| Rumpelstiltskin |
[Oct. 8th, 2009|01:34 am] |
"Tell me how you want it," she says in a hiss that has my man bits stirring underneath my jeans.
She already knows how I want it though. We have been here before. "Just like last time," I say. "And the time before that."
She smiles then. The grin of a killer, of an animal. She blinks at me slowly, deliberately in acknowledgment. "Put your money on the table and come to bed."
We've all got our addictions, our vices. This one is mine. Don't you dare judge me.
I put the rolled up cash on the dresser with the marble top, in rolled up twenties and tens. I move towards the bed. What comes next is paid and bought for with the finest money I've ever stolen.
She sheds her robe and nakedly crawls onto the bed like a panther stalking prey. I nervously remove my own clothes in a series of clumsy movements as I try not to laugh. I sit on the end of the bed with my back towards her. In my ear I hear, "safe word?"
I've never used the safe word before. "Rumpelstiltskin."
"Turn around," she says.
I do. We kiss then. It's sweet and deep and there will only be one more like it.
I barely open my eyes again to see the blurry shape of hands launch at my chest. I lose the ability to intake oxygen as I go flying into the wall at the far end of the room. I collapse on the floor. I curse God in every language I know and some I make up. Struggling to move from a fetal position to a kneeling one I see her figure come off of the bed with the grace of a spider.
"Is that what you like?" she asks in a horrible voice. Hers but not exactly. Like she was talking through the grinding of glass by metal. "Do you enjoy knowing that you have to be threatened with death to taste life?"
I get to my knees. Thank the baby Jesus.
With another blur she's in front of me now with abnormally long fingers around my throat. Her jaw becomes unhinged revealing so many teeth she might very well be part shark. Her tongue has become a forked thing that licks my face from chin to brow. I'm lightheaded already. I try to form words but they don't come.
"Life is wasted on the living," she informs me. She then lifts me like a pillow and flings me into the wall across from the one I just bounced off of.
I crash into it back first. I'm on the floor, face down. Before I even register it she's on my back holding me down. She's ridiculously strong. She bites me once on the shoulder and once in the neck. The teeth are so sharp I barely feel them at all. "You taste like shit," she tells me. I pretend to struggle. She's off of me and lifting me up to face her.
I take a full breath. Breathing is not as overrated as one might think.
"Look at you," she hisses again. "Another failed disgrace of a human being." Nails slash their way across my chest. They are mostly superficial cuts but they bleed well. "You're whole fucking race makes me nauseous."
"I'm sorry," I squeak out.
"You're sorry?" she asks. "YOU'RE FUCKING SORRY?" I bounce off of three more walls, one after another.
I suddenly find myself sitting up in the bed looking at her. She looks more like she did when I arrived save for the nakedness and the blood dripping from her mouth down her throat and over her breasts. "Why don't you do yourself a favor and just let me end it all for you? You're not worth much more than being a quick snack for me before I get myself off and go to sleep."
I look at her with a bruised expression to match my bruised body. "Does this mean I don't have to wear a condom?" I catch her off guard, I can see it in her face. I don't usually get smart when I'm being beaten. There's a first time for everything I suppose.
She slaps me hard across the face. It's like being belted by a shovel. Somewhere a gash has opened because warm, salty wetness slides down my skin and finds my mouth. Tastes like chicken.
"FUCKING COCKROACHES, THAT'S WHAT YOU ALL ARE!" she bellows. "INSECTS."
I say nothing. I'm afraid I'll throw up now. It's all I can do to stay awake.
She grabs me by the back of the neck and I feel her teeth dig in. This is it. The big one. I feel my life juices being sucked away. There are tears in my eyes. I'm not sure whether they are happy or sad tears. She pulls away and looks at me. The horror toothy grin of death turning once again into an blooded angel face. "Ask me nicely and I'll end it all for you now. Sweet. Dark. Oblivion."
I think about it. I always do. I think about having to watch my father drink himself to death slowly after my mother passed. I remember how the doctor gave him three months and how he was able to cut it in half with enough Jack to kill a Rhino. I think about a wife I loved and a child I never knew who both left me on the day my girl went into labor. I remember burying not one but two on a cold, December morning just as the snow began to fall. Marking the end to my sanity in beautifully ironic fashion. I think about all the little things the Universe had taken away from me to add to the big ones. Those things that helped me get out of bed and face the world again. All those things lost like grains of sand in the desert.
I want to say 'please' so very badly. Instead I say, "Fuck you, no."
Her grin grows into the inhuman thing again and she lunges for me. I close my eyes. The dark behind my eyelids is comforting.
She envelopes me in her arms. Not violently. Gently. She holds me like a lover would.
I cry for what seems like lifetimes.
Later I'm dressed and she is wearing a robe of silk. In another life I may have wanted to make love to her, even though I've seen her true face. The Angel looks at me. We started our business relationship about a year ago. She may even honestly feel sorry for me. Happy Anniversary dark lady. Don't spend all my money in one place.
"I didn't mean to hit you in the face," she says quietly.
"It's ok," I say. "I got mouthy."
"Doesn't matter." She breathes deeply. "I need to control myself better."
I smile a lopsided grin. "Can't stop being who you are. No worries." I move to leave. "Same time next week?"
She looks at me with concern. "You took a bad beating this time. Better make it two weeks."
I limp over to her. I wonder if she can even care about anything, let alone me. I kiss her again sweetly just as we did before she threw me across the room the first time. It's sweet and deep and there was only one like it.
Afterward I stare into her eyes. "I'll see you next week." This time when I move towards the door she does nothing to change my mind.
