A Trampled Man.

The main problem with never standing up for yourself, is that by the time you actually do, it's always way too late.

I work for a security firm, I get paid minimum wage to basically call the cops if I see anything that would require calling the cops. I'm supposed to make myself seen, so that people will know to stay away from whatever it is that I'm supposed to be watching. Mostly temporary structures, or malls. Nothing ever happens, I never call the cops. Mostly kids try to pull some shit. And I stop them before it gets too serious.


It's a shit job. It's meant to be a shit job, it's the kind of job designed for the kind of douche bags that were too big a douche bags to be allowed into the army or the police.


I work with a lot of douche bags. I'm not a douche bag.


I like working nights, I like keeping a place safe, I like keeping kids out of trouble. I'm not allowed to be a cop or in the army because I only have one arm.


I was born without it, so don't feel bad about it. I just don't have it, I wouldn't know what it would be like to have one. It might as well be a vagina, I'll never know.


If you are going to feel bad for me, feel bad about the fact that kids are mean, real mean. I got picked on for not having an arm for a solid twelve years. It was horrible, gruesome and violent. I'm not going t get in to the details, but lets just say that it probably has something to do with the reason as to why I allowed myself to get walked all over in this situation, until it was too late.


I was working security for a theatre company that put up plays in the summer in tents. Shakespeare or whatever, I guess they used to do Shakespeare each year, until the past couple, when they had to get more modern plays and musicals in order to make money. I don't know.


So the job, was mostly just like, sitting in a truck outside the tents from midnight until eight in the morning. Racoons were the biggest problem. They got in to the garbage. It was annoying. Until the kid showed up.


The kid said that he was one of the actors in a play, and that him and his friends just needed inside to rehearse and hang out after hours. He said this by arriving at like twelve twenty, and handing me a beer, he asked all of this of me. He had the kind of smile, the smile that looked right through you, and made you want to be his friend. He had that power over me almost right away. To be honest, talking about it now, he still might. I don't know.


So, instead of saying no, I decided to buddy up. So I said that I needed to be in there with them the whole time. He said that that was fine. And we got out of the truck, and I let a group of about nine of them in. With me, I guess there was ten of us.


The first night was fun, they hung out, got drunk, the kid, his name was Alex. He banged one of the girls right on a couch in front of everyone. Everybody else just kept on hanging out like it was normal. So I did too. Even though it made me very uncomfortable, not that I hadn't had sex before, I just didn't want to watch other people have it. It was the second time I let him walk on me. There would be at least a hundred more times.


It made work fun, it wasn't work. It was getting drunk with a bunch of really good looking actors, that seemed interested in me, for who I was. They would always call me a real person. As if, some guy with one arm working security was a rare novelty to them. They couldn't get enough of me. As long as I did all their favors. Which would always be slightly degrading or uncomfortable. But they would celebrate me afterwards. They even had me making fun of myself for my lack of arm a couple of times.


All good things come to an end. Actually, all things end. This was no exception. So one day I actually decided on my day off, to go to the plays, all of them, in one day. And you wouldn't believe it. But not a single one of my new friends was in any of them, at all! So I got to thinking, because, frankly, even though I'm a push over, and even though I only have one arm. I'm not actually, all that stupid. Really. So I got to thinking, what were they doing with me every night, why were they wanting to drink and fuck inside the tent, every night? When they clearly could do that anywhere. Why involve me?


I had three guesses, either they were drug dealers, and were somehow, doing something with drugs. Or, they were terrorists of some type. Maybe anarchists or some shit. Or they were simply just stealing from the theatre, right under my nose. I figured it was probably the third option. I partially hoped that it was one of the other two. More dramatic that way. I'm just a push over security guard, not much happens to me.


Mostly, I was hurt. I was hurt that I had been used. I was hurt that they never tried to include me in whatever it was that they were doing. That they clearly had just been pretending to be my friends. So, that night, I told Alex, that I needed to talk to him. So we went out to the truck that I was supposed to be keeping watch. Alex, was clearly on edge. I had grabbed a couple beer, and we sat in the truck. Sipping at our beers.


