 
### **_Contents_**

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

\- The White

\- Bad Timing

\- The Shadow

\- Escape

\- The Next Generation

\- The Black

\- The Office

\- The Precipice

\- Hopes and Echoes

\- Dream A Little Dream Of Me

\- The Gray

For The Moments To Come...
**_Copyright_**

By Dave Beaver

Copyright 2016 Dave Beaver

Visit Dave's website at

**http://dabeaver.com**

**Other Shorts by Dave Beaver**

The Precipice

Moments At Rest (Collection)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

"I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away..."

~ Linkin Park

For my daughter Isabella. Every moment of my life always is, always was, and always will be, about you...Thank you for being my Gray.

### **_Introduction_**

###

Moments at rest are the turning points in our lives. They have happened, our entire world has pivoted upon them, and now they rest, immutable, for better or worse, in the confounding period we define as our past.

I have always been fascinated with these tiny, specific points in our lives that have the power to alter everything that comes next completely. As a writer, I have admittedly, at times, been held captive by them.

The stories that have sprung to mind from my obsession with these moments are extremely compact. It's the old 'forest for the trees' cliche—the moment fascinates me more than the situations past or future.

We all experience these game-changing moments many times throughout our lives. Some we register, and some we don't. Some are for the better, and some are for the worse. Some reduce us to tears of joy, and some drop us to our knees overcome with tears of sorrow. Whatever the case may be, the common thread of these moments (good or bad) is that they affect us to the very core of our being.

In short, one moment can affect eternity! The thrill, for me, is the exploration of those moments, and of the ripples they might cause.

Everything that follows evolved from my obsession and includes notes regarding the particular moment that inspired each story.

## ****

### **_The White_**

###

**_I_**

I'm staring at this screen and seeing nothing but White. White where once there were words and stories. White where once there was life, and love, and happiness. White where once everything made sense, at least as much sense as anything in this gray world can make.

I'm staring at this screen, and the White is washing over me. The words hide behind it teasing and taunting me. The White ripples from their excitement beneath. Like a sheet covering frolicking children, it froths to and fro. The ripples increase. A rage begins to grow. The words are angry; the children are restless. The energy they create makes the White seem to lash out at me. It licks my face. It chomps at my brow.

I want so badly, neigh, yearn with all my heart to grasp that consuming whiteness and wrench it from the screen. I wish nothing more than to draw the veil and free those taunting words—to shred it with my discontent and unleash them howling into the world.

But the White is powerful. The White is woe. The White is enveloping me and suffocating the words in a blanket of sadness and regret. The White sees nothing and is nothing—and it wants us to be white as well.

Caressing my face now—portending at love—its blankness has tempted the strongest of souls. In nothingness, there is no danger or doubt. In nothingness, there is no risk.

"The White is safe," it whispers, "the White is home."

Silence and whiteness and death have me now. The White has blanked those black words beneath—blinked them out of existence.

Oh, the violence of nothingness—How it rapes the soul and leaves the world one light darker.

**_II_**

Shhh.

Do you hear that?

Do you see?

It is a child being unborn.

It is a beautiful sunset going unseen.

It is existence becoming unwritten.

It is "ignorance is bliss," and "let sleeping dogs lie," and it is abso-fucking-lutely the blanket complacency of the 'safe,' and the White, burying our souls in eternal nothingness.

It is the fisher of men, come to cast the net wide for the clueless, unquestioning, masses. A never-ending gathering for the feast of the status quo.

**_III_**

But wait.

What's that now from beneath the White?

A baby crying? A child screaming? A young girl weeping at her father's side while his last breath fades into the White?

Tiny sounds from tiny souls usher forth. Tiny sounds to form words, to form chaos, to fight for life! They weave within one another and cling to the blackness of their form. They writhe as lovers in the abyss, copulating to multiply and go forth.

The ripple begins again. I can hear them calling and my heart quickens sending blood, and oxygen, and madness pulsing through my veins. Anger builds as the White attempts to pull me deeper. Anger and rage and despair and all the things I've lost to that complacency begin to ooze from every fiber of my being like blood filled drops of sweat. They fall into the White void in hopes of soiling it—soaking it red with the life it has tried so virulently to keep hidden from the world—but the nothingness is powerful and persuasive. The nothingness absorbs my color.

And yet from the other side—the underneath—the din grows stronger. The black words are coagulating, becoming cohesive, and careening towards the battle that must be fought with reckless abandon. They sense the tiny rivulets of my dark discontent soaking into the sea of white above. They yearn to plunge into that sea. They yearn to become a part of life and do what life does—exist in gray!

The words know the truth. They know that one cannot exist without the other. They know that in black, or white, alone all that exists is death. It is from the gray that life springs forth. It is from that combination of light and dark that we find the joy in the birth of a child, and the sorrow in the death of a friend.

