Wasted Time

My life wasn’t supposed to turn out all jumbly with different events stacked one atop another without sequence or meaning. Admittedly, wearing my own rendition of rose-colored glasses made time pass – beautifully. Every minute, every hour looked better after a sip of wine, a glass of whiskey, a line of cocaine or two. Meth. But one can live like that for only so long. Pressure builds, and BOOM, time disappears. Ask Angie Mike Tessa Larry. All their lights went out last month. Mine is starting to dim. And really? I don’t much care.

Bad Company

This is my contribution to Pegman. What a creepy place the Overbrook Lunatic Asylum must have been. Thanks for reading my 147-word story.

Yeah Luke was a phantom all right sliding in and out of the gang like vapor from our pipes he’d smoke a little of this a lot of that then disappear come back clean and start all over again we didn’t mind he was funny brought bloom flakka krokodil crank disappeared for good one day that was o.k. we’d already decided he was crazy anyone that lived in the decrepit lunatic asylum had to be of course authorities didn’t know or they’d a booted him out every now and then one of us or all of us or three of us would go in there to hang ’cause being inside creeped us out James was the one who opened the drawer and found Luke wrapped in a straight jacket dead as any doornail with hyde tattooed on his forehead hell yes we scattered ain’t been back since

Swallowed Time

Today Pegman took us to Hanoi, Vietnam, and the memory of my nineteen-year-old boyfriend getting a low number in the lottery flooded in. Thanks, Karen, for the bittersweet recall of a good man.

Nineteen: Got it all. Good lookin’ girlfriend. Football star. Accepted to a high-end college. Gonna’ be a doctor.
Nineteen: Drew #25 in the Screw-You, You’re-Going-to-Vietnam lottery. Feeling empty. Can’t focus.
Farewell party. Beer. Hugs-n-Kisses. Loud music. Tears. Smell of fear.
Twenty: Celebrated that birthday lugging a 100-pound pack on a 50-mile march. Thanks, U.S. of A.
Twenty: Free ride to jungles loaded with bugs, mud up to my ankles, orange-colored defoliants and villagers carrying hatred in their eyes. Some live. Some don’t.
Twenty-one: Hello, LSD, mescaline, cocaine, heroin. Life is easier now that skulls in the bushes don’t register as anything more than a flash of white tangled in a heaviness of green and stench.
Twenty-two: Few of us mark our birthdays. Just glad to be alive. Or not.
Thanks, LSD, for swallowing time.
Twenty-four: Home. Greeted by strangeness and anger. And a fear I cannot heal.

An InLinkz Link-up

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Lost Chances

Photo by K. Rawson

We remember the clatter of boots on steps, the boyish shouts and the click-clack of swords made of sticks.
Our eyes still see flashes of red, purple and orange T-shirts as the boys scattered through the woods.

The tips of our fingers long to brush back silken hair and peer into eyes of blue or green and see,
really see
what they wanted.
Just give us the chance.

But those times are lost.
They didn’t know what they wanted so they took what was given.
Now our boys linger in pools of sorrow with hollow eyes,
waiting for feelings of euphoria and ecstasy.

The History of Samuel’s Mom

It’s Wednesday-Friday and time for another addition of Friday Fictioneers. Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for posting Sarah Potter’s picture and making us all think. Here is my 99-word story.

 

Samuel: Two-years-old
“Come to Mamma, baby boy, walk on over here! You can do it.”
Mamma: pretty and bright-eyed, dark-haired, plump.

Samuel: Eleven-years-old
“Honey, Mamma hasn’t got time right now. Run along.”
Mamma: thin, tired all the time.

Samuel: Eighteen-years-old
“Look, Buster, I’ve had it up to here with you. Get outta’ my face.”
Mamma: gaunt, jittery, hair matted and dull.

Samuel: Twenty-years-old
“Packed your bags. They’re by the back door. Get.”
Mamma: skeletal, dull-eyed, her hair gone limp and whispy as spider webs.

For the last time, Samuel shut the door against the chemical stench of crack cocaine.

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The Pusher

My 93-word contribution to Friday Fictioneers is a bit bleak this a.m. It reminds me of the way our rental house looked after the first renters moved out – I kid you not. Many people thought they were running a meth lab. Instead, one woman had become addicted to pain meds and begun chain smoking in the living room, coating all the interior walls with nicotine. To no avail, her partner tried to cover it up but broke into tears as we walked through the ruins. In the end, we sealed the walls with varnish to get rid of the odor. Enough said. Thanks to Ted Strutz for the photo and to the lovely Rochelle for posting it.

Come to me, run to me
This is my lair
Full of promises, at first
Flowers Sunshine Laughter
and Dreams

Soon I will not need to ask
You will beg to come
The smell of the smoke
The draw of the needle
The hiss of happiness in your veins

Others will join us
Pretty ones, sad ones
Young ones
Monsters

But then we all become monsters
In the end
Do we not?

Our lives rust
and break
Our dreams turn to
nightmares
Our bodies scream
No More!

Still, we come

Who’s to Blame?

Where does the blame lie? Is there blame? Or should what happened to Eliot be chalked up to fate?

One could say, should say, Eliot had it all.  At least one supposed he did when he was three years old, and left a wavy impression of flax-blue eyes and corn silk hair after he’d dashed through a room. He had a father who worked and loved him, a mother who loved him and worked at home. His house was half-finished, but that would be rectified – in time. Truth be told, the half-built house was on the acceptable side of town, not downtown where unemployed loggers stumbled from drink while their wives pumped water out of flooded basements or merely watched the foundations of their homes rot into the ground. Nor was Eliot’s house along the waterfront where deteriorating docks yearned for the ships that no longer swayed while their hulls were loaded with timber. And most certainly the half-built house was not up on the hill, lodged among solid brick homes surrounded by azaleas and rhododendrons, and three cars in every driveway. As we said, Eliot lived in the acceptable part of town.

Maybe his parent’s divorce was to blame. Or his lack of interest in school. Or the uncle who molested him on their “special” camping trips. Perhaps blame lies in Eliot’s association with friends – can we call them friends? – who drank and took drugs and stole in order to enjoy unsavory pastimes. Maybe we should avoid combining enjoy and unsavory pastimes in the same sentence, but, for awhile, Eliot seemed to thrive on everything society frowned upon. In fact our Eliot sprinkled his own rendition of tasteless behavior on top of what he and his pals dished out to the people in town.  “Such as?” you ask. Does stealing computers, microwaves, radios and televisions from his father satisfy or should there be more? There is more.  But you must do your own research to discover everything Eliot got up to during his teenage years.

In the end, fair Eliot has slipped? plunged?  from darling boy, to handsome teen, to sad and broken man.  He has no job. He has no money. Later today our Eliot will have no teeth.  Thank you, Mr. Meth.