Jay C. Mims's Blog, page 4

Therapy

“Is it okay if I smoke in here?” she asked, her ass barely on the couch in the supposed-to-be-inviting office. It was an awkward sort of perch and the sofa was about as comfortable as a toilet seat, but it was her typical way of sitting regardless of where she was or who she was around. “It’s my last one.”

“Of course you can,” the therapist responded, pulling an ash tray from some hiding place or another and setting it on the coffee table between her and her new patient. The doctor then wrote something on her chart, one eye on the clipboard and the other on the patient.

The woman on the couch was only twenty-six, but she could have been mistaken for fourteen easily. It wasn’t that she looked like a teenager, it was that she dressed like one: ripped black jeans, very tight; a pair of leather motorcycle boots, probably steel-toed; a Misfits t-shirt hidden underneath an old leather jacket; it was the quintessential Goth uniform, one the therapist had seen a hundred times on patients young and old. She made a note of the woman’s appearance on the chart as the patient lit her cigarette.

“Tell me why you’re here, Kayla,” the therapist said. It wasn’t a request or a question, but a demand.

“Well,” the patient said between drags, her words intermixed with the smoke, “I’m not really sure where to begin. Hell, I really don’t know why I made this fucking appointment.”

The smoke from her cigarette swirled around her, but didn’t seem to move around the office. It was content to stay just within the patient’s sphere of influence, as if she was in a much smaller space than the office.

“Something led you into this office, something that you don’t want to face on your own. So why don’t you try to tell me what it is?”

“Let’s begin with my students then. They’re fucking awful, only in school because they think it’ll lead to high paying job. And they don’t give a shit about the classes they don’t think they need. ‘Will this be on the test?’ ‘Why do I need to know how to write a paper if I’m a nursing major?’ That kind of crap.”

“So you teach?” the therapist asked, making another note, though she was more than a little surprised.

“Yeah, college level English classes. Bet you didn’t see that coming.”

“Is it your work load that has you so stressed?”

Kayla had wondered since the current semester had started if class was what had caused the slump, the drowning of every problem in alcohol, the increase in nicotine consumption. She had been teaching just fine for two academic years, though. Why would it just now be taking its toll?

“I don’t think so,” she finally answered, putting the still flaming butt out in the ash tray. “I really can’t stand the attitudes of a lot of my students, but teaching isn’t what has me losing what is left of my mind.”

“What do you think has you losing what’s left of your mind?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be asking me shit about my family and friends, what might be going on in my bedroom, or something?”

“Is wasting time on subjects like that going to help you?” Kayla was surprised now, not sure how to respond to a snarky therapist. “Look, you came in here of your own volition with no recorded history of mental illness. Yes, I went ahead and looked at your medical records since you signed that waiver when you made your appointment. I could grill you about your entire life, or you could stop bullshitting me and tell me why you’re here.”

Kayla stared down the older woman, her cold eyes trying to crack the therapist’s thin smile. She shouldn’t be mad—she did make an appointment after all. But that kind of condescension was not what she had signed up for.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think is wrong with me, since you know me so well?”

“Alright,” the therapist began. “I think you’re still trying to hold onto some kind of youthful idea of rebellion even though you are now in fact an adult and you’re having a hard time reconciling the two personae. Are you the professional academic or the young anarchist? As you watch yourself become fully the former, you cling desperately to the latter even though you are convinced that that is no longer who you are. How does that sound?”

Kayla lit up a second cigarette, her hard stare still unwavering.

“Thought the first was your last?” the therapist asked.

“I lied,” Kayla answered, her voice tight and restrained, a wounded animal trapped and looking quietly for an escape. “And that was pretty accurate. I’m watching part of my identity die and I don’t know how to still be me without that part.”

“And that has led to reduced productivity in your creative pursuits and a sense of apathy in your professional capacity?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve come to see a shrink after probably months of self-medication and long nights of gritting your teeth trying to make sense of it all. You’re desperate enough to reach out for help because you can’t find the answers yourself.”

“Are a therapist or a psychic?”

“I’m just very good at my job, Kayla. And something tells me you’re very good at yours.”

“I’d like to think so,” Kayla responded, holding onto her cigarette for dear life. “Lately I’m not so sure.”

“That sense of doubt is probably coming from the same place as your sense of loss in regards to your identity. Tell me, do you dress like your fellow professors?”

“I’m the youngest non-adjunct in the department, and while I dress more professionally than this”—she indicated her clothing—“I still like to dress like me, even at work.”

“What did you write your dissertation on?”

“Lovecraftian weird fiction. And my master’s thesis was on Fight Club.”

“You’re worried that your subversive side is dying because you work in academia while at the same time you are subverting the very field in which you work. What a contradictory line of thinking.”

“Some of those same professors that are now considered conservative were once upon a time radicals and free thinkers. What if I just end up like them in my old age, intellectually stagnant and set in my ways?”

“You inevitably will. Most of us old fuckers end pretty set in our ways. But you aren’t like that right now. Why worry about the future?”

“I’m a teacher. My job revolves around the future of others. Makes sense to worry about my own.”

“Based on what little I know about you, Kayla, I’d say you have very little to worry about on that front.”

“Is that it, then? It’s all up to me to make this shit right again?”

“Were you expecting a handful of magic beans that lead you on a grand adventure of self-discovery or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Mental health isn’t exactly like that. Sorry to disappoint. My recommendation is recognizing that you can in fact be both the academic and the anarchist, that your dual nature can and should exist. You don’t have to get rid of one to be the other. Yes, that comes down to you. But you already knew that.”

“Yeah, I did,” Kayla said, taking the last drag of her cigarette as she stared in the bathroom mirror, her reflection’s thin smile growing fuller as she realized she was going to be okay.

Marla

Lewisville might be considered a town, but it’s nothing more than a suburb, just a parasite on the much larger Dallas. It’s where I was raised, where I grew up, where I still happen to live. I tried escaping a number of times, but I’m still here, though I don’t know for how much longer. My hometown is more than the place that I cut my teeth on life. It is where I learned what death is.