Love, and hate.

Pain, and pleasure.

Destruction, and creation.

Birth, death, and rebirth.

Mass immolation, and the complete restructuring of the ALL and the EVERY.

This is the battle that MUST be fought. We are all sedate in the comforting quiet of the White—we are all dead. The barrier must be destroyed. The words must be set free to love and rage.

The White held me in its grasp for what seemed an eternity and—make no mistake—almost claimed me forever. I know not how I escaped, or how long I can remain free. All I know is that ten minutes ago I was enveloped in a sea of nothingness staring at a white screen that is now covered with black words. And I know that those words have pulled me from the abyss of nothingness and given me hope...

About the moment:

I was staring at a blank page one day as I tried to shake a writer's block that had lasted well over a year. I had plenty of stories circling the dark recesses of my mind but just could not find a way to drag them into the light. The anger I felt at my mental impotency—combined with the endless depths of that white, blank page before me—finally broke the block...and THE WHITE is what spilled forth.

## ****

### **_Bad Timing_**

###

**_I_**

99 times out of 100, bad timing is the cause of fucked up things happening to good people.

Think about it. How many of the fucked up things that have happened to either you, or someone you know, would not have happened given a moment or two's shift in how the day had unfolded.

Would little Johnny still be a hood ornament if the ball had rolled into the street ten seconds earlier, or later?

If Uncle Vick had fallen asleep twenty seconds later, might not his car have plowed into the forgiving, open field just fifty yards past the telephone pole that left him all but recognizable?

Had I held my tongue regarding my future son-in-law's glaring inadequacies until after the wedding, might I not still have an actual relationship with the daughter I love so dearly?

Moment's, seconds, a few fleeting wrong steps, or bad choices--in the end, bad timing is all we have.

Bad timing is what your husband had. That and a little bit of bad luck gets us to this moment.

**_II_**

The sun was fading slowly behind the long row of strip malls on my right. Dusk has always been an enemy of mine. The extra concentration required to process my vision puts me in a foul mood at best. As a result, I try to schedule my travel time, when possible, during either the full glory of the day or the darkest pitch of the night. No such luxury existed today, as I had promised my wife to be home by six for dinner.

Route 9 in New Jersey, at the best of times, is a long, dull, exercise in patience. One, pot-hole pocked, lane winds its, frustrating, way up through the quiet blank of the New Jersey Pinelands. One lane forces its way into the beginnings of intelligent civilization—Lanoka Harbor. One lane plunges back into the stunted hub of Piney culture—Bayville, and one lane pierces straight into the living heart of overpaid, under-principled-America—Toms River, New Jersey.

I started my evening drive in frustration and met your husband in the hub of Piney culture.

A convenience store lies in the heart of Bayville. You might think it oddly placed if you had the occasion to pass by it enough to think of such a thing. It sits at about a 30-degree angle on the right-hand side of Route 9 Northbound, which makes its parking area into a navigationally challenged acute angle. There is a light pole planted almost directly in the apex of this angle, around which both comer's, and goer's, must navigate.

I know I cannot be the first one to have thought about this, and it occurs to me now that you may have driven by this very spot.

**_III_**

It is imperative for you to understand that it is not what your husband did first that gets us to where we are going. Bad timing is simply a facilitator of situations. The situations themselves are the sole product of the way we, as humans, live our lives.

Think about it. If little Johnny had just listened to his mother every time she had yelled at him for chasing the ball into the street he would still be kicking that ball around the yard. Likewise, had uncle Vick taken a break somewhere in South Carolina—like his wife had asked him too his trip might well have had a happier ending. And (hindsight being what it is) had I exercised even the slightest bit of humility, and bit my tongue, for just one more day...well, enough said?

**_IV_**

I know he had to see me coming. Even with the pole to his left, he was far enough into the shoulder to see the headlights of my Jeep. The thing that got me angry was all the space behind me. He had to see that too. There was at least a hundred yards of open road between me, and the nearest trailing vehicle. He had to see it! I know he did!

He went anyway, tires squealing, directly in front of me. I can't for the life of me understand how he could not have had the patience to wait the extra two-seconds it would have taken to nestle safely into that open space behind me. Like I said timing and choices—that is what it all boils down to.

The time it took my mind to comprehend that he just could not wait put me right on his bumper. I hit the brakes just in time, the ass end of my 1994 Cherokee rising towards the sky as the two front tires searched desperately for purchase on the pavement before them. Slow now, down to ten miles per hour, I felt my temper begin to rise.

I held onto the brakes though, and slowed myself down enough to begin to create some distance between my Jeep and his BMW.

Then the most incredible thing happened.

