smirk on her face, “Are you using a euphemism?”
I draw raised eye brows on my face, “Well the euphemism sure was implied. But I also mean metaphorically.”
She tilts her body forwards and looks…
View original post 248 more words
Gorilla asks again
Some religious humans can be heard saying things that question whether a person can have morality without believing in God and lessons in the Bible. But doesn’t that say more about their moral values, if they need a book and the threat of hell to give them their moral values, rather than just having them on account of being a good person?
Therapy. Version 2. Or Crack.
“I see you’ve cracked.” The therapist says, tilting her body on the big computer chair.
“Haven’t we all?” I ask
“No. Do I look like I’ve cracked?” She asks, tilting herself forward and spinning in the chair to show me her entire body.
“The night is young. I can crack you if you want.”
“And how would you do that?” She asks.
“Headbutt you.”
“Then you’d crack more and we’d both just be a gooey mess.”
We both draw smirks on our shells.
“You are being inappropriate perhaps, Miss Therapist.” I etch a grin on my shell. “Do you remember when we all had cracks, out of the virtue of being human?”
She draws another smirk on her face, “Are you using a euphemism?”
I draw raised eye brows on my face, “Well the euphemism sure was implied. But I also mean metaphorically.”
She tilts her body forwards and looks at me curiously, “Explain.”
“Do you remember your first heartbreak, Miss?”
She nods her body to gesture yes.
“So do I. That was a crack on our psyche. But then we moved on, perhaps we were even stronger afterwards. You know when all was said and done.”
“I guess.”
“We used to crack inside and sometimes we had wounds to show for it outside. But we stitched ourselves back up.”
“We did.” She agrees.
“But the generation just after me, hell probably even my own age to some extent, crack and never get up again.”
“hmm.”
“We’re more fragile than we ever were. While trying to be stronger than we ever were.” I knock on my shell, and another crack appears, “See what I mean?”
“You are so cynical, Sam.”
“What you call cynicism is just the truth, Miss.” I lean my body forwards, “It’s also just evolution.”
“I’m supposed to help you.” She leans forwards and replaces her current default expression with a sympathetic look. “But honestly, I don’t think you can be helped.” She etches a sad face on her shell.
“I know.” I agree. “Our shells are just too fragile.”
“But they’re so full of calcium.” She says with the scripted optimism therapists are given.
“Which is certainly good for the birds.”
She looks at me puzzled.
“We can feed ourselves to the birds.”
“Very morbid.”
“Perhaps it’s time for the dinosaurs to rise again.”
For more like this:
Therapy
Therapy
“So, Sam how are you feeling today?”
We both glow brightly in the dark room, I want to touch my face, but I’m afraid I’ll accidently press a button. “I’m feeling an emptiness that is full.”
My therapist changes position slightly in her chair; she’s trying to tilt her head in that human way therapists used to do. “Uh huh. Tell me more.”
That’s in the therapist’s script or dictionary or whatever. “What can I say. It’s everything, and it’s nothing. But there is no connection.”
“Connection to whom?” My therapist asks curiously; I imagine she’d be raising a brow if we were still human.
“To the world, to life, to humans. We think we’re connected, but then we come away empty, don’t we? Just a screen full of emojis.”
“What emoji represents how you feel right now?”
“None can adequately portray anything.”
The therapist nods her body. “Yes, Yes. But you’d probably say the same about words, right?”
“Yes. No words, no emoji’s, hell even no action can quite express what I so often feel. That’s why, no disrespect, therapy is bullshit.”
Her cartoon like legs dangle off the chair, “I think the problem we have is many people have been comfortable putting their brains into their phones, but you’re not quite there yet.”
“Nobodies quite there yet.”
“Isn’t that a massive assumption?”
“No. The evidence is right here. Have you been to Tumblr?”
The therapist looks sad. “Yes. I’ve seen it.”
“They’ve put their brains in electronic devices, miss. And then they’re looking for a reason and well let’s be frank, there is none. So they’re fighting for causes some of them have a grain of truth, but they’ve mutated the grain.”
My therapist nods her body again. She is also reluctant to touch her face, just in case she too accidently touches a button.
“We’re dotting our I’s, Miss.”
She shows me a confused emoji, then says, “Like,” and shows a cross-eyed emoji.