It is where we found Marla.

She was eating french fries at College and Abilene, a semi-busy intersection about a block from our house. You could tell she had lived on the streets for awhile: scars dotted her rump, no doubt from running from larger animals; her ribs poked out from under her black coat; and she refused to come when we pulled the car over. It took all five of us nearly two hours to catch her.

I was seventeen on that Saturday in the middle of October when we plopped this underweight thing into our backyard. I’ll never forget that night. I had a date with this cute guy from the swim team, my first of my senior year. So many years later, I can’t even remember his name. All that has stayed with me is my little sister, Sara, wrapping her arms around this mutt in the backyard, looking up at my mom.

“Can we call her Marla?” she had asked in a whisper.

Our family became six with that simple question, mom not able to deny Sara a companion. My sister had been going through a rough bout of depression that year, and those were the first words she had spoken to my mother in a month.

Marla wasn’t like any dog we had ever owned. She was wild and uncoordinated, always searching for some kind of escape route everywhere she went. While all of our other pets had been rescues as well, she was the only one to retain any sort of independence. Even now, with so many years between that first night and now, she would still run if given the chance.

Sara and I joked the first few weeks that we had her that she reminded us of the husky from the beginning of John Carpenter’s The Thing. We expected tentacles to sprout from her back at any moment to drag us into her suddenly open stomach to be devoured and absorbed. The jokes got so bad that I didn’t like sleeping with Marla and would put her in Sara’s room at night. What can I say, we were kids with active imaginations, even as teenagers.

Two years went by, and we all settled into a healthy rhythm. I was in college at UNT in Denton while still living at home. Matt, my older brother, had just finished his Master’s degree in Library Science and had a job lined up in College Station. Sara had joined the Marine Corps a year prior. My mother and father were gracefully entering their fifties. And Marla laid around the house, begged for table scraps, and tried to escape.

Since Sara had left, she had taken a shine to Matt, spending her days and nights in his room. He had spent a few months unemployed after graduating from TWU, but had been offered the job at Texas A&M almost immediately after interviewing. We were all so proud of him. He didn’t tell anybody that the job was little more than minimum wage, though, and we didn’t find out until after he got sick.

A week before we were supposed to move him down to College Station, he got sick, hospital kind of sick. I helped my dad take him to the hospital. If it hadn’t been so frightening, I would have thought it looked funny, my father carrying this grown-ass man up the hospital steps. My mom arrived crying and we waited together outside of the emergency room.

Matt’s liver and kidneys had completely shut down and the doctors were doing everything they could get the organs working again. They even tested me to see if I was a match if he needed an organ transplant. We stayed at the hospital until my father couldn’t stand he was so exhausted. I drove him home, meeting my mother there. Marla was waiting for us in the kitchen.

She had this happy dance when anyone would come home where she would bounce on her hind legs and throw her head back. Since she looked like a shrunken down Doberman, it was kind of adorable. That night, though, with Matt still in the hospital it wasn’t.

We sat down at the kitchen table, my parents finally telling me what had happened. Matt had overdosed on prescription painkillers. My mom had found a bag full of vicodin and percocet under his sink. Nobody slept that night or said anything in the morning. The doctors didn’t expect Matt to recover. He didn’t.

Marla stopped trying to escape after we buried Matt.

I moved out a year after Matt died. Unable to find real work, I started full time at Recycled Books and found myself a little efficiency apartment in Denton. Since I was only twenty minutes from home, I still went to see mom and dad and Marla every weekend. She had decided dad was her new person since Matt was gone and Sara was still a Marine.

She liked to lie between his legs while he rested in his recliner. I liked to go and have dinner at their house on Friday nights. My father and I would watch crappy sci-fi movies after we ate, my mom going down the hallway to her room. Marla would nestle into dad’s legs, flopping over onto her back, sticking all her paws straight up into the air. She would stay just like that until about nine o’clock. Then she would head down the hallway to lay with mom.

Marla would jump out of the chair and trot to the entrance of the hall. She always stopped, turning her head to look back at us, before settling her brown eyes on my dad. Still staring, she’d sigh before turning away and waddling down the hall.

There was something in that look, in those eyes, that was unsettling. It was like Marla was trying to figure you out, trying to understand what you are by just staring. All the jokes Sara and I told about her being the Thing came back, except it was no longer funny anymore. I was grateful that I no longer lived there.

Dad wasn’t feeling well one Friday night, about nine months after I had moved out. I left right after dinner, because both he and mom had gone straight to bed, Marla in tow behind the two of them. I didn’t get the call until six the following night. They hadn’t found his truck until then.

“Ms. Miles?” The strange male voice asked when I answered the phone. “Elizabeth Miles?”

“Yes?” I had responded, not thinking anything other than it was nice to hear an actual human from a telemarketing call.

“Can you please come to the Lewisville Police Station as soon as possible? It’s about your parents.”

I arrived at the station fifteen minutes later, speeding down 35. They were both dead, mom and dad. He had tried to swallow a bottle of antidepressants. She had tried to stop him. Whatever kind of fight they had went from their bathroom into the driveway, my dad behind the wheel of the truck, my mom standing in front of the grill. He ran her down, before driving to a warehouse on Edmonds and overdosing, just like Matt had.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I remember the officer saying after explaining what had happened to my parents. I just drove to their house, knowing I would rather be alone there than at my apartment.

Marla greeted me at the door.

Hindsight is 20/20, and as I write this, I know I should have killed that little dog then and there. But it didn’t make sense then, still doesn’t make sense. In my grief that night, I cuddled with Marla while I cried, neither of us getting any sleep.

I was able to get a hold of Sara the next day, before she left on a ten day long training mission. Because of the circumstances, she was able to get two weeks emergency leave and headed straight back to Lewisville. She arrived Monday and we buried our mom and dad next to Matt that Friday. Sara cried without acknowledging the tears and I stood dry-eyed through the ceremony.