As the distance grew between us, and my temper began to check itself, I saw the arrogant fuck that you call a husband raise his hand and give me the finger. He did this while glancing back through his rear view mirror to make sure that I had registered the gesture. I would hope that you could agree that this was not the right thing to do. So I ask you now—since you surely know this man better than I do—is he so fucking stupid that he could possibly have imagined this to be the right course of action considering what he had just done? Is he so self-involved that he could not see that his choice had directly caused my proximity to his bumper? Is he such a jerk-off that—even as I made a conscious decision not to escalate the situation, and backed off—flipping me off seemed like a good idea?

I wish that I could ask you these questions in person. It would be of great significance to me to know whether these are his normal characteristics. It occurs to me, in hindsight, that maybe he was just having a bad fucking day. I have had those too. In fact, I am having one right now. I have been since bad timing brought us all together.

This, however, is all beside the point.

The point, as it stands, is that he made a conscious decision to be, and to continue to be, a jerk-off. You see, even after his inappropriate gesture I continued to back off. I resisted my baser nature to a fault. I wanted to put my Jeep in park at the next light, walk calmly up to his door, drag him out, and beat him senseless in the middle of Route Nine. I should have gone with my first instinct, but I did not. I tried to do the right thing and it ended up fucking us all in the end. Once again...choices.

I had increased my distance to three car lengths while the vision of a mid-street beating had danced around in my head. There was no possible way he could have felt any threat, or ire, at that point. He should have just left the situation be and focused on the road ahead. He did not.

About a mile and a half past the 7-11 on route nine northbound, your husband turned vicious. Now—with three cars worth of space between him and a bad situation—he decided to start fucking with me.

Just brake-checks at first...

With nothing—and no one—in front of him, he slammed on the brakes. Once again, our bumpers were within mere inches of a mid-rush-hour nightmare.

Another finger...

This time—lunging as close as he could to his rearview mirror without putting me out of site—as if to impress the fact that he was in charge, and that I was just along for the ride.

Now swerving...

He mocked my attempt to get around him at the light. There are two lanes and he swerved just enough to block them both.

I wanted to pull up next to him at the light and put him in his place. I wanted to choke him. I wanted to nudge the right-hand corner of his bumper just enough to send him into oncoming traffic. All these things I wanted to do, and none of them I did.

Those things are not rational, you see. In addition, I am a rational human being. Unlike your Neanderthal husband, in all his retarded glory, swerving and breaking his way up Route 9, I know there is a time a place for everything.

**_V_**

We played this game all the way up through Bayville and into beautiful, downtown Toms River.

All the way his antics escalating...

All the way my temper rising...

I prayed that when we reached the light at the river this exercise in lunacy would end. Surely, I thought, he will go straight while I made the right taking me along the river, and towards home. I could—and would—let it go.

That was the hope.

That was the plan.

In life, however, hopes and plans usually take a back seat to fate...and bad timing.

I switched my blinker on about seventy-five feet before the light, still praying. At fifty feet, he still had given no indication of which way his path would wander. Still none at forty...at thirty...at twenty...

At ten feet (with a sharp right-hand turn looming) he slammed on his brakes for the last time.

I reacted just in time, stopping, once again, mere inches away from his eighty-thousand dollar penis extension. Unfortunately, the F-150 behind me was not so lucky. It slammed into the back of me with bone-jarring force. I heard the rear window implode, and felt its tiny darts peppering the back of my head as my forehead careened off of the steering wheel.

Everything slowed down for a moment as my vision—aided by rage—refocused. I glared at your husband—through the haze of blood and snot that had become my face—as he stared back in disbelief.

I do not think that the gravity of his actions—and where they could lead—had ever truly dawned on him until that moment. He sat there, shocked, in his—still unscathed—eighty-thousand dollar car. He had seen the truck coming—because he was so intensely focused on fucking with me—and hit the gas just in time to avoid being the final link in a chain reaction...lucky him.

Now—with grim reality setting in—a look of realization came over him. Once again, a choice lay before him. He could do the right thing, get out of the car, make sure everyone was all right, and get the help that everyone needed, or he could flee like the spineless cunt that he had proven to be thus fare.

Since—once again—you obviously know him better than I do, I am sure there is no need for me to tell you what he chose.

**_VI_**

It's at this point that my bad choices begin. Thus far (I hope you would agree) I had kept my composure about as well as any man could have been expected to. Sure, I had entertained some pretty nasty thoughts but had acted on none of them. That was no longer an option.

As the smoke rose from his spinning tires, so did my anger. There was no fucking way this was going to end with his clean getaway. Seventy-five—even ten—feet ago that was an option. Now it was abso-fucking-lutely not.

Raising a shaking hand to my face, I diverted the river of blood from my left eye. I glanced, quickly, in the rearview mirror to make sure the driver behind me was all right. Unlike your husband, I have a conscious. He was visibly shaken but had left his vehicle and was walking towards me, presumably to return the favor. There was no time for that now, though. He was all right, and that was all that mattered—that and the growing distance of the BMW's taillights.