“We’re dotting our I’s because we can’t quite capitalise on individuality, though we’re trying harder than we ever have before.”
The therapist’s screen shows moving dots as she considers this. “I can’t say I understand the way in which you express yourself.”
“That is nothing new, Miss.”
“Sam. You’ll never be happy living like this.”
I glow my full body towards her, my cartoon like legs dangling also. “Happy wasn’t ever a constant or ever will be. There is no such thing as a happy life.”
“That sounds very cynical.” She shows an emoji with a flat expression.
“Perhaps what you call cynism is just the truth.”
She ponders a moment, her legs kicking out underneath her like a child’s on a stool that is too tall for her, “How can we end this therapy session?”
I bend my body, so I glow towards the floor, the light reflecting from the ground back to me, making it too bright to exist. “We can’t.”
All in the head
I forgot I’m not supposed to go on rollercoasters. Still here I sit like a beer glass on a coaster, I’m shaking inside my teeth are chattering. It’s not cold. I’ve got adrenaline through my viens 10 times a dozen. I’m about to have a heart attack. I’m fizzing up, I’m frothing at the head and I’m running over like a liquid. The rollercoaster goes upsidedown, everything looks right this way down. I throw up my guts over some innocent person just walking along minding their own business. “If my head falls off,” I start, to the stranger beside me, “It’s okay.”
“Um.” He shifts his eyes from side to side.
“Your eyes looked better where they were originally.”
“Um…”
“The doctors say everythings in my head anyway.” I grin, sick smeared round my mouth.
Muted
Yellowing fluorescent strips of light line the ceiling, a sickly smokers hue emanates through the entire building. The walls are grimy with trails of dirt trodden in from hundreds of different pairs of feet. The corridors radiate the smell or rain covered backpacks and hair. One kid smells like he’s used his dad’s entire aftershave and deodorant in one go; his attempt at playing adult. Piss flavoured laughs match the yellow hue that surrounds us. We’re crowded like sardines in a tin, I barely have to move my legs to move through the corridors to my classroom, I just get pushed along in an ocean of sweaty, smelly teenagers. Lord help us, these are the future. We’re the fucking future. When I finally reach my classroom 1A, I then have to wait in line for the inept IT teacher to turn up. He has bad B.O. Wears round glasses and looks like a serial killer. I want to kick him in the balls. The other kids are nattering away, some of them turn to look at me, laugh and whisper amongst themselves again. And some lads throw a football at the wall, right next to my head. The idea is, they make it look like they’re heading for my face, but actually, they’re just gonna hit the wall. It’s funny because it just is okay? Especially because it means my wooden stance might just slightly quiver and my face might show some expression that I usually try to keep so locked up and out of sight of anyone. No one wants to see my face making appearances of a normal human being, I learnt that long ago. “Oh my god, don’t smile if you’re gonna look like that.” Is a common thing I’ve heard throughout my life. They laugh as my nerve endings send signals to my face that I can’t stop, the little minuscule expressions portraying my anxieties of the ball maybe hitting my face. It’s a reflex. I’m not human enough to have reflexes, it looks funny on me. I’m wincing, and I can’t help it. I turn my wooden frame, so they’re greeted with my side on profile. They roll the ball along the floor towards my feet, I’m supposed to kick it back. But, I’ve also learnt that any action I make is just a cause for derision. I want to kick it back. I tell myself, ‘Kick it back, they’ll laugh at you either way. Don’t you get that yet? They’ll laugh at you whatever you do or as the case is, don’t do.’ I know I can’t win, but I’m frozen inside. I will not kick that fucking ball. It’s at my feet. They stare and laugh. I stand woodenly. This is my life. My sister walks past, her face blushing at the sight of me. She knows I sort of resemble her, she knows it’s clear we’re related. She blushes, and I see how embarrassing I am to her. I ignore her like she wants me to, she goes by quickly. I can almost hear the thoughts in her head, ‘please God, no one pick me out as being related to that thing.’
I’m in a piss-stained school, with teachers that smell of piss. My education is hard with stale piss, it’s useless it’s pathetic.
“Cat got your tongue.” A girl says, giggling.
I want to reply, “No. I got a new tongue from the body shop.” And then I pull my tongue out of my mouth, take it out, and wipe my face with it, it foams up and smells of red berries.
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