Outside on a cold night, aching and in one big ball of pain I think about going through one more week. A living man who might as well be dead; her a dead woman trying to fool the living. I wonder when the day will come that I let her finish the job and give me that sweet. dark. oblivion.
Who knows?
Maybe next week.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009
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| uphill |
[Sep. 2nd, 2009|12:56 am] |
He had given up on falling in love. It now seemed like a grown-up version of kick-ball. In first grade he was picked last every time. He did not want to be last. Not then. Not now. He had no desire to be someone's second choice. To be anyone's back-up plan. Best to just throw in the towel now. It might seem like giving up but really it was a self preservation move. Best to give up that journey than end up as someone's consolation prize.
He was oddly alright with this. There were times of course it felt unbearable. The loss of someone to share your secrets and dreams with. The loss of the warm animal that learned how to hold you just right. The loss of sweat-hot bodies interlocking. The loss of the sweet words whispered in the dark.
Other times though he kept his mind off of it.
If it got bad he gently reminded himself that there was not much of a heart left to share. It was a crusty, black thing now stitched back together as if by a blind man with the shakes. He reminded himself that since the Big Hurt the women he dated either never really saw him as he was or were always waiting for the BBD. The Bigger, Better, Deal. They were easy to spot. Easy to see coming. He avoided them as soon as he recognized it.
Where would you find a fetching creature of beauty, grace, intellect, and charm that also brought wise and enchanting words to the conversation all the while exhibiting a sexiness never before enjoyed by human kind? Where would he find A LADY? Hmm? Exactly.
He spent late nights wondering about the fate of his immortal soul. He procrastinated work on his novel. He wondered when the joy left him as he pursued his dreams. There were cities he wanted to visit, events he wanted to be part of. Lately however if any of these things presented themselves he would not have been able to tell you he was excited. There were times he was full of life and laughed and danced badly, but then there were these dark times. Empty times. He did not care for them. He could not escape them.
He tried really hard to make the best out of the way things were. Sometimes he rose to the occasion. Other times he was a horrid mess. It was a constant uphill battle for him, against a vicious and powerful foe. He got wounded a lot, but he was getting better at fighting. So at least there's that.
He wondered what, if any, adventures he still had left to experience. He wondered what surprises the Universe had in store for him, if the Universe remembered him at all. He wondered if giving up on falling in love was the right decision. Or even if it was a decision at all. Most of the time, most of the time, he was just lonely.
Lonely without answers.
And the fortune cookies did not help since their advice was only good if he did it "in bed."
(c) Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Empty Vessels |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|11:26 pm] |
Where are all the genuine people? Where did they all go? Are they truly an endangered species, a minority among the meatbags that populate this sphere of mud and water? It seems there was a time when they moved in and out of my life like changing tides, but tides nonetheless. Now I stand waist deep in an ocean of people that are calm and fake, hardly wanting to ripple the world with anything that would reveal their true selves to you. Where did all the real people go?
I will go out with friends of friends and find the most stereotypical, generic people. They could all be cast in some silly quasi-drama featuring beautiful characters with little or no humanity to them. I have conversations with people that make we want to stab myself in my ears. Carbon copied humans with carbon copied dreams and carbon copied opinions. Wii fit characters.
Could it be me? Could I have grown so cold and bitter in my mature years that I digest those around me with a less forgiving mind's eye than I did in years past, or in this hustle and bustle of the world where we're talking to each other in 160 characters or less are we becoming our own avatars of who we should be? Caricatures of real people without the depth and interest to support them.
Or perhaps I just walk in emptier circles. Maybe even worse, that I am unable to maintain friendships with those genuine people that make me feel alive and whose company I'd take a bullet to defend. There are only a few left now. A handful of great human beings touching my life with only the barest trickle of new ones coming in.
Where are the lovers, the artists, the dreamers, the music makers, the storytellers, the photographers, and those acquaintances that take life by the balls that I never tire to spend time with? Why do they remain hidden from me? Why do they go?
Were contracts taken out on them? Have they been eradicated by a virus targeting only people with real souls? Must we keep the dull and boring and paint-by-numbers individuals filling up most of my day?
Where did all the genuine people go?
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Audio Commentaries |
[Aug. 24th, 2009|11:28 pm] |
I wonder how long I'll have to keep living and breathing, how much heartache I'll have to own, before I won't sit quietly during the witching hour and wonder why it was him over me. How many more times will I allow myself to replay the lies you told me and the unceremonious way you cut me out of your life with a rusty blade? How long before I can be free of you and all the promises you never kept, never meant?
There are days where you are hardly an afterthought. Glorious days where I feel reborn and carefree. Days that make me happy to be drunk on the oxygen the world provides and the vibes that tickle my soul. You would never think that the me that hides behind my eyes is held together by duct tape and bubble gum. That I look like a vase a child destroys and puts back together poorly in a vein attempt to forgo punishment. Then of course there are days and nights like these. When I know you're out there rationalizing all you've done and all you do. I don't know who the bigger fool is, you or I, but I know who the more lonely of the two are. I wonder what my life might be like now if I settled for the first one that came along too. I wonder if dying slowly living the truth is better than living badly in make believe.
After all this time I wish it didn't torture me so. That the shadows of my heart would leave me be. That I didn't use the DVD player in my head to skip between chapters. That my own audio commentary didn't reveal just how naive and amateur I was at creating my own story. And how you walked out of my life after only the first act, now being used for cameos that serve nothing and no one. They were just in your contract.
I bet you still say convincingly to anyone that would listen that yes, you did love me. That my actions or yours or both caused that to disappear over time, leading of course to you making your heart and lady bits available to the someone merely biding his time. Oh I'm sure he loves you genuinely and didn't leech onto your pain or hardship or catch you at a weak moment. I'm sure taking a married wife in her bed when things are rough for her proves just what a chivalrous fellow he is. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me.