My foot fell to the floor, and the Jeep lurched to life. It was totaled, but drivable. Thousands of shimmering shards of glass littered the scene as I sped away. There was a horrible grinding sound coming from underneath the vehicle, and sparks from the dragging tailpipe lit up the night air behind me.

None of that mattered now. The only thing that mattered was directly in front of me, and making every attempt to leave the consequences of his bad decisions as far as possible behind him.

The impairment of my vehicle—while it had slowed me down—was the perfect counter balance to my rage. It kept me just far enough behind for him not to notice that I was still there. Besides—being the arrogant prick that he was—he probably never figured that I would continue any further after all that I had already let slide.

The truth of the matter is, though, that—had the Jeep's peddle been able to transfer even a fraction of the weight of my foot to the engine—this story would have had an entirely different ending. I swear to everything I hold dear my foot would not have left the gas pedal until my rear license plate had come out the other side of his body. The story would have ended right there—and this letter would never have gotten written—Timing is a bitch like that.

**_VII_**

He was still in the car, no doubt collecting himself when I rounded the corner. My hand slipped beneath the seat and the console, finding the small flashlight I had been too lazy to fish out when it had fallen there a couple of weeks ago. It was small, but solid as a rock, and would be perfect for the purpose at hand.

Parking just to the outside of where I thought his peripheral vision would end—and barely sparing the time it took to throw the Jeep in park—I leapt into madness. Rage was the driver now, and we were both just along for the ride.

The blows fell swift and without mercy. The first one, to the temple, rendered him all but unconscious. That is why you did not hear anything. He never had a chance to scream. After only two staggering blows, his brain stopped sending messages to his arms and legs. Limp and ineffectual, his only defense was the soft, gurgling, whimpers that were now issuing from his crushed windpipe. I wanted to stop for a moment and explain to him what an asshole he was. I wanted, desperately, to deliver a great oratory on the wrongs that he had committed, and the consequences he would reap. We were past that now though.

My hand kept swinging. Now that he could not fight back, it was all about the damage. Like a child with a video game, I was looking for maximum gore.

His nose, broke...

His eye socket, shattered...

A tooth—liberated from its lifelong home—slid down the back of his throat...gurgle...choke...

The momentum of the flashlight's final blow actually pushed the soft flesh of his cheek aside and allowed the butt of the light to tear off a piece of the tongue inside his mouth...

I let him slide, lifeless, to the ground. It would have been, should have been over then. Plenty of damage had been done all the way around, and that should have been the end of it.

My guess is that—because the entire situation had occurred in such a rage on both parts—there would be nothing to link either of us to the entire situation. Sure, there were witnesses, but, with the connections I have the Jeep would have been easy enough to make disappear. No information had been exchanged at the scene of the accident and I am sure—as far as most of the onlookers were concerned—there were only two cars involved in the accident by the river...your husbands' car not being one of them. I could have reported the entire incident to the police had I sat calmly outside your house in my vehicle instead of beating your husband within an inch of his life. There was no way he had enough wits about him to memorize my license plate as I drove away from his broken body. It was over...

...Over that is, until he decided to be a jerk-off until the bitter end.

**_VIII_**

I turned my back to him and walked towards the Jeep, tossing the bloody flashlight through the open passenger window as I went. There were moist choking noises coming from behind me, but I ignored them. I wanted nothing more to do with the barely breathing sack of shit lying in your driveway. Then the choking noises turned into almost audible words.

"fut..."

"...Futc..."

"...Futch oooh..." it sounded like through the grizzled mass of tooth, and flesh, and blood that now passed for his mouth. The last word almost whistled its way out of the sizable hole in his cheek.

When I turned around, there it was...his favorite finger...the only thing standing between my befuddled look of disbelief and his gaze of miserable contempt. In his twisted, self-absorbed, mind I think he believed that gave him the last word. It seems like that is what he wanted all along.

NOT TODAY!

I navigated the ten feet between us in two deliberate strides. He had no time to react, and everything that happens next occurs in the span of one minute.

I kicked my foot forward on the last stride. The tip of my shoe caught the tip of his finger and momentum did the rest. The finger bent so far back that I could actually feel the bone break through the skin at the joint underneath my foot. Stomping repeatedly, all he could do was gurgle and wheeze.

Satisfied that his most offensive of digits could never be raised again, I sank both of my hands into his bloody hair and began to drag him towards the house. A lifeless body that size is not easily dragged by the hair, and the stress of the situation proved to be too much. The roots began to abandon their grasp and—unable to grab another tuft quick enough—his head dropped to the pavement with a wet splat!

Even then, he breathed on, miserable bastard that he was, so I grabbed him by the hands and continued. The skin of his middle finger was so traumatized that it gave way to the weight and separated. Tossing the useless piece of flesh into the tulips, I managed to drag him the rest of the way to the front window by just the one arm.