The next week was spent with attorneys regarding our inheritance. We sold the cars to dealerships immediately. The house couldn’t be sold in that time, so Sara made the choice to take a less than honorable discharge and move in. I would have had it not been for my year lease.

“As soon as your lease is up, sis, you’ll move in and we’ll start over,” she had said, trying to be cheerful in the midst of everything. She was holding Marla while she spoke, gently rocking the old dog.

Sara made it two months in that house with Marla, before putting the business end of a pistol between her teeth and pulling the trigger. She did it on a Friday afternoon, knowing I’d be there that weekend to help take care of things.

I found her body in dad’s old recliner, Marla sitting between her legs.

There isn’t much else to say. I buried my little sister next to my older brother and parents. I walked away from the house and went back to my apartment in Denton, leaving the dog behind. I had no logical reason to think Marla was to blame, but I’d just put the last of my family in the dirt and needed something to blame. When it came time to renew my lease, I declined choosing to move back home, thinking I’d have to bury a dog when I got there.

Marla was waiting for me when I opened the door, her brown eyes fixed on me as soon as I walked through the door.

I’ve been here a month and Marla hasn’t left my side. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t do this anymore. Unlike the others, I felt the need to say something before the end, though. I opened the front door, hoping Marla would just run away. She’s sitting on the bed watching me type this, every now and then moving her gaze to Sara’s pistol resting next to my laptop. Maybe she’ll run when it’s done.

Catching Up

The apartment building was squat and brown, tucked neatly behind a fourteen story monstrosity at the edge of Anderson State University. It seemed quiet from the outside, quaint in a hipster kind of way, though it was probably dirt cheap. Melissa had wondered what kind of place he would live in ever since he had escaped his parents’ house; staring at the small building, with its red doors and chipped stair-railing paint, she knew this was exactly where he would have ended up.

December air bit at her feet as she looked at the door with the number 2 nailed to it. The night was cold, or at least as cold as North Texas can get, and the wind had picked up again, bringing moisture with it. Snow wouldn’t be falling any time soon, but ice was likely to invade most streets in the Metroplex. Icy roads were as common place in the winter as triple digit temperatures in the summer, and Texans had no real idea of how to cope with either. Removing her gaze from his door, Melissa stared down at her feet, knowing that flip flops hadn’t been an ideal choice given the near frozen wind.

Come outside. Just two words, a command sent as a text. She hadn’t told him to come outside in literal years, but she couldn’t recall just how many. It had to have been at least three since the last time because he had still lived at home. Part of her worried that he wouldn’t open the door, that he was already asleep, or that he was ignoring her again. Still, she danced from foot to foot watching his apartment. She had to suffocate her smile when she saw the door open.

From her leaning perch on the back bumper of her car, he looked much the same as he always had as he stepped out into the early morning chill: short black hair, bright green eyes, broad shoulders. Even though they didn’t exactly talk anymore, she knew he had taken up bodybuilding as a hobby and it showed, the black and white button up he was wearing straining itself to contain his body. She thought he looked good, until he got closer. Exhaustion painted an ugly picture on his face, and it wasn’t just the dark bags under his eyes. His cheekbones were too defined and the fire usually present in his eyes was dim at best. He didn’t carry himself with the same swagger she remembered and his large arms hung loosely at his sides. Muscle doesn’t look very sexy without confidence backing it up.

“Surprise, kid!” Melissa announced when he had crossed the expanse of the parking lot to stand in front of her, throwing her arms up in greeting, pretending he didn’t look as bad as he did.

“How did you get this address?” he asked in reply, the corners of his mouth barely stretching into a smile, though it was hard for her to tell under the month-old beard taking up residence on the lower half of his face.

“Aren’t you just fucking stoked that I did?”

“How did you get my address?” he repeated, the beginnings of the smile gone. Melissa sighed.

“Your mother told me where you live. She loves me, you know.”

“Thanks, mom,” he said wryly, though there was little warmth in his sarcasm. He leaned against the trunk of her car, staring at his own apartment with her. “It’s two in the morning, Mel. What are you doing here?”

“We talked about hanging out when I was back in town,” she answered, digging her fingers into his side. He didn’t move or make a sound, so she gave up on the tickle attempt.

“Yeah, in August. Have we spoken again since then?”

No, they hadn’t. Melissa didn’t have a snarky answer to that, or a real one for that matter. She had sent a few drunk text his way over the last few months, texts too flirtatious in his mind, texts he hadn’t responded to. That was it though.

“Well, you know me, Chance. I do stupid shit in the wee hours of the morning, like come visit you,” she finally said, her words coming out in a puff of visible breath. It was his turn to sigh now.

“Do you want to come inside?” he asked. “You did drive all this way.”

“Of course I do,” Melissa answered immediately, her smile back and her blue eyes shining. That smile was contagious, and Chance didn’t fight it, just shook his head. “I’m too good at convincing you of things.”

“You just keep telling yourself that and maybe one day it will come true,” he said, opening that red door and leading her inside.

It was a small two bedroom apartment, what she had been expecting. What she wasn’t expecting were all the boxes. The only things not packed away were two couches, one off-white leather, the other some strange pattern likely out of the 70’s; a black kitchen table with two high backed chairs; and a TV almost too large for the wall it was settled against and the metal stand upon which it rested. There were boxes on the table, boxes in front of the TV, boxes next to each couch., boxes fucking everywhere.

“How much shit do you own, man!?” she asked, her eyes surveying all of the cardboard and packing tape. He took in his place too, laughing as he did.

“Sorry about all the clutter. Moving the beginning of January. I got me a house, Mel.”

“Fuck! A house!? With what money?”

“My new job pays enough for me to afford a house. But I wanted to wait until my lease was up here.”

“New job?” Melissa asked

“I told you about it in August!” Chance answered, frustration marring his smile. “The one with Homeland Security?”

