i think my soul has sleep apnea. [trigger #167]

As he looked across the coffee table at his therapist, he wanted to say so much all at once. His mind and heart were a log jam of thoughts and emotions. There was so much to say, that he was left saying nothing. He wanted to articulate his pain, his weakness, his suffering. He thought perhaps there might be solace in having someone, anyone, understand what he meant when he talked of his own pain.

He offered the best metaphor he could.

“My soul is never at rest. There is always pain, always a knotted grip on my heart. I think my soul has sleep apnea. If, by some happy mistake, my soul falls asleep and is resting in my chest for a bit, it suddenly loses its ability to get air and wakes up sucking and gasping for oxygen. Any moment of rest is so often followed by heart-crushing panic and despair. I just don’t know what to do about it, to feel like a normal person once in a while.”

 

her year of magical thinking was over. [trigger #138]

Sometimes, one’s magical abilities only manifest for a season, and then retreat beneath the surface of our psyches from whence they came. Such is the case for Abigail Camposino.

As if very often the way of things, Abigail had no idea she had any sort of aptitude for the magical arts. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in magic, it had just never occurred to her to think about it at all. Then, when her husband died, the trauma dislodged whatever it is that blocks the human heart from all its potential. Too often, it takes great tragedy to awaken us to all that is possible. For Abigail, in the soul wracking pain of the loss of her husband, she found that something felt different in the deepest parts of her mind.

She never, at any point in her brief stint of wizardry, learned how to intentionally use her gift. All she ever knew was that at times, when something was taking up a great deal of mental space (be it consciously or otherwise), she would dream vivid dreams that sparkled beyond the veil of our world, like a diamond sparkling beneath the surface of shallow water. Upon waking, the world would be a different place. Things that happened in her dream would have been made true in the waking world.

Her barren sister-in-law conceived twins. Her philandering boss was caught, against all reason, and sent to jail for 30 years. Her children found success in life, love, and vocation that was astounding to any who were fortunate enough to witness it.

Then, one year to the day after her first dream, the well went dry. As suddenly and mysteriously as things had begun, they also stopped. Whether her own human dissociation created another subconscious block, keeping her from her latent capacity for more; or perhaps she’d just lived through her magical season as it was meant to be. Whatever the case, she never had another of her dreams, and what happened in her normal dreams never made an impact outside of her own sleeping mind.

fahrenheit 452*: this summer’s hottest sequel. [trigger #114]

Some people should never, ever become wildly rich. Geoff Perkins is one of those people. In what could accurately be termed an accident, he invented an enormously successful product that allows you to use your keys to find a lost remote, and a remote to find lost keys. It doesn’t help when you can’t find your remote or your keys, but millions of people around the world decided it was better than nothing, and shelled out the money to buy the device, making Geoff Perkins an overnight success.

He then got enormously lucky yet again. this time in the stock market. He got in on not one, but three different start-ups that went on to become historic successes. The result is that Geoff Perkins is one of the wealthiest humans alive.

This is bad for art.

Geoff, an idiot, but a more decent fellow than most when you get right down to it, decided to give much of his money back to the world. Unfortunately for literature, one of the ways he decided to give back was by buying the rights for some of the most wonderful novels in history, and commissioning sequels, sequels which he pre-titled to give the new authors guidance.

To call it a cluster-fuck would forever warp the definition of cluster-fuck to the point of making it essentially meaningless for the rest of time.

Here are just a few gifts that Geoff Perkins has now given to the world:

• Fahrenheit 452*
• Weekend at Gatsby’s
• 1985 
• Animal Town 
• The Photo of Dorian Gray 
• Don Quixote Rides Again! 
• One Thousand Years of Solitude 
• Braver Newer World 
• More Things Fall Apart 
• The Sun Also Sets 
• Slaughterhouse-Six 
• A Farewell to Legs
• Back with the Wind. 

Clearly, many of these titles show that Mr. Perkins has never even read the original books. Apparently, that isn’t going to stop him from punching literature right in the dick.

his mullett was upsetting. [trigger #95]

Mark was going to do better this time. He hated the way he sounded when he started nagging his son, but somehow it always happened before he even realized what was going on. He’d be in the midst of chiding him about his car, or his job, or his clothes; then he would hear the sound of his voice and the words coming out of his mouth and he would be horrified. He sounded like his mother.