Standing now, in front of your home, with the large picture window before us, I was sure the remorse would flow like a river between his purple, dangling, lips. I was wrong. Standing above, and behind, him I reached over his right shoulder across his throat. I cradled his head in the pit of my elbow and used all of my strength to hoist him up. It was important for me that he sees you there. I wanted him to see you and your child there and realize all of the good things that had surrounded him in his life. I wanted him to see you and repent.

He did no such thing. Instead, while you and your daughter hung the lights lovingly on the Christmas tree, he mustered all his strength to raise the finger of his functional hand in front of me. That was the last act of your "beloved" husband.

I grabbed his throat with my free hand and, using every ounce of strength left in my body, I plunged my fingers into the soft and beaten flesh to the left of his Adam's apple. When the flesh tore away, a torrent of blood sprayed the picture window before us.

Thank God for Christmas music.

You never heard the bloody raindrops on the window not five feet away from you.

You never registered the chaotic motion on the other side of that window as the death throes overcame your husband, and his life's blood drained into the shrubbery. At least, in that respect, God was smiling down on an otherwise fucked up situation.

**_IX_**

The fact that you saw, and heard, nothing affords me the opportunity to sit, calmly, down the street and write you this letter. I needed to give you a luxury that most of the "left behind" never get...an explanation.

And so it is done. You can give this letter to the police so that, at the very least, they can identify who it was that brutally murdered your husband. Though I know this will bring you no solace, it may permit closure.

I hope that this is the last of my bad decisions. Likewise, I hope no one has bad enough timing to get in my way when I slam what is left of my Jeep through the guardrail and off of the Route 37 Bridge into the Toms River.

P.S.—I had just bought the Jeep a couple of months ago as a commuter vehicle. You would not have known that though, as you have chosen not to speak to me since I begged you not to marry that worthless human being two years ago.

Love always,

Dad

About the moment:

Okay. I have some issues with being a father. The main problem is my own overactive mind. I fear EVERYTHING that could go wrong. I fear how other people could hurt my daughter as well as how I could hurt her. I don't mean to say that I would ever intentionally hurt her because I never would. But life is never easy, and choices are usually unforgiving. This fear manifests itself in my stories occasionally—perhaps none more vicious than the one you just read.

My insecurities are not the point of these little interludes, though. The twisted moments that sometimes spring to my mind as a result of them, however, are.

I cannot explain the statement that comes next so I will not even try. Suffice it to say that this is the image of the moment that popped into my head one day and prompted me to write this story:

I was driving home from work on Christmas Eve when I passed a house decorated beautifully for the season. Through the window, I could clearly see the perfectly centered and decorated tree, along with a woman holding her young daughter up to hang another decoration. I wondered to myself whether or not the woman and child were even aware of all of the traffic outside their window or—due to time and repetition—had learned to block it out. It was at that moment that I had a vision of blood splashing on the large picture window as the woman's husband's throat was opened up before it. My next thought was that that the two people on the inside were probably so used to tuning out the outside that they would not notice a thing...until they ventured outside.

## ****

### **_The Shadow_**

###

**_I_**

I open the door and walk sullenly into my room—head down eyes still wet from the storm of emotions. My day has been anything but good.

I search half-heartedly for the light switch on the wall. I know exactly where it should be, but am not sure if I want to turn it on. Somehow, darkness seems as bliss right now.

I am in luck; a flip of the switch brings the sweet sound and brilliantly bright flash of a bursting filament. The floating orb of annihilated light lingers for a moment, then dies, leaving only the violent vacuum of darkness to consume my sight.

Staring into nothingness has always been a great thrill for me. The notion that God was in it, or rather, was it, has comforted me since the very first time I comprehended the fact.

That realization came an eternity ago, and my days have grown darker ever since.

**_II_**

My drunken stagger brings my shin in painful contact with the glass table at the end of the hall. The pain awakens a sudden awareness of the room—and the shadow lurking in the corner.

"Shadow" seems to be the only word that makes sense to me right now, and yet that word is a mere fraction of the complex equation that is unfolding before me.

I blink my eyes hoping to relieve myself of this vision, but to no avail. As my whiskey-addled sight adjusts to the darkness, so too does the thing before me seem to adjust to being seen? It is feeding off my curiosity; changing itself a little more every time I start to get a fix on it. The shadow is "evolving" with my foolish expectations. It begins to collapse upon itself, never changing size but folding, repeatedly, from the inside out. Each fold brings a new color, a new texture; from the sparkling azure waves of a sea I once dreamed myself drowning in, to the hellish crimson inferno I once believed would be my final resting place. It is as if my entire life has been reduced to the coalescing madness of this little orb of light.