He asked if there was anything the matter, and I said there was. I was getting emotional, already, before we even had the confrontation, I was very hurt and upset, I thought I could keep my cool. But the beer wasn't helping. I asked him why he and his friends were such mother fuckers and why they felt they had to lie to me. He asked me what he thought they had lied about. I told him I went to the shows. He said that technically they were actors in those tents, since every night they had been pretending to be my friend. I was already blubbering like an child, but when he said that, I had to slap him. And he took a knife and put it against my throat.


I don't know where the knife came from, it was like, one second I was crying and I slapped him, and the next thing I knew, there was a knife on my throat. That kind of thing had never happened to me before. Things had escalated very quickly and I was beginning to panic, I'm a security guard. I'm not trained for this kind of thing.


In my teary blur, I saw through the window of the truck. The view was of the stage tent, sure, but also to the right of it was the ocean harbour. I could see there were those tiny black boats that you see in the movies, and people were moving boxes and boxes of stuff off of them, and taking them into a parked semi trailer. I said:

“Oh, drugs. Well, at least it was something cool.” Then there was something cold and sharp against my neck. And everything stopped.


I guess those words were my last.

Uncle Nick's Visit.

On a straight, wide highway a red Ford F-150 was cruising along going 10 past the speed limit. There was a man, about thirty five years old, with a long beard, and stark blue eyes. He was driving, with both hands on the wheel, gripping it a little too tightly. Next to him, was a little girl, she was about to turn eleven years old. He had kidnapped her. And he was going to kill her.

The night before, there was an argument at the little girls house, her uncle was visiting, but her mom didn't like that he was visiting. Her mom was letting her father know this. Her mom was yelling but somehow thinking that upstairs where he was supposed to be sleeping, Uncle couldn't hear. She knew that her uncle could hear, because he was staying in her room, and she was sleeping on the couch in the basement while he was visiting. She could always hear Mom yelling when she was in her room. She assumed that Uncle was going to be upset with Mom because of what she was saying about him.

Then they started to whisper, and she couldn't hear. That's when she knew that they were talking about her. They always whispered when they talked about her, even when she was sleeping upstairs in her room. They whispered just in case.

Nick had arrived late, he needed to get there, now that he knew what he knew, he had to get there, and he had to rectify the whole situation. Things had been left for too long, so he got in his truck, and he drove all day and night to get to his sisters house. To see the girl. To make sure that it was true.

Naturally, his sister freaked out when he arrived at 2am on a Wednesday night. Tired, dishevelled, and a little drunk. His sister had a temper. She started screaming as soon as he reached the door. She was unintelligible. She knew why he had come, she knew that she couldn't stop him. Or, if she could. That she shouldn't. Not after what happened.

Her husband was a small, and quiet man. He always tried to stop his wife from having screaming fits. It never worked. That's one of the reasons that Nick never respected him. There were many other reasons for why he had only ever had two or three conversations with the man since he met him. Fifteen years ago.

Her husband dutifully went upstairs and carried Allison out of her bed, trying not to wake her up, but failed.

“Why are you carrying me?” She said in a whiny, tired voice. Frustrated at being moved, but too weak from sleep to stop him.

“You Uncle Nick is here. He's going stay in your room.”

“Can I say 'hi'?”

“Tomorrow, you need to sleep, and so does he.”

“Is Mom angry?”

“No, dear, she's not angry.”

“Liar...”

While she listened to the whispers, her mind wandered, she needed to think of a plan, she knew what the whispers were about, she knew exactly what they were saying. She knew why Uncle Nick was here. She knew that he had found out. And he had come to fix everything. Well, she thought, if anyone could. It would be him.

Allison needed to think of a plan. What he was going to do was obvious, how he was going to go about it, depended on a lot of things. Maybe, if she was smart, she would have enough time to show him one last thing.