I think if you can walk away so very easily, than you never really loved me at all. Perhaps I had the better of the deal. Maybe it was always harder for you and I had it much easier. But I know I left blood, sweat, and tears for you along the path I walked and in the Thunderdome I fought in to make myself a better man for you. Consider yourself a strong person, go ahead. I didn't fold at the first sign of trouble. And I didn't start getting matching tattoos with anyone while I was still married. Keep that in mine.
I don't hate you. But I hate all that you did to me and to us. Fear not, I carry the weight of my role in this too. I know my hands were never clean and that I got off to a very late race to save all that we had. In the end however I was the only one that wanted to save it. You decided to cut this bastard loose.
So here I am, years after the fact, haunted on nights like these when I think I'm not even a proper memory you carry with you anymore. I'm not even a prequel to all you are now. You're in the middle of a remake and I'm the actor from the original trying to get noticed at the Comic Con in hopes I can sign an autograph for anyone that liked what came before, in all it's unrefined once-upon-a-timeness.
I wonder how long I'll have to keep living and breathing, how much heartache I'll have to own, before I won't sit quietly during the witching hour and lose myself within it.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Nostalgic |
[Aug. 7th, 2009|12:11 pm] |
It started with a movie and it was all down hill after that.
I caught myself in one of those moments where you are channel surfing late at night when you should be either sleeping or creating great art or having the best sex of your life. Instead I am mind-melding to the TV deity and find a movie I have not seen for some time that always fills me with a bit of joy when it is on. The movie was REALITY BITES and I devoured it like a cannibal at an orgy. Of course now in the aftermath I feel a hollow space in the center of me.
You feel old when you do the math backwards from when the movie was released and realize it's been fifteen goddamn years. Fifteen. I was seventeen years old and a completely different person in many of the most important ways. When did that happen? Where was I? Gah.
Anyway the warm feelings came from Winona Ryder's character, Lelaina. Not just because I remember having one of those celebrity crushes on her back in the day but because different sides to her character reminded me of these girls I used to hang out with in highschool. The amalgamation on the screen was not better in any way than the real versions of these ladies but it hinted at their greatness and sparked a flood of memories I had not visited in forever and a day.
They were the coolest, most amazing girls I had ever had the privilege of knowing, hanging with, or ever to have had a crush on. I miss being in their presence when they were together, as they snapped, crackled, and popped energy and excitement. I carry fond memories of them all. A few even stole my heart though I never always let it be known. Those days in highschool I like to visit the most always feature them in the foreground and in the background. They're powering the vision or haunting it wonderfully.
I run into some of them from time to time, but mostly like so many people do in your life, they're passing ships in the night. Sometimes I'll pretend and hope to run into them and reconnect as friends or even something more. It's a nice dream and lord knows I've always been a good one for dreams.
It's funny what you think about when you are channel surfing and should be putting your time to better use. It's funny how old I feel and how long ago it all was. It's funny which people you miss the most after all this time.
Good night ladies. Though most of you I haven't seen in years, I'll always love ya just the same.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| haz patchwork head |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|12:43 am] |
Sometimes I think it's when the storms roll in and the bands start playing that I am in the moment. Other times it's the way the werewolves howl at the moon to the whirl of the robots as they dance the cabbage patch. Perhaps it's the way that the medieval knights pick fights with the ninjas, and as the two factions kill one another you can see the pirates making off with all their women. It could be the shooting stars, the time jumps, the man-eating plants, the circus of crime fighters, the people living at the center of the world, or the dead that sit up and tell me secrets. Once in awhile it's the torture chamber the satanic warlocks from the 9th dimension go to work on me in. When the planets align just right it's the alternate realities where Wham! was as big as The Beatles and whores give family discounts.
It can be one thing, a strange combination platter of oddities, or all of these things and more put together in a patchwork quilt of ideas and fuel for the beast. Take your pick or place your bets.
The Religion of my mind can be practiced at any time, regardless of my state of dress, the various stages of hygiene, or the Blessings or Curses filling up my punch clock during the course of the time framework of my day. It can be structured or a mess of throwing things against the wall to see what may stick.
It's when this Hurricane presents itself filled with all these things and more that I know it's time to put the blinders on, sit down, and write. To spill the garbage from my head, from my soul, out into the void and leave my own personal smudge on the world for everyone to look at and say, "huh."
It's one of those nights, babycakes.
With any luck they'll be more.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Ice Gets The Sand Wet. The Sand Loves It. |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|09:40 pm] |
Growing up and well into my early twenties I loved the Winter. Winter was my time. Warm clothes housing secrets, where nights found the world faster and cast it's shadow on the land in epic fashion. In my dull vampire mind the Summer was the day and the Winter the night. You do not have to know me long to know I am a night person. With the moon in the sky I always come alive.
With all this truth around me swirling like a storm I can assure you that no one found it more surprising than I that I want to retire to a beach and live on the water.
I spent three years (minus one) in Hawaii. Perhaps the love for my island eventually thawed my cold, dark heart, at least as much as those shriveled things can thaw anyway. I went on Holiday recently with the family and we stayed in a small, one story home whose back glass sliding door opened onto a deck that transformed into a pier, which finally gave way to the bay. I was privy to the slosh of the waves both calm and threatening to go crazy with the promise of rain. I witnessed sunsets that cupped my heart the way a lover might my nether regions. I felt like I was home you see, with the heat and shorter nights even though the night time is still my time and most probably always will be.