“Right!” she responded, though she did remember that conversation. It was the same conversation that they agreed to hang out. Her selective memory just cut out the part about the job. “Well congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he said, moving into the kitchen. He pulled a half empty bottle of whiskey out of a cabinet. “Do you want a drink?”

“God, yes.”

He poured two fingers into a glass and four into another before replacing the bottle in its cabinet. With both glasses in hand, he meandered his way through the maze of boxes and settled into the off-white couch, giving Melissa the two fingers. She sat down on the couch time forgot, accepting the glass with less liquor without a word.

“Cheers,” he said before taking a healthy sip. She followed suit, though she wasn’t sure what she was drinking to.

“Are you still painting?” she asked after an awkward minute of silent drinking. Her glass was empty and he was still sipping on his.

“Of course I am. What kind of question is that, Mel?”

“I just wanted to make sure.”

“I actually had some of my stuff shown in a local gallery in October. It was a good moment.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me!? That’s awesome, dude!”

Melissa knew about the gallery showing, had seen it on social media, but she didn’t want to let Chance know that. He probably knew that she knew about it anyway.

“As I’ve told you before, you aren’t exactly on my need-to-know list. We just aren’t that close anymore.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, wishing there was still some whiskey in her glass.

“Hey, do you remember the first time we got high together?” he asked before she could request more alcohol. “You accused me and Ryan of already being stoned because it was so dank you could smell it on us when we got to the door.”

“Oh my god, yes! Ryan went completely catatonic and Baily spent an hour in the bathroom trying not to throw up! And you just got really giggly.”

One good memory was all it ever took to get them to relive the glory days of high school and early adulthood. Story after story came out of their mouths: the time Chance got so drunk he threw up on the bar; the time Melissa crashed her car into his neighbor’s fence; the time they dropped acid together and made the mistake of watching Evil Dead. He got up to refill their glasses once as they ran down memory lane, but they never strayed away from the past and into the present. There was something he wasn’t telling her, something he was keeping to himself, something weighing heavily on his mind. She could tell. She had always been able to tell.

The sound of the bedroom door opening halted their conversation, and they both looked in that direction. Chance wasn’t all surprised to see a beautiful woman standing in the doorway, her red hair disheveled from sleep, her brown eyes barely even open. Melissa was though, not sure who the woman wearing the grey sweats and black hoodie was. He hadn’t mentioned being with anybody, in August or tonight.

“Where was my invitation to the party?” she asked, her voice having that adorable sing-song quality of someone who had just woken up. She seemed to glide as she made her way to the leather couch, Chance scooting over to provide her room.

“I’m sorry that we woke you,” he said as she settled in, resting her head on his shoulder. It was an intimate gesture, one that answered Melissa’s questions about who this person was. “Melissa, this is Amber. Amber, Melissa.”

“Melissa,” Amber said, shaking the other woman’s hand. “You’ve talked about her before.”

“I have. She was my best friend in high school and the first girl I fell in love with.”

“You used the phrase ripped your heart out I think.”

Melissa snorted at that, though he had said as much to her before. Chance just shook his head again.

“And I then said that would require me to have a heart,” Chance explained, looking down at the nearly asleep Amber. She sat back up and grabbed his left hand, placing it on her stomach.

“You have a heart, and a big one. This is proof of that.”

Chance’s smile wasn’t rueful or sarcastic, but full and genuine, at her proclamation. He pulled her into him, settling his arm around her.

“You aren’t supposed to be drinking,” Amber whispered, indicating the whiskey still sitting in his glass.

“It’s my one drink this week,” he explained. “Besides the holidays, stress me out. And Mel showed up out of the blue. Seemed the perfect excuse to have a drink.”

“Next you’ll tell me you smoked a cigarette,” Amber said, her voice finally sounding like it was awake. She sat up and pinned him to his seat with her stare. “We agreed: since I can’t drink, you won’t drink. Now, I’m going to back bed. Melissa, it was nice to meet you.”

Amber kissed Chance on the cheek, a small peck before going back into the darkness of the bedroom. She shut the door behind her. Chance drained his glass.

“I probably know the answer to this question, but why can’t she drink?”

“Because she’s pregnant, Mel,” Chance sighed, staring into his empty glass. “I’m going to be a dad in a few months.”

“What?” Melissa asked after the shock wore off. “How?”

“It’s a long story that I don’t really want to get into right now.”

“You weren’t even seeing anyone last time we talked. Now you’re going to be a father? You’ve never wanted kids.”

“Like I said, it’s a long story. Let’s leave it at that.”

Chance stood up and took both glasses to the kitchen, rinsing them out before placing them on the rack to dry. At least his inability to do dishes properly hadn’t changed. He motioned to the door, and Melissa knew that her welcome had worn out. Hell, her welcome had worn out literal years ago. What other important details about his life was he keeping from her?

“It was good seeing you,” he said just outside the door. “Catching up was fun.”

“Yeah,” was all she said before turning around to walk to her car. He shut the door behind her, and she knew that catching up was all they would ever do. Pulling out of the parking lot, it felt like that red door had been slammed in her face instead of gently closed at her back. It would likely never be opened again.

Voyeurs

The laundromat is where I do most of my people watching. If you asked, I couldn’t give you a good reason why that it is. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m here at least once a week, or that I’m never preoccupied with other things when I am. Or maybe the laundromat is just full of interesting people; I don’t know.

There was this one time a few months back that I’ll never forget. I was minding my own business, headphones in, eyes devouring the words of Tom McCarthy when a little girl walked up and sat down next to me. Now, if you’ve never actually seen me, I’m not the friendliest looking person. My resting asshole face is a marvel to behold and at the end of a typical day my jaw is sore and stiff from scowling so much. I was in a wife beater that day, so all of the ink and muscles were on display, and my breath had that distinct quality that only comes from drinking too much whiskey the night before. I wasn’t even a social caterpillar that day.

None of these things bothered this little girl. She just crawled into the seat next to me and asked what I was reading. I showed her the cover, though she was too young to understand what the words “satin” and “island” looked like yet.

“Does it have pictures?” I remember her asking.

