EDIT! : I added a story I had written some time ago to the bottom of the journal. Feel free to read if you're so inclined.
Wow... Shitty week. Well, for the most part.
Let me esplain. No wait. That will take too long. Allow me to sum up:
Ever been ready to load, say, like 18 warshot torpedos only to find out they're on back order? No? Funny, that's what happened to me. How the fuck does someplace just run out of torpedos?
Anyway, a bunch of other shit is loaded on the ship while my guys basically work their asses off cleaning, painting, fixing shit. Only to be told by our Commanding Officer at, say 1545 (that's 3:45pm for you civilian folk) that no one leaves the ship until a four page list of bullshit is taken care of. Well, except him. He can leave.
That happened several times this week. Complete cluster fuck of a week punctuated by periods of aggravating retardation of epic levels.
Ok, three good things this week.
1) Repaired a potentially destroyed friendship. Glad I didn't lose you as you rule and that would suck.
2) Funny convos with
sia about our favorite lesbian crush and other things. Much laughter, Thank you.
My colostomy bag has a colostomy bag!
Nuff said.
3) Her. She knows who she is and she makes me light in the head. Thank you my dear.
SO! The EDIT... As a load of friends of late have been placing bits of their writing in their journals, I thought I might do the same. As some of you may remember, I've been putting in bits and pieces of a stroy (hopefully of novella length when done) in here. This is not that story. I used to have friends find three words for me. Three words they wanted used in a story. This is one of those. So, without further ado, I give you The Little Things
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
The Little Things
Follicle mites
Pixie
Mendacious
"What?"
"Follicle mites. No idea what the fuck they are, but the doc gave me this shampoo to use. Said it should clear up pretty quick."
"So, you have worms, like, living in your head? Isn't that a little creepy?"
"Look, he says these mite things are everywhere. On your skin, in your furniture, all over. They eat dead skin or something like that. He says I just have a strong reaction to them. It's like dandruff. All itchy and everything."
"That's weird."
It wasn't really that weird. Everyone is allergic to something. Some people are allergic to trees, dogs, certain medications, whatever. Me, apparently its follicle mites. Not sure why Sharon freaked out. I loved the girl, but little things were big to her. Being a paraplegic? She's cool with that. My wheel chair is just part of me as far as she's concerned. Is it okay that I've killed people? Sure, why not. It was a 'military conflict'. I was just doing what I had to do, she says. But little things, being late, leaving a cup on the table with no coaster, me watching the news at 3am, and mites it would seem, drive her crazy. Who knew?
She crossed the room to kiss my cheek, soft wet lips on dry leather. Never understood why she stayed with me. A pissed off old fuck in a rolling prison who hated nearly everyone. Including myself.
"See you in a few hours, babe. I'm going to get a drink with Tina after work, but I'll be home in time for dinner". The rhythmic sounds of heels on hard wood and the groan of a hinge as she walked out the door of our small apartment. As she walked out of my life forever.
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I met Sharon two years ago. The Lost Nights was exactly what I wanted back then. Nine months previously I had lost everything. Everything I had lay in an alley in some shit hole in Somalia. My pride. My ability to walk. My left foot. A folded piece of paper from my wife explaining why she wouldn't be around when I came home. I had lost everything and all I wanted in return was darkness. Lost Nights gave me that. Darkness lit only by the strobes and spotlights for the dancers on the small strip of a stage. The darkness in the girls' eyes, sucked dry of life by the job and this shit box bar. The darkness I could find in the bottom of a glass. I could feel it slowly eating my insides. Eating my thoughts. Killing me. Breeding darkness within my own darkness. It was what I wanted.
Sharon was the wrench in the works. She had life. Her eyes actually saw the world around her. Her soul was tangible and she exuded something I couldn't pin down. I watched her dance and I couldn't find the power to lift my scotch. Its peaty odor called to me like only twelve-year old single malt can. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't think. Christ, breathing was only accomplished by the simple fact that my body refused to stop doing it without some kind of outside help. It wasn't that she moved any differently or better than the other girls. Hell, she wasn't even really that good, but she drew money from pockets and billfolds like a pickpocket on a crowded subway. She gave us her all, they gave her their cash. Me? I gave her nothing but my attention.
"I see you in here a lot". She was now sitting in the booth across from me. Her hair was a bit stringy from a long night on stage, but her face was beautiful. Sweat ran down her neck, over her collar bone, and down across the small pixie that lived perpetually between her breasts. The ink wasn't all that fresh, but the colors were still vibrant and clean. "Hey, I'm up here".
"Sorry. Your tattoo."
"No big deal. People staring at my tits kind of comes with the job, right?"
"Suppose". And so it began. Night after night she learned my story and I learned hers. She liked dogs, hated cats. Mom was Baptist, Dad stayed home on Sundays. She liked classical and rock, but not so fond of country. She loved the rain and looking at the moon. It was little things.
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She used to learn a word a day. She wanted to go on a game show. Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, whatever. Thought the words would help.
"Men-what?"
"Mendacious. It means to be untruthful. Dishonest. It's a good word."
"Mendacious it is, then."
Simple plan. Learn one word a day. See? It was little things.
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Three hours ago, Gladys Gilroy, a kindly old widow, took some cold medicine. Nyquil. The sniffling, sneezing, knock you the fuck out before you can make it to bed medicine. So now, she's passed out on the couch, the midday news going unnoticed. Mitzi, her black and gray feline companion, didn't so much mind until it was time for her daily fix of wet food.
No amount of mewing, pawing and sand papery tongue was enough to wake poor, sleeping, old Gladys, so Mitzi did what she usually did in such cases and slipped out the open kitchen window to the third floor ledge. It was a simple operation that required little effort. Onto the ledge, past the flower pot with the dead daffodils, around the bend to the fire escape and down to the dumpsters in the rear of the building. The hardest part was simply pushing past the pot. Or pushing it off the ledge as was the case today.
Twenty-five feet below to the pavement beneath. Shards of terra cotta shrapnel explode in a small concussion that sends shoppers, dog walkers and various other folk scattering. Chris Spivey, bike messenger for the last two and half years, narrowly avoids the shards and flying dirt by zigging through no fewer than six pedestrians and hopping the curb. Missed every one of those scattering people. He failed to miss the parked Honda Prelude. Chris was able to watch his bike as he rolled up the hood of the Honda. He watched it as it careened into traffic, his two month old Trek bounding across the street of its own accord, spreading havoc in its wake. A cacophony of breaks screaming out in chorus as taxis and commuters tried desperately to avoid the need to exchange insurance information.
Sharon watched it all. A slow motion dance of metal and glass. Saw the ford truck hop the curb and cut down the parking meter. Quarters, dimes and nickels, once within and now set free, flew through the air, turning end over end reflecting dull flashes of sunlight that mesmerized her. She hardly noticed as the truck and its snarling grill, now creased by the parking meter impact, crushed her from just below the ribcage down and pinned her against the weathered brick wall of McClaren's Drugs. For one fleeting moment she knew what I knew, what it was to not feel anything from the waist down. And then the life in her eyes, that piece of her soul that drew me in, faded forever.
Because of a cat. A fucking cat, a pot, a bike and a truck. Those God damned little things.