Nick, didn't sleep. Instead he searched through her room. Trying to find a journal, or something, something that gave Allison an outlet for her mind to wander. He found it in a shoebox covered by a mountain of clothes that she obviously would never wear. It was not a box full of your usual outlets for a little girl, no diary, no journal. No drawings. There were just countless cards with one word each on them.

Cower, Rage, Fear, Hate, Anger, Pain, Suffer, Destroy, Obey.

He stopped reading. It was worse than he had thought. Downstairs his sister was still yelling, until he walked down. They started to whisper.

“Sis, stop it.” She stopped crying.

“I'm so sorry Nick. I didn't know! I didn't know!”

“It's not your fault. Some things are impossible to imagine until they happen.”

“What are you going to do.”

“I'm going to fix it.”

“Okay.”

“Go get some sleep guys. I'll clean up down here.”

His sister and brother-in-law went upstairs first, after a couple hours of watch, just before dawn, Nick went upstairs to Allison's room for an hour or two of sleep, leaving Allison on the couch in the basement. Nick had made sure the door to the basement was locked before he went upstairs. But she was smarter than her uncle. She had the key to the basement door in her hand the whole time her dad was carrying her downstairs. This was going to be her only time to act. She had to do it now.

She got up from the couch, barefoot, she walked up the stairs and she unlocked the door. She walked to the kitchen, and walked upstairs to the bedrooms. She took out the key to her own bedroom, that Nick was in. She locked it. Then she moved over to her parents bedroom.

Allison, walked slowly into her parents bedroom, so quietly, the only noise was that of the interchanging breathing from her parents. She softly walked up to her father. Lifted up a knife she had grabbed from the kitchen. And stabbed her father in the throat. He tried screaming, but the sound of the blood spraying from his throat made a much louder noise than he could have hoped to have made. The spray of blood woke up her mother. Her mother screamed and jumped up to her husband. Clutching him and screaming.

Allison wanted her mother to see, she wanted her to see so that she would scream, and the scream would wake Nick up. It did. He ran to the door. Thinking to himself, not again, not again. The door was locked. So he started slamming into it, trying to knock it down. All the while, he heard the screaming, it was the same as last time. All the same. Except this time, he knew who was doing it. However, just like last time, before he could bust the door open. The screaming stopped.

When he finally bust open the door. Allison was sitting cross-legged in the hallway, the knife laying on her legs. She was completely covered in blood. Just like last time, except for the knife, and the smile.

“I got you again Nick, when did you figure it out that it was me?”

“I always knew, it's just not something you ever want to believe.”

“I killed Auntie Chelsea and my baby cousin. I guess I was five years old. Is that's why it was hard to believe?”

“You were covered in blood. Just like now. But you were crying.”

“I'm a good actor, I was Cinderella in the school play.”

“You're the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life.”

“Stop saying mean things. Or I'll tell Mommy.”

Last Thoughts

An old man, dressed in checkered pants with a cream sweater that was very frayed, walked up in front of the crowd that had gathered for a reason other than to listen to him speak, and spoke.

"I, can't talk about love, as much as I used to. Because, love, is not something that, when one gets to my age, is spoken about. The more love you have, in your life, the less, there is to say."

 He held up an old finger into the air. He constantly spoke, as if he was out of breath, which he was.

"If it is true, that is. Love, is not something that should be described, but experienced. It has an essence that fills your bones, and all you can say is that you have it, and feel it, over, and over You, can never, explain it more deeply, than that. It is not a failure of language. All things, have there limits. Limits, are not failures. They are, simply, limits."

The crowd had no idea what was going on, yet the old man kept talking.

"Advice, can and has, and will be, given on how to love. And that is because love, and behavior, are not the same thing. It can be easy to love, we all love, we all love easy. We act, like children, often because of love. I can't say whether it is a good thing, or a bad thing. But behavior because of love, out of love, is not love. It is behavior, and love is not, and never will be, an action."

The crowd, mostly of young adults or teenagers, were listening.