This would be his son’s first trip home from college for the sophomore year. Mark wanted to make it a good one.

His son finally pulled up out in front of the house at around 3 in the afternoon. Mark went to the door and looked down the walkway. He quickly realized that not nagging was going to be quite the ordeal. His son’s appearance was even more shocking than it had been when he left for school.

First off, his mullet was upsetting, that definitely hadn’t been there when he left.

He was wearing a t-shirt with a marijuana leaf colored like the American flag. In big block letters the shirt said, ‘Don’t Make Sense, Make Dollars.’ Mark had no idea what that phrase, weed, and America had to do with each other, but apparently there was a connection he was missing.

As his son got closer, Mark also noticed a new tattoo on the boy’s forearm. Mark couldn’t make out what it was a tattoo of, but it was definitely a tattoo!

Yes, if this was going to be the weekend Mark stopped nagging his son, he had his work cut out for him.

dribbling down her chin. [trigger #24]

She pulled his head backwards by his hair, smelling his neck with relish.

She paused to enjoy the moment, his mind was so seduced that there was no chance of him thinking clearly enough to fight back.

In that moment, she delighted in many things. She could feel his heart beating through his chest, pumping life through his body, so close she could already taste it. She thought of the little girls he trafficked, not only had he trafficked his last, but she would soon have access to his records, and each girl would be free by the end of the week.

Even though she had long since stopped feeling sorry for what she was, for killing to live, she still chose her victims carefully. There was still the odd innocent here or there in a pinch, but normally she eliminated men and women so evil it was difficult to fathom, even for something like her.

She never gave in to the urge to romanticize what she did. She was killing terrible people, but she was still killing. And while part of her joy at the kill came from the salvation that came to so many with each death, a large part of her joy at the kill was purely in the kill. In the violence and power of it.

She grinned, it was a deadly, feline gesture. Her pressed her fangs into the flesh of his neck, just enough to penetrate the skin, but not enough to feed. She loved these moments just before the slaughter, she almost always chose to draw it out, to savor each second, to prolong the anticipation and desire.

Finally, she threw her head back, then plunged her teeth deep into his flesh, losing herself in the taste of his lifeblood. These moments are when she is truly alive. It’s why she never looks with disdain on her lycanthrope brothers and sisters like most of her kind. She may hunt with the grace and care of the jaguar, but once it came time to feed she was overwhelmed by the savage hunger of the wolf.

She drank deeply, and then pulled away, taking in deep, heaving breaths, the blood dribbling down her chin. These breaths were obviously not because she needed breath to live, God’s first gift had been denied her for some time. No, these breaths were to oxygenate the blood she was drinking one last time before his life had truly gone out of it, to feel a secondary tremor and thrill as she consumed him.

there the mountain sat, happy and personified. [trigger #21]

There the mountain sat, happy and personified.

Centuries ago, the people believed that the mountain was a giant who had been sleeping so long in the same place that the earth itself had formed around his massive form.

The giant had been tricked into sleep by a great sorceress. She did this to save a small village of farmers from the giant’s wrath. Now, that village had become a city that bustles in the shadow of the mountain.

The sorceress was kind, and lacked any hint of vengeance, so she was sure to give the giant peaceful, pleasant dreams while he slumbered beneath the rock. The sorceress was also very wise, so she gave the giant dreams of the goodness of the people who lived in his sleeping shadow. If ever the giant awoke, he would look with love on the people he discovered and would defend them from any danger.

Thus, the people had seen the mountain as their guardian, ready to awaken whenever danger became great enough to rouse him.

Now, the people laugh at the foolishness and superstition of their ancestors. And on the giant sleeps, snoring gently beneath the layer upon layer of rock.

rain began pelting his sun-chapped face. [trigger #5]

Bruce woke up at his desk. He’d fallen asleep at his office. It wasn’t the first time that month, or even that week.