Despite the hangover, I managed a smile through my too-thick beard.

“No, it doesn’t have pictures.”

“Well then it doesn’t sound like a very good book.”

Before I could respond with a well thought out response that would in no way have been sarcastic about how books without pictures can be quite good, she reached into the front pocket of her dress and produced a handful of green Skittles. Only green, I remember distinctly, as if she had thrown away all other flavors (or maybe eaten all the others and saved the green ones for last). She popped at least ten into her mouth.

“Want some Skittles?” she asked, offering her hand up to me like a physician offering pills. Maybe my hangover was so obvious that a little girl felt the need to cure me with sugar. I politely declined and she shrugged before throwing what was left in her hand into her mouth.

Her mother came up then, apologizing profusely, as if her daughter’s behavior was somehow intrusive or insulting. Maybe she was worried that a tattooed white man would be bothered by a little black girl offering Skittles; hell, maybe a tattooed white man had been bothered before. Or maybe the daughter had a tendency to run off quietly, the way most children have a tendency of doing.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I answered, smiling again, only slightly self-conscious about my yellow teeth. The little girl smiled up at me, a sneaky kind of smile, like she knew she wasn’t supposed to wander away from her mother. I stuck my tongue out at her and she responded in kind before taking her mother’s hand and walking away.

I look for that little girl every time I walk into the laundromat.

We’re all voyeurs; we all people watch. I often wonder about what strangers think when they see me, what kind of judgments they make. Am I just the tattooed white man with headphones in whose blue eyes peak out over the top of the Raymond Carver book? Am I scary because of the muscles and ink? Am I just another face in the endless sea of humanity?

It doesn’t really matter what strangers see, because they will never say anything. We live in a world where observation is usually the final step in interaction. We watch and witness but never engage. That little girl did, though, came up and sat next to someone she had never met and would likely never see again. She offered her precious Skittles to a person who looked nothing like her.

There a few people in the laundromat with me tonight: an elderly woman folding her undergarments; a pair of men watching the telenovela on the screen; and a frazzled mother with her two little girls. I’ll likely never see these people again and can’t even begin to figure out who they actually are any more than they can decipher me. But tonight we will occupy the same space for the same purpose.

I like to people watch, especially at the laundromat. As I step outside for a cigarette, I can feel eyes on me. What do they see?

Life Support

“Does anyone have any questions? Anything else to add?” Elaine asked, though the question was rhetorical. The marketing manager had smoker’s teeth, the kind that weren’t quite yellow but definitely weren’t white, and a sickly sweet smile that April had never been able to trust “Matt? April?”

“That about covers it,” Matt answered, making his way from the conference table and back to his office. He didn’t want to be around his boss any more than he already had today.

April just shook her head, the red fohawk bouncing from the movement. She had plenty she actually wanted to say, wanted to tell Elaine to go choke on a Costco size bag of dicks, that this campaign was fucking stupid and wouldn’t lead to an increase in subscribers. But she wanted to keep her job more, and the mouthful of blood kept her from saying anything at all.

She bypassed her cubicle after the meeting, bee lined straight for the bathroom. Thank god it was empty; she could be alone for a minute. April emptied her mouth into the sink, the crimson splashing all over the porcelain bowl like a spilled bottle of cabernet sauvignon. It only took a minute and some soapy water to clean the sink, but this was getting old. She was so sick of spitting up blood, so tired of biting her tongue. All she had really wanted to do for the last several weeks was scream.

It wasn’t just the marketing manager’s bullshit that had her sinking her teeth into her strongest muscle. It was her druggie roommate who spouted off incoherent opinions like they were fact almost every day; it was her mostly idiot friends who had stagnated at the emotional age of eighteen and refused to catch up with her; it was the dudes who couldn’t see past her tits, making dating an utter nightmare. She had kept quiet for so long, had filled her mouth with blood so often, that she didn’t know how to stop.

Her reflection watched her out of grey eyes, eyes bloodshot from sleep deprivation. She wasn’t sleeping again, just lying in bed night after night and staring up at the popcorned ceiling, the whooshing sound of her fan the soundtrack of her insomnia. The desire to crack the mirror under the weight of her fist was only tempered by her need to remain employed and the bandages encasing her knuckles. She had already smashed the bathroom mirror at home that morning.

“What the fuck!?” her roommate had yelled after the crash and tinkling of glass.

“Just blowing off steam,” April had responded before storming out of the apartment, though she knew it was more than that. The anger she refused to let have a voice was finding other ways of escaping.

Slinking back to her desk, April felt a heaviness in her chest, the kind of weight she usually felt after chain smoking. It wasn’t her tar-lined lungs, though; it was her heart. Maybe this was a heart attack and she’d just keel over and die. The thought of Elaine having to explain the death of a thirty year old in her office brought a small smile to April’s lips. The bitch would probably have to go to the police station to answer questions and everything.

Sadly, it wasn’t cardiac arrest, nor was it even physical pain. She knew it was just adulthood. It had plagued her for years, but over the last few weeks she knew it had finally settled well into her chest, was killing off any childish wonderment she had held onto. Tommy’s words from a few days ago ran through her head again. Her tattoo artist and sometime lover had dropped by over the weekend with a new design for her ribcage and a bag of pot, an early birthday present. It had been a good night.

“Maybe Ally Sheedy had it right and our hearts die when we get old,” Tommy had said to her that night, the two of them naked under the covers and sharing a joint. “Maybe there’s just no avoiding the fact that the person we thought we’d be as kids will die long before our bodies do. Maybe the life expectancy of the human soul is just less than that of the body.”

It was a really depressing thought, but most of Tommy’s thoughts were really depressing, the kind of thoughts that made you rethink almost everything about your existence. It was one of the reasons she liked him. Kinda. Taking the joint from his fingers, April had mulled over his words while inhaling.

“You know, that line is one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to be dead by the age of thirty,” she had responded, blowing the pot smoke into his face. He breathed deeply through his nose, a smirk developing on his thin lips.