I desire to finish my book and buy a small place on the water. A place where I can feel at home even if it is against my nature. A place where I can spend my remaining days writing with my girls coming to visit often, perhaps for whole summers at a time. It's a wonderful dream and one I will not give up, as I have few of my dreams left. When you lose and lose BIG you tend to get protective of all you have left, even when it is not very much. So I want my beach house and my writing. I want my kids for summers and weekends and as long as they'd like to put up with me. Here I am, a Winterman with sand between his toes and colored lobster red.
Forever a Vampire on Holiday.
(c) Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Back In The Driver Seat |
[Jun. 18th, 2009|11:40 pm] |
Honeydew light invades the black pitch and I raise my hands to cover my eyes while choking back the urge to scream. My throat is so very dry it would probably have only come out as a horse, gurgling mess anyway. Best not frighten myself let alone anyone else in the vicinity.
The light bathing me like a bastard mother grows like a cancer until it's filled the little box I had called home from anywhere between two hours and two years. Weakly I try to stand only to fall over, catching myself with my hands to save my face, scraping my palms in the process. I end up crawling out on my hands and knees into the white, hot mess.
Outside of my prison I keep crawling until the ground beneath turns from rough cement into grassy softness. My vision still bleached whiteness seen through slits where the lids of my eyes try and save the round jelly transmitters within. By the time I finally recognize the world I'm surprised I have not gone completely insane.
I stand when I am able. I look down at myself. I'm wearing a loin cloth and my beard is a long bushy mess. I pray to some God whose name escapes me that there will not be too much white in it. If you are a normal person you would think it a beautiful day. The sky is aqua blue and I hear birds singing. I'm in a fenced in courtyard with a tall burgundy colored fence surrounding the perimeter. Past them I see large trees dancing with the slight breeze that creeps up my garment and tickles my balls.
It's like waking from a dream to your girlfriend playing with you. It gives me the first sensation of home in what may be forever.
I see where I need to be. I move towards the plywood table and aluminum chair that had been left for me. I take a seat and my buttocks fuse to warm aluminum comfort. In front of me are my tools. A Laptop with unfinished works saved on files I've neglected for far too long. To my right, next to the keyboard on the table, is a glass of rum doing the tango with some coke over ice.
I could use a shower and a shave. I could stand for some food to nourish the body and some delicious mind-altering sex to feed the soul. I could use these things but for now I need to write. It's my purpose and when I've been away from it for too long I become a ghost of who I'm supposed to be.
With hands that shake I begin tap, tap, tapping at the keys. Like a lover I'll treat my tales sweetly, roughly, teasingly, and transfer bits of me into them.
I'll always be that lunatic spilling his essence onto the page.
Good Christ it is good to be home.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Missing A Daughter |
[Mar. 28th, 2009|12:28 am] |
Sometimes I think she sees through me.
We're supposed to be connected through cell structure, by blood. She is half of me after all (though I have no doubt she sees it as the bad half) and there should be some common ground, some place were we connect, even on the smallest scale, under the most tiny of circumstances.
She does not treat me like her father. She respects me but only when she knows I'm not joking anymore. Being here for her is like slow Chinese Water Torture I'm sure though she never comes right out and says it.
I wonder what it was like for her growing up and once every six months having someone say, "This is your Daddy. He's on leave. Hang out with him for two weeks before he has to go again." Sometimes we're haunted by our choices. I wonder what the world would look like had her father never left for the Army, and if we did not have to get reintroduced all over again over four years.
We never really had a chance to develop the language of our relationship as father and child. This was not nearly the same kind of problem with her older sister. But for this little one who is slowly not so little anymore, I feel like the last three years have been small steps towards each other from two people still on opposite sides of the world, even though I'm right here.
I'm not in her top favorite people. Not even close. I wonder if we'll ever catch up to the race we've fallen behind in together. I wonder if she'll ever look at me with half the affection she does her mother. Or hell, her step father. After all he was around all the time while I was choking on sand and losing my mind.
I struggle with my role as a father all the time. Not because I do not value it, on the contrary. I struggle because I feel like it will never be where it should have been. I'll never be the father in her heart I'd like to be. I wish to be.
But I guess it does not matter much.
No matter what she'll always remain one of the two True Loves of my life.
My little girls. My Angels.
And she'll always have my heart whether she wants it or not.
Happy Birthday baby.
-SJD |
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| Burn Baby. Burn. |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|12:08 am] |
He took a puff of the cigarette the Devil offered. The one puff quickly turned into a coughing fit, the likes of which he had not had since the last time he tried smoking when he was fourteen, some eighteen years earlier. He knew it would happen but thought denying the offer of a cigarette from the Devil would be awfully bad form. That and he was curious to see if it affected him now on this far end of the time-line as it did then. It did.
"Sorry," said the Devil. "I should have known better. Once in awhile the little details escape me."
"No worries," he said. They stood on a rocky cliff giving way to a cavern far, far below. But from here they could see the city in all of it's glory. There were dark, stormy clouds overhead but the day had not given away to night as of yet. The city lights were already visible. They were in the In-Between time now.
"So we've come to an understanding I take it?" The Devil spoke like molasses on sandpaper, though not quite so pretty.
The young man closed his eyes tightly. The moment of truth. The Sum of All Fears. He opened them again. "Yes."
The Devil nodded and returned his dark gaze towards the city.
The young man took a deep breath. It was simple really, understandable to a fashion. The people he most cared about get to go on and lead extraordinary lives. The Devil in turn gets the young man's soul, to devour at his leisure.
"You know what?" asked the Devil. "I admire you little creatures. So frail and ugly and monkey like....yet once in awhile you can see the webs of creation stretch and shine just at the right times for you. Your souls are worth so much....capital in the hereafter. I may hate my father for letting you walking mud creatures take form and speak, but sometimes you even impress me, the greatest of all his creations."
The young man shrugged. "Thanks."