"Your world, and my world. Are the same world. My love, and your love. The same love. Don't let this age fool you, I am not as wise as I was when I was your age. There, are no greater fools, than those that think, because they have lived, they understand better, what they have lived."

All murmurs had stopped. This was not what they were there for. But they were going with it.

"I have loved. I am in love. I will always be in love. I have been, since I was, a young man. I found out, what it was, and never tried to describe, or talk about it. Until today. I, hope, you understand."

He walked off the stage. No one knew who he was. No one ever found out.

David

David walked inside the church, because it was snowing outside, and he was freezing. He needed to be somewhere warm. He needed to warm up, for an hour or so, before heading back out in to the snow storm.

David wasn't religious, nor was he raised religious, so he didn't have the anger that some atheists have against God. He just didn't believe in God. It made no sense to him. It wasn't a matter of faith, he could believe in things that there was no proof of, however, he simply could not believe in God.

That didn't stop him from needing a warm place to stay.

David, had been wandering from town to town for the past two or three years. If he really thought about it, he would say that he left on May 3rd. The day after the love of his life died. That would mean the love of his life died on May 2nd. If you were to ask David the year, he would not be able to tell you, since it had been more than two or three years now, that he had stopped keeping track of years.

David wasn't disabled. He didn't have a learning disability. It's actually quite common for people to be very different from one another, without there being anything wrong with them. Despite the shock that it can cause.

Sometimes time can just put too much pressure on a person, so they stop keeping track of it.

David immediately felt uncomfortable in this church. It was nothing like the churches he had seen in picture books of churches. There was no gold, there was no stain glass. There were no windows at all actually. Just wood. It was small, but new. All the wood still smelt as if it had been freshly cut. There wasn't even a cross at the altar. However, there was an altar.

That's how David knew it was a church. He hoped it wasn't a crazy snake church. He hoped it wasn't a crazy church at all. It was hard to tell, because clearly they hadn't put up any of their decorations to tell you what kind of a church it was. They had installed the heating though, so David did respect their priorities, from what he could see, so far.

David said a big hello, hoping that it would echo throughout the building, but something about the design of the church actually muffled his voice, as opposed to expanding it. He thought it strange, thought for a moment and walked up to the altar, stood behind it facing the pews.

David said "Hello".

It was like thunder, it crashed and shook the building. The pews had bolts in them that came flying out like bullets, crashing through the walls, creating a shrapnel made of wooden splinters that sprayed in all directions in and out of the church. The bolts must have continued further past the church, because he heard screams and the crashing of windows.

All of this chaos was happening around him. But he was safe, untouched, standing at the altar. David was watching it all happen, unflinching.

David smiled.




 

Owed

His pride made him hard to be around. He felt as if the world owed him something, because he was special, and because he used his special talents as much as he could. And even though he kept on using his talents, the world didn't seem to give him what he felt he was owed.

That was because the world didn't owe him anything.

He would mostly be asked to do favors for people, and he would always do the favors because he was expecting his ship to come in. And if he assumed if he didn't do those favors, karma would make it so that his ship would never come in. So he did favors, but he always let people know what a big deal those favors were.

"You're welcome." He would say with his nose out clearly our of joint. Before, always before, someone had thanked him.

Naturally, when people hear that, they don't thank with the sincerity that he required.

"Uh, thanks?" Would be the response, a hint of confusion. As if to remind him that he didn't need to be there, if he didn't want to be.

It would leave him upset, and he would fret about it for weeks on end... It's easy to understand why he was such a hard guy to be around.

Ironically, the only reason people ever were around him, wasn't because of his talent, but because he would always do favors for them.

He wasn't very talented was the problem. But he was good for lifting a couch or T.V. He should have started a moving company, saved up a whole bunch of money and gone back to school. To become a teacher or something.

But he couldn't, because the world owed him something, something for all his hard work, favors and talent. Even if his talent was small.

The world didn't owe him anything though, the world didn't know he existed.

And it never would.