“Your thirtieth birthday is just around the corner,” Tommy had reminded her, though how he knew when her birthday was she didn’t know. “Are you really ready to die?”

Sitting there at her desk on a cloudy Tuesday morning, April knew the answer, had known it Saturday when he had asked.

“No,” she whispered to her computer screen, knowing that was a cowardly answer. Her heart was dying; she could feel it. Why shouldn’t her body join it?

Tommy had rolled over that night, propping himself up on his elbow, stared at her hiding under the covers. She had taken another hit before handing the joint back to him.

“Maybe we can prolong it,” he had responded, his green eyes never once leaving hers as he inhaled. “Like life support for someone in the ICU. Yeah, we’re probably going to die soon, but right now the medicine has stabilized us. Make sense?”

April had understood what he meant, knew that his pessimism was always somehow infected with positivity.

“Like the things we do for enjoyment sustain the dreams?”

“Not just what we enjoy. What’s the one thing that seems to give you purpose, that gives the discordance of reality some semblance of sense? What are you passionate about, April?”

“What are you passionate about?” she had asked, not wanting to admit that her guitar was buried under years of dust, that she hadn’t written a song in so long she was afraid that her fingers would bleed like she had just started playing again the next time her fingers touched the fret board.

“Tattooing,” he had responded, rolling back over, not even pushing her about not answering. “Turning the blank canvas of human skin into art worthy of a museum is my life support.”

Tommy was a great artist, so she forgave his arrogant sounding explanation. But his certainty that inking random strangers was all he needed to sustain himself sounded too simple. He always seemed so happy, though, even for all his nihilist talk.

“April?” Matt asked. “April?”

“What? Yeah?”

“Distracted there?”

“It’s my birthday. Cut me some slack.”

Matt laughed at that, a real sounding laugh, not the fake shit that comes out of most people’s mouths.

“I need these done by the end of the day,” he said, dropping a stack of files on her desk. Editing mediocre headlines was the last thing she really wanted to do, but unemployment wasn’t exactly an option. “And happy birthday.”

Happy birthday? What is so happy about spending the thirtieth anniversary of one’s birth stuck at work where you can literally feel everything you ever wanted out of life dying? Those were the words she wanted to say, the sentiments she wanted to share with her boss. He had already turned away, was already walking back to his office. Her chest throbbed, and she knew that if she didn’t fucking say something right then, she probably never would.

“Matt!” she called, standing up and throwing shit back in her bag, the words tumbling out of her mouth less hostile than she expected them to be. “I’m actually taking the rest of the day off. You only turn thirty once, right? I’ll get to these first thing in the morning, yeah?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” her boss said. “Enjoy your day!”

April walked out of the building, knowing that Tommy would be applauding her right now if he could see her. She hated that that thought made her smile, but she more than kinda liked the tattoo artist. Reaching her motorcycle in the parking lot, she pulled out her phone.

“It’s pretty early for a phone call,” Tommy said when he answered. Anything before three in the afternoon was early to him.

“Playing guitar,” April said. “My life support is playing guitar.”

“I didn’t know you played.”

“Come over,” she responded. “I want to play for you. And for me. And I don’t want to ever stop playing.”

“I’ll bring breakfast,” Tommy answered, even though it was closer to lunch time, before hanging up.

April put her phone away and hopped on her bike, her fingers itching for the strings she should have never stopped touching. Her chest wasn’t hurting as she rode out of the parking lot.

A Dialogue Between a Man and a Woman

“Is there a problem here?” Morgan asked, regretting almost instantly opening his big mouth. It always had a way of getting him to trouble, even though he had the muscle to back up any word he might say. He was built like an ex-con, which made sense given that he just made parole. Stepping into a possible fight was not how we wanted to spend his first Friday night on the outside. “Because I heard the lady say to leave her alone.”

There were four of them in front of him, though he only really saw the white boy leading the pack. He turned when he heard Morgan speak, eyeing the man who dared challenge him. Since Morgan stood a good seven inches taller than the other man, it was a very quick size up. He was dressed like a typical frat boy: polo shirt, khaki shorts, loafers. He even had one of those hipster fad haircuts, definitely not the kind of dude you would expect to see at Hooligans. The other three might have looked similar, but they were just background dancers to Morgan; the douche bag still eyeing him was clearly the leader.

And then there was the girl, though with that clenched jaw and eyes throwing daggers at the four dudes calling her a girl would probably get him socked in the mouth. She had on black jeans and a tank top with green highlights in her black hair; a dull green and grey octopus looking monstrosity was inked on her left arm, probably an homage to Lovecraft. She was thin and lithe, a gymnast or maybe a martial artist. Her arms looked like corded steel, the kind of arms Morgan remembered packing a hell of a punch, and her feet were shoulder width apart. She was ready to draw blood.

“No problem,” the white boy said, flashing Morgan an oily smile. “Why don’t you just enjoy your drink, chief?”

The frat guy turned back around, his attention again focused on the furious woman who was probably less than two words from kneeing him in the balls. While he wouldn’t mind seeing that outcome, Morgan opened his mouth a second time instead.

“You sure there, white boy? Because it sure seems like she isn’t remotely interested in you.”

The hipster didn’t just turn around to face Morgan, but stormed away from the bar to level a finger at the larger man.

“Who the fuck you calling white boy?!” he demanded. Morgan just stared down.

“Seemed pretty obvious I was calling you that. Now why don’t you and the rest of the douche brigade get out of here before she calls the cops. A precious, little thing like you wouldn’t last very long in jail.”

Before the leader of the frat guys could respond, Morgan crossed his arms in front of his chest, two smoky tree trunks, appendages bigger than most dudes’ thighs. The white boy may not have been intimidated by the barbed wire of the woman he was harassing, but seeing Morgan’s giant arms made him choke on whatever words he wanted to throw. He and his crew quickly fled, their tails between their legs. Morgan watched them with smug satisfaction as they did.