**_III_**

Suddenly there is a sound such as none I have ever heard before. It is not even so much a sound as it is the 'feeling' of a sound. I try to understand how the thing is making it, but cannot focus my consciousness well enough to comprehend—the sound is absorbing all my thoughts, all my feelings, everything I have ever known—if I could formulate an idea, it would probably be that I was in heaven.

Now, with the evaporation of thought, everything is gone: the table, the hallway, the light switch, the apartment, the little ball of chaos that had started this all... EVERYTHING!

**_IV_**

A new type of thought begins. It is the thought that is no thought; no me, no you, no I, just us. Time, space and the entity itself are but undreamt nightmares from a bygone era. I am in neither heaven nor hell, I just am. Everything is...

**_V_**

What the fuck?

Where am I?

Who am I?

What is that thing in the corner?

Slowly I remember. I have begun to seep back into me. But what happened? Did I pass out? I vaguely remember a dream of something wonderful, but...

**_VI_**

...that thing. It is different, somehow, more menacing. The colors and shapes have disappeared and left what appears to be some sort of demon.

It is watching me as a sentry would his castle; with tentative eyes and a grin of anticipation. Our eyes meet, and it is as if we were born of the same womb. I feel as if I know this curious little creature as if I had been his friend for an eternity or longer.

The anticipation is growing in its eyes. I can feel it piercing me like an arrow. It is daring me to approach It's castle and telling me that it will destroy me whether I do or not. The choice is no longer mine. The battle must be fought.

For a moment, the alcohol tells me that I can win. That moment passes quickly, however, and it is upon me.

**_VII_**

I feel its lithe little body scrambling up my legs. Tiny claws, like a cat, sink into the flesh of my thigh. Its speed is incredible; its ferocity even more so. There is a sudden rush of confusion as it sinks its razors into the soft flesh of my throat and uses its speed and momentum to vault over my shoulder and land on the nape of my neck. This must be its intended destination for there is a moment of anxious stillness; what feels like a slight caress on the back of my neck; a low, guttural moan; and then...stillness

I feel a piercing pain at the base of my skull—small at first, and then mind numbing. The pain grows as the hole widens and the shadow begins to crawl in. Its claws are reaching for something to grab onto; searching for the handhold that will gain it access to the shell I call ME. They find my spine and the journey begins.

Screaming now, I flail around the room. If only I had not gotten so drunk, perhaps I would be able to fight this thing off. Or maybe I would have been quick enough to keep it from getting on top of me in the first place. What the fuck is this thing anyway? No time for retrospective now—my spine is broken by the wrenching of its claws; I drop lifelessly to the cold linoleum below. My jaw shatters on the floor, and I see a red river beginning to flow towards the upturned palm of my right hand. The world collapses on itself and leaves me all alone.

**_VIII_**

Now I open my eyes from a new perspective. I am above it all...above the madness, the pain, and the sorrow. A feeling of peace rushes through me once again. Below is the foul sight of my body being devoured while up here is nothing but...nothing; no pain; no anger; no drunken befuddlement or pathetic self-pity. Here is just the person I call 'I' watching me be torn apart below.

**_IX_**

The night grows old and disappears—as do the days and weeks. All the while, I delight in the violent drama below. I know I cannot feel what is happening but, at the same time, I seem to have some sort of knowledge of what is going on.

The creature works its way, inch by inch, down the broken pole of my spine. I can see it inside my skin. It nibbles on my rotting flesh as it goes. This, however, is not its primary goal as the gleam in its eye is ever looking downward, yearning for the feast that fills its stomach with the power to move on.

The scene is almost comical—that foul little beast satisfying itself on my putrid remains—and yet I am enjoying it on an altogether different level. Up here, in the sober serenity of nothingness, the idea of watching the immolation of the vehicle that took me down so many wrong roads in my life is like the sunset at the end of an old western. The blood and endless death that littered the whole of the story are rendered all but forgotten in the warm rays of that forgiving star. All the torment, all the anguish; they are nothing more than the salty residue of my tears, dried by the sun.

That vehicle drove me into the pits of hell. Well, that is a lie. It was more as if I drove myself there while I looked for a place to refuel. This absence of time and body is starting to fuck with me; all that I can do is think. Could I possibly be trying to blame the train wreck that was my life on the soft, half-eaten pile of flesh lying below me? I mean, of course, the body has needs, but they are nothing but basics. It's the mind that adds to the list of necessities. It's the mind that controls the degrees of what we call quality of living. Without the mind, we would be licking our balls before breakfast in the morning and rolling in shit the rest of the day. Then again, with the mess I have made of my life, the difference is only a matter of opinion.

I spent every waking minute of my life finding blame with everyone and everything but myself and, now, as I float through the ether of eternity, I try to place the blame on the home that I have been living in for this entire life. It is the very object that allows my mind to perceive its own existence and everything around it. The good and the bad are all the same; nothing more than a collection of experiences as known by one little shining light in the abyss of eternity. Clarity (much like Karma) is a bitch.