Over the last few years the young man saw a pattern in darkness descending on those he most cared for. His father, a great journalist, had slowly developed Alzheimer's. His mind becoming a cloud eating all that made him what he was. His sister had left one day to journey to Hollywood to be discovered and found herself selling her body at a high class escort service instead once she found achieving her dream too difficult a task to undergo. His best friend, who he had known since she was three and whom he had fallen in love with approximately one whole minute after that first meeting, a fact he kept to himself for twenty-nine years, was strung out at her junkie boyfriend's who sometimes used her as a form of currency.
During this dark time the young man kept having dreams about a old lady rocking in her rocking chair. This went on for years until he was visiting relatives in the next state and while walking down his family's street, saw that same old lady sitting on her porch, rocking away. He asked his extended family about the woman and they told him stories about old Ellie Mae Brown and the crazy life she had led. She had made the community prosperous over the last seventy years, pushing agendas that stretched from education improvement to Sunday picnics to building a new bridge over Talbert Creek. She served on every local board and personally helped raise funds for most of the projects.
The young man took it all in stride and the next day ventured out, in search of her. Curiosity got the better of him and he had to talk to her. As he approached the old woman he felt a nervous twitch and wondered exactly what he would say to her. This proved fruitless because when he got within earshot she broke the ice herself. "Well come on up. I ain't getting any younger and you're taking your sweet ass time."
The young man adopted a puzzled look. "You....you knew I was coming?"
Old Ellie Mae Brown's face scrunched up. "You ain't too bright are ya? Yes I knew. I've been dreaming about you for years young man. Hurry up. At my age every breath could be my last and we've got some words to have, me and you."
The young man took up residence on the porch and over the next hour they talked. Ellie Mae Brown shouted for a housekeeper who brought the young man some sweet tea, and this is what was said. Ellie Mae told the young man that he was what they called "touched." He would have to make a big decision that would affect the lives of more than one person. At first the words coming from Ellie Mae seemed strange but as she talked a quiet calmness came over the young man and somehow, down to his core, he knew she spoke truth. Three people in his life had fallen from the path and were now on collision courses with oblivion, yes? He nodded. Only the young man could save them now. The Dark One, the Beast, the Devil, whatever you wanted to call him had laid claim to those he loved. And he would only set them free if the young man, in turn, offered his soul in exchange.
"I don't understand why." He said simply.
Ellie Mae said, "It's because God puts certain people on Earth to offer great sacrifices. Sacrifices of love for the greater good. Those are the ones that are touched, child. And when they are offered the choice to save their loved ones they either agree and save them for an eternity in Hell-Fire, or they take the selfish way out and let their loved ones burn."
"Jesus," said the young man. "That's sick."
"Mmm," she mused. "And don't blaspheme."
"Why would God do this?"
She stared straight at him. "Who knows? God's got his or her own reasons, I'm sure. I can tell you this though, when it all ends and the final fight is fought and he casts all of Hell into the great Abyss, the only ones he will pull out of Hell and save are those that were "touched" and made their sacrifices."
The young man paused before asking, "So you eventually get saved."
"Eventually."
"But you said they burned for all eternity."
"Yes," she agreed, "but God's time is not our time."
"Why me?" asked the young man.
"I think," she said, "because few souls can stand an eternity of torment before rescue and only those will do."
The young man stared down at the chipped, wooden porch.
She then added, "Or it could just be the luck of the draw."
"How do you know so much?"
Ellie Mae laughed. "I'm old. But I've always been a little 'touched' myself in a different kind of a way. You see young man, once upon a time, I was not the wonderful lady you see before you. I was a child at the time but I was also possessed by a foul demon whose name cannot be spoken in human tongue."
The young man could not believe his ears.
"I was marked and doomed until someone close to me, someone 'touched', made a sacrifice to save me."
"Someone close to you?" asked the young man.
"Yes," she said. "My father."
They were quiet again leaving room only for a gentle breeze the springtime loves to give up when it can. Then she added, "When he went I got better and went on to do remarkable things, see remarkable things, and see a little behind the curtain to the great mysteries. But it wasn't just me, no sir. My brother went on to be the most decorated soldier from around these parts during the Korean War. He died there but saved the lives of no less than twenty other soldiers during his time there. Soldiers who went on to have wonderful lives of their own. And my pastor, who had given up his faith? Who had picked up the bottle again? After my father left he poured out every drink he had and spent thirty more years saving the people here."
The young man frowned. "So all I have to do is give it up and my loved ones will be saved?"
"Yes child," she said. "An eternity of torment to save them. Then one day you'll be reunited again."
"At the end."
"Yes, at the end."
"So when do I have to make the choice?"
Her face grew shadows. "Don't you worry none. The Devil, he find you soon enough."
It had taken a year but yes, that was indeed the case. He did not have to sell it hard. The young man had already made up his mind by that time. His father did not recognize him. His sister called him crying most days but refused his offers to fly her home. His best friend had lost a tremendous amount of weight and finally told him her boyfriend didn't want her talking to him anymore. The love of his life, who would never look at him in that way, chose cold emptiness over him. It was this last one that pushed him over the edge. This last one that had broken his heart. So yes, he had already made his decision.
"You know," the Devil said, "you only get a reprieve in the end if God wins."
The young man hadn't thought about that. He supposed it did not matter much. "Will you forever be unable to touch them?"
The Devil nodded. "Yes, they'll be free of me forever. It's part of the rules."
"Then I guess it just doesn't matter. I'll try to have a little Faith."
The Devil winced. "Gah. Such profanity in your voice. Makes my ears bleed."
The wind picked up now and it was obvious there was a storm coming through.
"Time to go." The Devil turned away from the city.