“Who the fuck do you think you are!?” the woman demanded, punching him hard in the arm. “I didn’t ask you to come to my rescue!”

“Excuse me for trying to help,” Morgan responded more sarcastically than he meant to, pushing past her to get to the bar. There were only a few other people seated on barstools, so the bartender was right there when he approached. “Glenlivet. Two fingers. Neat.”

“Did I ask for your help? Did it look like I needed help!?” she was near-yelling behind him, all the fury she didn’t get to let loose on the four douches now reserved solely for him.

“And one of whatever the lady is drinking,” Morgan asked of the bartender when he got his Scotch.

“I do not want a drink from some guy who thinks I am just a damsel in distress in need of rescuing!”

“Oh yeah?” Morgan asked, turning away from the bar when he had gotten her beer. “Here I was just hoping having a drink would get you to shut up.” He pressed the Shiner into her hands before walking away. She followed him all the way to the booth near Hooligans’ entrance. The regret of opening his mouth when he shouldn’t have grew with every word she said.

“You didn’t need to step in. I was handling myself just fine.”

“I’m aware. You could have taken the fuck no problem. But he had three friends backing him up and I don’t care how strong you might be, those are odds you shouldn’t play with. Hell, I can bench press a car and I don’t like those numbers.”

“You had no right. That’s the problem with men!” she said as she slid into the booth. “You think a woman needs your protection or some shit.”

“Lady, you’re making a lot of assumptions about someone you have never even met before. So please continue telling me what’s wrong with my gender. I’ll be sure to let the other guys know at our next fucking meeting!

“There was four of them and one of you. And the lead douche was dressed in the ‘my-daddy-will-sue-you’ uniform. I apologize for opening my big mouth. Won’t happen again.”

“What the hell does it matter how many there were?” she asked, taking a swig of her beer. “It was still a situation you shouldn’t have butted into.”

“And how could I have lived with myself if tomorrow on the news there was a story about some goth girl getting sexually assaulted after beating the shit out of some douche?”

Morgan’s brown eyes stared hard into her blue, until she had to look down, both of her hands wrapped around her Shiner.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong with men? I’ve seen what’s wrong with men! Try spending six years locked up with em. Now how about I tell you what’s wrong with women. I’m supposed to rake other guys over the coals for being misogynistic assholes, but when I do that I get berated for being patronizing. I call bullshit on that.”

Morgan took a sip of his Scotch, trying and failing to not let his lips curl into a snarl. One week out and he’s already threatened a white man and pissed off a white woman. Downing the rest of the glass like a savage—he had always believed that Scotch should be savored, not shot—he let out a deep sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at the empty glass. “I had no right to step into a situation you clearly had handled. And I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I’m Morgan, by the way.”

“Laney,” she responded, holding one of her hands out to him. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I was ready to bash that fucker’s head in, though. I’m so tired of guys thinking women should worship the ground they walk on.”

“Amen to that,” Morgan answered. “It’s nice to meet you, Laney. And I’m sorry on behalf of my gender. Guys do really suck.”

“So you just got out of jail?” Laney asked, finishing her beer.

“Prison. And I just got parole, yeah.”

“Can I ask what for?”

“Assault. I beat some rednecks nearly to death seven years ago.”

“Were they racist?” Morgan had to laugh at that. Everyone always assumed race had something to do with it.

“No. It wasn’t a racial thing. My brother goes and gets his leg blown off in Iraq and too many people want to disregard his sacrifice simply because he’s gay. So I let my fists finish what those two assholes started with their mouths.”

“I’m sorry,” Laney replied, looking down again.

“Don’t be. It’s all in the past now,” Morgan said, not really wanting to talk about it. “Why did you react with such violence earlier? Yeah, they were rude and obnoxious, but your response was almost primal.”

“My sister. She was raped three years ago and the guy walked. No jail time, no probation, no nothing. I always feel the need to defend myself now.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgan said, not sure what else he could say.

“Don’t be,” she answered. “Like you said, it’s in the past.”

“If I still had a drink, I’d drink to your sister.”

“If I still had one, I’d drink to your brother.”

They just sat there, staring down at the table, unsure of what else to say. Neither wanted to admit they were embarrassed by their responses. After several awkward seconds of silence, Laney got up to leave, thanking Morgan for the beer. He responded with a no problem. I’d like to tell you that they became friends, that they talked about gender issues on the regular, but that would be a lie. They never saw each other again after that Friday, though neither of them forgot the incident that led to their conversation.

Entropy

She had dreamt of funerals before, danced through rows of gravestones concocted by her subconscious at least a dozen times, but these dreams had never actually done the reality justice. And yes, she had attended a few over the years; she had been in this very cemetery before, laying her sister to rest. Something about this one just felt off, though. Maybe it was standing next to that four year old headstone, or the fact that she was burying her father today, or maybe it had to do with those five grams of shrooms she had ingested two hours ago. Whatever it was, she no longer wanted to be here.

Not that she had wanted to attend in the first place. Her sister’s death had been hard enough, followed too closely by her mother’s. Placing her father next to the two of them, she couldn’t help but acknowledge that she was alone. That feeling of off-ness dove deeper the more she stared at the headstone.

Its death date was wrong. Instead of reading “7/27/2016” the way it should, “11/17/2014” was inscribed on the gravestone. Cocking her head to the side, she studied the granite, trying to remember where she had seen that date before. She kept getting distracted by the billowing mist swirling about the ground. It was a clichéd image, the kind seen in B horror movies, of fog blowing in on a graveyard. When thunder cracked behind her, what was left of the rational side of brain recognized the hallucination for what it was.

“It’s the day mom died,” a voice said from behind her, a voice she hadn’t heard in four years, a voice that killed any lingering sobriety. Even though she knew she was hallucinating, hearing her sister speak sent a genuine tremor up her spine. “How ya been, Jawbone?”

“Whit-Whitney?” Samantha asked, turning around slowly to stare at what was clearly a ghost. She had never cared for that stupid nickname, but it was something only her sister would have ever called her.