He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a bottle of Browncoat Whiskey and took a swig. The whiskey stayed out on his desk, he’d need some more in his morning coffee.

Bruce had that dream again. It was so vivid and insane. It always starts with him as a child, with his parents. They’re leaving the theater when a figure emerges from the shadows. The figure becomes a man, then the man and his parents talk back and forth with raised voices until an explosion of sound rings out. BANG! BANG! He hears his mother scream. Nothing like this ever happened to him, or even anyone he knows, but in the dream it seems so real.

Then the dream continues, he’s a child at his parents’ funeral. It’s mad. The dream moments feel like actual memories. His father was still alive, son of a bitch that he was. His mother hadn’t taken her own life until Bruce was nearly 30. Yet, moments after waking he’s almost convinced he once was a small, terrified boy watching them put his parents in the ground.

Bruce thought on that for a minute, about what it would have been like if his parents had died when he was a young child. They were still heroes to him then, still perfect and virtuous. His father still seemed superhuman. Maybe it would have been better if they’d died in that perfect state, before his illusions could be shattered by reality.

He took another pre-coffee swig of whiskey, tried to push both the dream and reality from his mind. Through the open door of his office he could see the door to the hallway, could make out the words on the glass telling anyone who passes that his services as a private investigator were available to whoever could pay.

It was time to follow another lead on the Selena Kyle case. Since the Kyle woman had come in asking for his help, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. She was intoxicatingly beautiful, and there was even more to it than that. She had this unquantifiable sensuality he couldn’t put his finger on, that along with her gorgeous black hair and green eyes were just a few of the very good reasons he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That was going to be dangerous as he moved forward with the case she brought him.

His next lead was about to take him somewhere he had no desire to go, but the only other alternative was to call the case a failure. Selena Kyle’s hips swayed in his mind as she left his office in his memory. She’d almost purred as she said goodbye. He’d give this case one more shot, even if it did mean talking to Falcone.

He took the Cross Gotham Expressway to the other side of town, double parked, and made his way up the street to the dry cleaners he knew acted as a front for one of Falcone’s favorite hideouts. Entering the alley to the side of the building, he pounded on a rusted door that looked like it hadn’t been opened in decades. An eye slot slid open. “What the hell you want?”

“It’s Wayne, I’m here to see Falcone.”

“Good for you, nobody named Falcone here. Go away.”

“C’mon, give me a break. It’s Wednesday, so we both know that if Falcone’s not in there, then he will be shortly. Just let me in. I’m not carrying.”

The eye slot slams shut. Over the next 20 seconds what sounds like a dozen locks are switched to unlocked before the door swings open.

Bruce entered, “Is he in yet? I’m running on a tight…” Before getting another word out of his mouth, the back of his head explodes in pain and everything goes dark.

He woke briefly, for a moment. He was lying on his back, the sun high and brutally hot overhead. His thoughts were insulated by the pain in his head, everything coming to him slowly.

He was dreaming again. More false memories. There was him, growing up in an empty house with no one but Alfred. Him, training mercilessly, filled with rage and a righteous desire for vengeance. The idea of a costume, like the one the lunatic ‘capes’ wear, flashed through the dream. That dream’s a new one, and even stranger than the ones before. He wondered for a moment if it has something to do with that boyscout he’s been hearing about over in Metropolis.

Back in the waking world of reality, a voice to his left says, “Hey, Frankie, he’s awake. Put his lights out again.” Another explosion of pain. More darkness.

He woke again. The sky was cloudy and gray. His face and bare arms ached as if they’d had a tussle with the business end of a hot frying pan.

Thunder pealed in the distance as rain began pelting his sun-chapped face. Realizing how painful it would be, he steeled himself and pulled up to a sitting position anyway. Carefully, he rubbed the back of his neck, wincing at how remarkably sore every muscle felt.

He was still alive, but out in the middle of nowhere. The message had been sent, leave well-enough alone. Well, at least he knew his lead toward Falcone had been on the mark. Time to get word back Kyle. Maybe this sunburned face and the two lumps on his head would lead to some sympathy from the woman. He smiled at the possibility of a much needed silver-lining.