"Yeah," said the young man.
And off they went. Soon the young man's father would have a miraculous recovery. He'd go back to journalism and his investigation will bring down a corrupt politician who might have eventually become Commander-In-Chief otherwise. It will be a crowning achievement. His sister will leave her escort job and take one as a waitress at a small diner. There she will most surprisingly be discovered. She will have a wide and varied film career and she will champion women's rights and will attack those that pray on women down on their luck in all ways. She will win much acclaim and help many people as a result. The young man's death will shock his best friend into leaving her boyfriend and she will clean herself up. She'll go to community college and become a nurse. She'll meet a man one day that reminds her of her long lost friend and they will marry. They'll have one son. One day that boy will grow up and cure cancer.
The young man burns somewhere you never ever want to find yourself. He burns and waits. And hopes. And has Faith.
It will be a good sacrifice. Sometimes when he's being punished he even smiles.
It's not everyday one man gets to save everyone he loves.
Right on.
(c) Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Lies, all lies |
[Feb. 24th, 2009|11:25 pm] |
Sometimes in the dark, I can still see the outline of you next to me, haunting me like a phantom. I can see the curve of you as my eyes adjust to the blackness. Sometimes.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I remember how I felt the time I stuck a wet finger in a light socket during my youth just to see how it would feel. You still course through me. Charging me up.
I want to reach out and touch your naked back, the part I always found most alluring on a woman, sexy with a promise of the naughty yet leaving the rest to my imagination...for now. I want to reach out but don't want to ruin the illusion that you're still really here next to me. Don't want the vision to fade.
Fuck me I can still smell you. Still taste you on my lips. My tongue.
You were the only one I ever made love to with my soul, as useless as it is luv.
I remember being sticky wet from you. I remember the way you made me feel free.
All that's left now is one part memory, one part dream. One part fantasy, one part cold, stark reality. The last part has the most teeth. Sharp and jagged and hungry.
So the condemned man lays here in the pitch teasing his heart while his senses play tricks on him. Seeing things that are not there. No longer. A trick of smoke and mirrors.
Sometimes in the dark, I can see the outline of you next to me.
It's a lie.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Violence and Myths |
[Jan. 31st, 2009|12:26 am] |
All myths house truth my dear, demented little Heathens. Hell some times the Myths are more important than the Truths. They carry more weight, captivate our minds, hold our attentions by the balls.
I've thought a great deal about the Hobos I see standing on street corners or at busy intersections holding their cardboard signs inked by sharpies, dictating their pain and woes into little blurbs letting us know that they NEED US to feed, clothe, and keep them going another day, week, or month. Perhaps I should pay them to help me pitch ideas to Hollywood. "Hey, Hobo Man, I want pitch an idea where Britney Spears is secretly an alien princess who has come to sleep with every man on the planet and she has to avoid the other evil aliens who hate sex on Planet Earth that are lead by Tom Cruise and the Pope. Translate that into a cardboard sign for me."
Hobo Man disappears for a minute or two and returns asking for a fiver and giving me a freshly cut piece of cardboard that reads: STUCK UP WHITE MEN WHO HATE
THEMSELVES TRY TO PREVENT BRITNEY FROM SAVING THE WORLD WITH HER SNATCH.
I bow before a Master.
There are times I want to give these homeless men and women money. Especially after I've picked some pockets, but even when the money is legally mine. I hear my friends (and hell from people I damn well Hate too) that all these dirty homeless people are operating the biggest con since George W. promised to smoke Bin Laden out of his Cave. "They're all secret millionaires," I hear. "They make more that you and I while doing nothing all day. Don't give them a goddamn cent. Not. One. Penny."
When I hear this I react differently every time. I'll laugh awkwardly. I'll shake my head. I'll stare at those trying to get me in "The Know" like I've walked in on them fucking my sister. Often though my imagination begins to churn and all those sick freaks out there know that once my imagination is firing on all cylinders it's time to scream and run for the hills.
So what's the deal? Eh? Am I really watching the world's greatest Con job? (Second only to the criminal acts on Wall Street maybe?) I think well there HAS to be some kind of truth to it. These people that want to tell you just how corrupt these poor folk are must be educated to some degree right? This brings me back to Myths and Truths. I bet that there have been a handful of Hobos over the years that are scamming us. Someone, once upon a time, found out about them and revealed the TRUTH. This Truth has now evolved from a little demon to a steroid-induced three-headed dragon of a MYTH, so now the Myth drives people to talk about the "Truth" they know about these so-called poor, draining us of our money before going home to clean up and drive their Porsches and eat fish eggs that cost more than your heating bill. I bet these few rat bastards are responsible for the truly hopeless and downfallen to be ignored because "educated" pricks I occasionally call "friends" think they're Grifters of the highest motherfucking order.
In my infinite wisdom and sweet desire for Justice (and because I am a devious whore of ideas) I have devised a plan to take this MYTH back for my Hobos.
Soon you will find me on street corners and intersections and every where else I can searching my true Hobos out. The ones that can barely move due to their unfortunate situation. I will take them with me. Feed them. Give them clothes. Nurture their souls.
Then the training will begin. Boot Camp of a sort. (And I know all about breaking a man or woman and building them back up. Hell most of the Hobos are already broken. So they don't have far to go.) I will fashion them into a brilliant and deadly ideal. I will give them a reason, a purpose. I will give them a Mission.