“More or less,” the ghost of Whitney responded, staring back at the frightened and tripping girl.

“Why is mom’s death date on dad’s tombstone?” Sam’s voice was shaking and tears had begun their descent down her cheeks, but for the moment she had enough control to ask.

“Because that was when he actually died.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” She raked her fingers through her brunette hair, her shroom-inebriated mind taking longer to fully grasp what her dead sister was saying. “Wait…you don’t mean…?”

“That dad literally stopped living in any meaningful sense of the word when mom died? That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“H-How-How is that possible?”

“Look at my headstone,” Whitney answered, ignoring the question entirely. So Samantha looked.

The headstone should have read “04/08/1986 – 05/07/2012”. Whitney’s life was reduced to nothing more than a dash between birth and death dates, as if everything that a person was and had been could be reduced to a placeholder. Just like Sam’s father, though, the death date was wrong. It instead read “06/12/2009”.

“You stopped living three years before you…?” Samantha refused to finish that thought, refused to accept what had happened to her sister, even standing in front of her ghost.

“Before I overdosed?” Whitney had no such compunctions about her death. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“That’s the day you left.”

The accusation wasn’t spoken in Whitney’s voice, nor was it much of an accusation. It sounded like just a statement of fact to Samantha, like it made perfect sense that her leaving would be the catalyst that led to that fatal OD. She had thought it often enough, so why not let it actually be true.

“I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, looking down at the fresh dirt on her father’s grave. “I’m so sorry.”

“You literally have nothing to apologize for,” Whitney responded again in her voice, staring down at her kneeling sister. She didn’t blink until Sam finally looked back up, her green eyes meeting the milky whites of the ghost. “Come on, Jawbone. There is something I want to show you.”

Whitney held out her hand, pulling Sam to her feet, before leading her off into the growing mist. Samantha couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her, so she followed her dead sister with a growing sense of anxiety, the kind that would build slowly until it had ensnared her ribcage. She would need her medication, probably needed it now. Mixing substances was something that normally didn’t faze her at all, but she wasn’t sure she even had her scripts on her; they were probably still in the car.

“It’s not much further,” Whitney promised, pulling Sam’s hand and mind closer to whatever their destination was. “Here we are.”

They had darted in and out of the rows of headstones, had moved so far into the fog, and walked for god knows how long. Samantha couldn’t be sure where they actually were. So she looked at the gravestone in front of her, the one with her name on it. Its death date indicated she had died in September of 1995.

“What is this?!” she demanded, not taking her eyes off the stone.

“Here lies Squidward’s hope and dreams,” Whitney responded, though in that deadpan that wasn’t really her voice again. “Look at the next one.”

Sam looked through her tears and fear at the next headstone in line. It also had her name on it, though this one claimed she had died in 1998. She moved on, the next one saying she had passed in 2002. After the fourth or fifth headstone (she couldn’t really be sure which), she looked to her right, finally noticing the endless row of gravestones. Was each one hers?

“You’ve died a lot in your lifetime,” Whitney’s ghost said, breaking the tense silence. “The first time, you were four. You decided you no longer wanted to dance, that ballet wasn’t for you. You weren’t too broken up about it.

“Or there was your death at the age of seventeen, the first time you had your heart broken. Would it make you feel better to know that that asshole shot himself three years ago?

“You died your last semester of college, your fear of not graduating devouring you. You died after your diagnosis, not sure how life on medication would be. You died after Whitney’s overdose, after your mother’s heart attack, after your father’s brief battle with cancer. You died last night, crying about today’s funeral.”

Samantha was still passively crying, the kind of crying that requires no effort on her part, as she surveyed all of the headstones, or at least the ones she could see. Death didn’t work that way. It was permanent. At least that’s what she kept telling herself. She slowly turned, inspecting her sister’s ghost for any hints of abnormality. Scientifically examining a ghost made no sense even to her drug-addled head.

“What are you?” Sam asked, somehow knowing it was the only question she would get an answer to.

“Entropy,” the thing that looked like her sister answered, crossing its arms behind its back and walking with the gravestones to its left. Sam got up to follow. “I am the slow decay of everything.”

“And in all your infinite wisdom, you felt like showing me my countless deaths?”

“Yes.” The thing parading around as Whitney offered no other response, just kept moving forward.

“Why?” Samantha yelled. “Why show me this? Why am I the only one with multiple fucking gravestones?!”

“Because, Jawbone, you needed to see your deaths to better understand your life.”

“Stop calling me that! Only Whitney used that name, and you aren’t her!”

“No,” Entropy remarked, stopping. “I’m not. Maybe you would rather look upon your mother.” With that, the thing morphed into Sam’s mom. Samantha vomited, emptying her stomach of the Taco Bell she had eaten earlier. “Your father?” It changed again, this time into Sam’s dad.

“STOP IT!” She yelled at the thing masquerading as her dead father.

“You need to see this, Samantha, all of it. Your family lived and died once, and that was it. But you…you die every night when you fall asleep, rising the next morning as something wholly new. You have lived thousands of lives in the short span of time you’ve spent on this planet, beautiful, wonderful lives.

“Everything dies once, Samantha. Everything rots and decays and becomes nothing. Everything, but you. You are the only thing I have ever seen come back day after wretched day.”

“Why do you need to show me this?” Sam asked in a whisper, her tears finally dry.

“Because you can’t give up!” the thing roared, a cacophonous amalgamation of every sound ever uttered. “You can’t die like everything else! If showing you how precious you are is the only way to make sure that today is just another day, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Entropy didn’t look like her father anymore. Or like her mother. Or like Whitney. It didn’t really look like anything, not that Sam could tell. Maybe that was because the mist had dissipated and the sun was shining again. Maybe it was because her head no longer felt like it was spinning and her father’s gravestone had the correct death date. So did her mother’s and sister’s.

Taking a shuddering breath, Samantha headed out of the cemetery, feeling alone. Lonely was something she could handle; at least she no longer felt like her time was fast approaching.