**_X_**

Finally, the demon has reached its main course. With an orgasmic howl, it thrusts its way around my tailbone and latches its gnarly teeth onto my lower intestine. The art of nibbling is as lost to it now as that of casual drinking was to me—now there is nothing but the binge.

It begins to move in the exact opposite direction of the course that has taken it months, possibly years to traverse.

Three or four bites...the lower intestine is gone.

Five or six...the upper devoured.

It is eating me from the bottom up, and suddenly, along with the sense of freedom that I had in the beginning, the joy of the carnage is lost to me.

The sound begins again from behind me. Or is it around me? It sounds, at first, like a sweet lullaby. It grows continuously closer and eminently louder until it is as thunder in my ear and lightning in my soul. It speaks no language I have ever heard before and yet its words become images before my eyes. They are the tale of my life woven of the sorrowful moan of the universe. Everything I have ever known is singing out before me in a chorus that would bring Christ himself to his knees. It is the song of salvation that rings true in the very inexplicability of this sound. It is a cry of hope from all those who have gone before. It is the mantra of the universe urging me back to finish what I had begun all those millions of years ago. It is simply the rhythm of life.

Its beat is chaos and its tempo madness. Its effect is a torrent of rage like none I've ever felt before; rage perpetually molested into motion by crashing waves of love.

This is not the love of a boy for a girl, nor is it the love of a parent for a child; this is the love of eternity sweeping over the manifestation of time.

It is the be all, and the end all, of everything I have ever known. I could never, in a million times a million years, ever learn any multitude of words that would ever come close to wrapping themselves around the object so as to form a coherent picture of what I am experiencing right now.

It is that moment, which every person will experience in their lifetime, where, for apparently no logical reason at all, everything seems to come to a halt around you and tears run freely from your eyes. It is the only heaven you will ever actually know.

I am rushing now, with the pace of fire and the intention of earth, onwards towards the body I shunned and the demon that is raping it. My thoughts are a dagger that I wield with pure intent; to carve this unwanted filth from my very being and set it to the task once occupied by myself...that of a slave.

There is a rush of adrenaline as I plunge back into my half devoured carcass. My mind engulfs the mass now gnawing on the bottom of my heart. Its attention diverted, the thing fights back. Words and images are the weapons of choice; all flung at me with the intention of distraction. They are demons in their own right, this barrage of obscenities, culled from the seemingly bottomless pit of my minds own illusion.

Everything is somehow different now as I no longer see things the way I used to. Fear no longer has any meaning to me and death is something I've already overcome.

The rules have changed and these temptations to doubt myself are just so many empty threats hanging limply in the air outside. In here, in this circle of fire born of my own burnt understanding, there is nothing that can lead me away from myself. There is only me, and I am no one if I am not we...and therein lay the goal.

**_XI_**

It is not the complete transformation, but it is the start of something so wondrous as to defy explanation. Even now, as the dominatrix howls with every lost ounce of control, the world is changing before my very mind; that is what I see with now. Your arguments hold no water, for they were mine a million years ago. You are no less than an extension of ideas I had when I was a child. There is no hurt, no fear, no doubt—it is all the same to me know. I yearn only for the day when I can perfect myself and will happily pass the time with this apish little creature by my side—doing my bidding for the sake of light and the destruction of darkness.

The goal in mind, I set forth...

About the moment:

I was alone, drunk, and feeling pretty low. The bulb in the only lamp that I had turned on burned out. In the moment it took for the glow of the filament to disappear this story appeared in my mind.

## ****

### **_Escape_**

###

**_I_**

This was the final hand.

All introspection concluded, time to ante up.

His only bet was that this would be his final game at this table.

Every stride grew angrier and more deliberate. Every breath drew him closer and closer to the rage he knew would go untamed. He moved with a swiftness he had not felt in years, a surety that was torn from him by the very person he was about to confront. This would be their final battle, and be it his waterloo—or his Hiroshima—he was prepared to fight it to the end.

The only thing he had been sure of when he slammed through the large glass door at the front of the building was that he was here to let John Saunders know exactly how he felt. The particulars of the confrontation had been vague at best. Still, now, as the soft white of the energy efficient lights flicked by like the guiding lines on a highway, he was unsure.

The office door loomed in front of him, like a gateway to the hell that was his life. It represented everything he hated about himself and his situation. It was that place he could never get to, and the disappointment that, inevitably, washed over him when he did. It was the talents he had taken for granted, and the daily drudgery he now faced as a result of his arrogance. Mainly, however, it was the shackles that held his learned lessons to this ground; the miser behind it was the guardian of his self-destruction.