Together me and my new brethren will find these liars, these fakers, these creators of Myths. We shall storm their concrete castles, their Fancy Liars Clubs, their overpriced unoriginal ideas of what happiness is, and drag them kicking and screaming from their places bought by those who felt sorry for them. Here we'll get these blubbering villains to make new signs. We'll give them new sharpies and the finest damn cardboard they've ever seen. We'll make them make sign after sign begging us not to crucify them in the streets, begging us to let the poor fuckers live. This time however they won't find the promise of mercy and charity so richly found. My Hobos aren't the shadows of human beings they were before. No sir. They're the sharp edge of the sword of Justice and so help us Baby Jesus some evil fucks need to get cut.
So it is here, one by one we'll pick these vultures off, until we've taken back the Myth and restored the good name of those that depend on society. After that though, well, we'll need a new Mission.
When the last creator of the Hobo Myth has been executed in the most gruesome stye possible with as much imagination as I can throw at it, I will turn these men and women and train them on some new ideals. I see our culture, our society, and I think that perhaps it would be better off doing some things my way.
My Hobos and I, we're going to make some goddamn changes around here.
And create us a New Myth.
And it will be glorious.
Amen.
(c) Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Night Begins |
[Jan. 29th, 2009|12:22 am] |
The less educated would tell you my night began with that slut of a girl, the one who did everything I asked of her just so long as I let her share my coke and drink a bit of my Rum. These inbred fucks would not know where a night with me began if I wrote it out in lines for them to snort.
I was thinking about the way that girl worshiped various bits and pieces the universe gave me, of which I'll tell you one thing, that girl was goddamn gifted. It was here however, with my brain short-circuiting on Coke mixed with The Captain, that my host's boyfriend came home. Jealous boyfriends are a funny, sad sight. Sure come at me like you're a badass son, if you got yourself some coke she might make you her secret Medicine Man too. I bet he was really surprised when I stabbed him the first time, perhaps less so the other thirty-eight.
Luckily I bring a change of clothes most places I go. I showered in my Cola Girl's bathroom and kissed her on her forehead before I made my way out of that place forever. I did not want to see her when she finally woke up to the sight of her boyfriend rotting on the floor, covered in his own dried up life juices. That would have been a downer. I had bigger fish to fry. Though I wondered if she will think that she had offed the bastard.
This makes me chuckle a bit. That's pretty funny.
I replenished my stock of cigarettes at a service station. A foreign man with a vacant expression stares through me as he takes my cash. What motherfucker? This not the American Dream you hoped for? Get in line. Join the fucking club.
I get back to the place I'm chilling at for a little while and wonder where my roommate is. She's a sweet girl but every time she hangs out with her fiance thing she comes back a day or two later painted with black and blue smudges of "love" he feeds her with his fists. I've often thought of Staking the sack-less scum Vlad style but the truth is I hate her a little for going back for it every time. So I wait. I wait until he comes here and interrupts my thinking or until she asks me nicely or offers me money. I only do things for two reasons: I find them enjoyable or I get paid. Right now her nightmare she's living is one she chooses. When she grows some balls I'll bury him. Promise. I wouldn't bother, but she is my sister and all....so.
When I step back out into the night air I realize how fucking cold it is. I give God the Finger. Fuck Her.
I go to this lovely dive that houses cheap, ugly food as well as cheap, ugly people which also boasts a jukebox filled with music that was hot a decade ago. I come here to be among my own. Not my equals, never that. But my fellow animals. My fellow monsters. I scoop up roadkill surprise off of my plate with a silver spork and shove it into my mouth. I wash the dead taste out of my mouth with beer the taste of piss. I feel the beast stirring beneath my skin. I want to howl at the moon. I want to stick my dick in something. Anything.
On my way back from the head a brute of a man bumps into me as he follows what I presume to be his girl or sister or both. He calls me a "Faggot" and rattles off about looking where I go and finally telling me the best part of me ran down my mother's leg.
I grin. I might even growl like a good monster.
So it is here you understand, a second away from when the screaming begins and the place erupts in carnage, here where one onlooker will later recall for the evening news how I butchered that Fugly Brute with a Spork and laughed like a fiend the whole time, that MY night really begins.
Just so we're clear.
(c) Shawn J. Douglas 2009 |
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| Just You And Me Kid. |
[Dec. 16th, 2008|01:30 am] |
The young man with the broken heart who frequented the bars did not feel so young anymore. In all fairness this was because he wasn't but hush, don't mention that. It'll only bring him down more children. No sense in beating a dead horse and all that.
He had often worn his fractured heart like a fashion statement, displaying it like cowboys did their boots or goth kids wore black. Like a broken record he would go to these bars and sit there drinking his poisons of choice (they varied depending on his mood and of course the funds he was carrying) staring at the reflection on the other side of the bar coming off the inevitable mirror, as he gave himself the evil eye.
The young man with the broken heart who really wasn't so young anymore tried not to count the extra lines that had crept onto his face like a ninja assassin in the night or the gray that teased on his ever thinning hair. He kept a secret prayer to himself hoping and pleading he did not end up like the long, lost souls that he would see at the bar. The old men who once upon a time stumbled into the place only to give up and take up permanent residence there. Every day he grew closer to becoming that which he hated. It would be ironic if it wasn't so ugly and weak.
He had left the bar where the lonely would dwell and instead took up a new tavern of sorts where the atmosphere was darkly romantic, and the lonely souls were replaced with lovers and friends. Laughter and love were on the menu with the food and wine list. It was Hauntingly Brilliant.
The young man with the broken heart still sat alone, staring at the aging face that reflected through the looking glass. Somewhere in the center of him he realized he had given up one kind of Hell for another.
Here he would give up and lose himself among the lovers and the living. Here he would be the last lonely not-quite-so-young bastard caught up in the great wave of other people's happiness and let it drown him. Here he would be, with no one else to keep him company save for that ugly old man staring at him from the mirrorverse, laughing and mocking him with sinister and quiet glance.
Just you and me kid. Just you and me.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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| Ghost Girl |
[Dec. 3rd, 2008|01:13 am] |
He watched the Ghost Girl dance on the ice. He did this after skating hours, when the night was at it's darkest and the only light came from the moon shining on the snowy earth below, reflecting off the ice and the girl in supernaturally majestic fashion. He stayed up late to do this, every night, ever since that first time he stumbled upon her.
He often wondered who she had been in life and why her soulful dance seemed so very sad. His heart went out to her and he tried to discern possible hints or secrets revealed with each step, with each purposeful movement of grace. He hoped more than anything that she had been happy. That she had been loved.
He told no one and kept her all to himself. Who would he tell? Who would believe?
He told no one for the same reason he never tried to get too close or speak to her. He was afraid she'd disappear and never return. He could not take that chance. Not when she moved like that.
Sometimes she was just mist and vapor and fog though he could always make out the dark hair and angelic face. Other times though, when the moon was at it's fullest and the night it's most real, she was as solid as any other woman he had ever cast a look upon.
Every woman that had come before her and every woman that would come in the hereafter would pale in comparison to his Ghost Girl and her dance.
She was his True Love.
She would never know.
He was her number one fan.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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| sweet, sad music |
[Dec. 2nd, 2008|01:07 am] |
Hold me below the surface until oblivion darling.
Make me your bitch.
Kiss me on my cold, dead lips.
And tell me you love me.
Even if it's a lie.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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| He Was.... |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|08:04 pm] |
He was not the frustration he felt nagging him from the moment his eyes opened until he submitted to sleep.
He was not the bad luck that had a way of finding him no matter how often he tried to hide.
He was not the drunken nights he tried to drink the pain away.
He was not the red, puffy eyes in the aftermath of tears he was surprised to find he had not quite used up yet.
He was not the failure he sometimes owned.
He was not the brokenhearted husk of a man that often stared at him from the other side of the looking glass.
He was not the endless cycle of reinvention that led him nowhere making him perhaps more confused than he had been before.
He was not the fist that found itself embedded into a wall.
He was not the lonely nights spent in a cold and empty bed.
He was not this lost and haunted feeling.
He was....
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|02:40 am] |
I would have stayed up until the sun came up and then caught a cab home. I never tire of listening to you talk. Throw those words at me baby. Throw them hard and soft and drown me in ideas and beliefs and loves.
The truth is that you mean more to this withered soul than you can know. I may have my shit together but only just. Only with my duct tape and bubble gum. It holds the crazy together. You touch me like a Holy Man healing me of my transgressions and demonic possessions.
I'd do anything to see you smile and taste life like it was a dessert following a rough and questionable dinner.
If I could remove your scars and add them to my own I would. I'd leave you smooth and clean and ready to start anew.
Even when you deal with the ugly of the world and want to scream you save me with a kind word or a sweet thought. An Angel during the Apocalypse.
I'll be forever in your debt.
Forever, luv.
Cheers.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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| the phone camera doesn't lie |
[Nov. 22nd, 2008|01:16 am] |
You send me a picture of a woman from your phone wearing something that would have suited someone from a century ago. She's vibrant and alive so I immediately reject the idea of ghost and think instead that she is just a woman out of time.
"She was my age. Spooky," you say.
I reply with, "She might have been you in a former life."
I stand by that comment.
So here I am again: What's left of a man whose soul shattered once upon a time leaving shards that were way too sharp to pick back up again. Sitting here thinking of all the things I could have been and all the things I'll never, ever be. And you're out running into time slipped doppelgangers.
I truly hate it when you are having all the fun.
I should sleep with the Time Slip Lady just to piss you off.
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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| Getting Back To Me |
[Nov. 10th, 2008|12:39 am] |
I've eaten the sweetest grapes I ever tasted in a little village three hours drive away from Kandahar Airfield, as I sat with a envoy of U.S. Soldiers as they met the Village Elders. In this same village I ate Ice Cream. Ice Cream in the desert.
It was pretty good. But the grapes were magnificent.
I walked from our station through our Army "Camp" and out the gates to our hotel where we were put up during training in South Korea in the midst of a heavy snowfall. I ate juicy meat off of a stick sold in front of a shop, had "Juicy Girls" ask me to buy them drinks for their hot young bodies and thick Russian Accents. I tried to ignore them as I was married then and a bit embarrassed about their forwardness. They went after my friend instead. They soon left us when they realized we were not so eager to part with our money for the false promise of fulfilling pleasures.
Plus, we were poor.
I ran a marathon in Hawaii, The Great Aloha, and ran longer and farther than I ever had in a stretch. I was a sweaty horror of a man but so help me I felt like I touched part of the Divine that day though I hurt like a broken man for days thereafter.
I miss my island.
I pissed on the lawn of our Commanding General because he was sending me off to War and I thought that made us even. Drunken escapades at three in the morning make much more sense at the time then they do the next morning, or years later even.
I spelled my name out. I signed my crime.
I saw some of the most frightening imagery on Gate 2. Allied Forces, Army, Interpreters, and Medical Emergencies were the only ones allowed through our gate. There were things I saw there I will never forget no matter how much I try to close my mind off to it.
The kids were the worst.
My price for coming home from the Army came at the loss of my closest friends, my second family. How I wish we could all live in the same place. How they got me through the toughest time of my life. How I hated and loved them. How they loved and hated me. They are never far from my thoughts or my heart.
My Band of Brothers.
So why is it during these vivid and larger than life events I found a way to roll with the punches and come up swinging and everyday now I feel like I keep getting hit over and over and when I swing back, in those few moments, I feel like I don't connect with anything.
It's a shame because I bet Fate has a glass jaw.
Where did the soldier go?
(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2008 |
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