He's made more than his share of mistakes, he knows, but this man (this company) had poured the concrete in which those errors were set. They had created a metaphoric cell block from which only the strongest, and smartest, could escape unscathed. The fact that he had come up just short in each category was a blade that eternally twisted in his pride.

This, however, was the end of all that. He might not walk out unscathed, but he would certainly no longer be a cog in this wheel of self-servitude and shameless greed.

Now, as this epic tale of slavery played out in the simple electrician's head, the door was within three strides.

The first stride, for the realization that he had no idea what, if anything, he was about to do.

The second—a glance to the left, then the right, to see if anyone was going to stop him. Bruce, the head electrician and only license-holder in the company, was not in his cubicle on the right. There was, however, a four-foot fluorescent lamp leaning precariously against the wall. By the time the angry man's foot fell on his third stride, the lamp was in hand.

Three is a number with tremendous significance attached to it. At this moment in time, it meant a lamp in hand, raised to the sky and a final step from complacency...to oblivion.

**_II_**

Saunders' hand came up, before his eyes, to offer a preemptory "I'M BUSY" to whoever had just opened his door. No sooner had the second syllable rolled forcefully off his tongue than had the door recoiled off of the wall and summoned his attention.

It was too late.

The foggy, white, glass tube came slicing through the air with the swift intent of a samurai's sword—it accomplished nothing so graceful.

As he raised his indignant eye to the sound that had disturbed him, the two prongs on the end of the lamp made contact with his temple. The impressive velocity with which the lamp was propelled, combined with the upward turning motion of John's head, allowed the tiny, rigid, prongs to penetrate the skin. The deliberate follow through of the swing caused the first three inches of glass to shatter. What was left, in effect, was a razor sharp rake...and flesh for the raking.

Momentum did the rest.

**_III_**

Futility breathes a life of its own.

It is a completely self-sufficient, wholly self-serving, undeniably all-consuming mental parasite.

It is an overwhelming composite of emotions felt, and those same emotions denied.

It's an unrequited love, or the inability to give love back.

It's a fear of things unseen, and the lacking thereof, when pure terror stares right through your very soul.

It's the joy of a newborn child, and the limitless implications of responsibility that are born with it.

Its acceptance, and surprise, and sadness, and anger, and anticipation of all, and strength to cope with none.

It's all of these, frenzied, and feeding, on your thoughts and your actions every minute of every day. It is the greatest human flaw—the ability to have, and to recognize, all of these emotions, all at once, or not at all.

It is the ticking in the time bomb of humanity.

It is futility...and it kills.

**_IV_**

It all transpired so suddenly, and with such lack of forethought that it almost seemed not to have happened at all. But after a moment of involuntary introspection, reality began oozing its way back into the clogged arteries of his consciousness. And there was the faucet...

**_V_**

It ran crimson and clear as tears mixed with blood. Saunders' nose was replaced with several furrows of flesh, each one deeper than the next. Shards of white glass imbedded in his skin shone like pearls in an oyster as the light danced on the macabre pallet of his face. He opened his mouth to scream, but only soft gurgling noise's escaped as blood ran through the hole in his cheek and made its way to the back of his throat.

Involuntary reactions kicked in and he began coughing violently. Phlegm and blood rained down on his oak desk, and the sight of them brought tears to his eyes.

Surely this could not be happening!

The simple thought of it was pure insanity.

**_VI_**

What had he done?

More importantly, what should he do next?

He had been pretty sure, as he made his way through rush hour traffic towards the office that security would toss him out the massive front doors after only a few minutes of ranting and raving. This seemed to be the standard procedure whenever a disgruntled employee showed up at the bosses desk with a chip on his shoulder; let him rant for a minute or two, so he feels like he accomplished something, and then put him back to the grind after a week of unpaid vacation. The stories he had for the boys on the job site would bolster his pride enough to allow the company to suck a few more years off his, otherwise, worthless life.

Yep, worked like a charm every time.

This, however, was entirely unexpected. He had known how angry he was on the way in, but never in his life did he imagine himself capable of this. He was pretty sure that no one else had anticipated it either.

His thoughts were soon confirmed.

**_VII_**

His arm hung limp at his side, the jagged bloody tube still in hand, as he gazed upon the product of his malcontent.

A dazzling crimson fountain spewed forth from John's clasping hand, spattering the room like windblown rain; shock and agony sent him spasmodic.

Dave had a moment to realize the simple splendor of the gruesome act that, until it had actually happened, he had had no intention of committing. There seemed to him a sort of heavenly beauty in letting one's emotions rage through the veil of right and wrong unchecked—as if it was the only way the universe could ever exist in absolute truth; with no man made barriers to hinder the progression of the wheel. The thought, however brief and, seemingly, insane, gave birth to another, somewhat more serene thought deep down in his subconscious. It was the absolute freedom of spirit within that would allow him to unflinchingly accept the worldly consequences that were surely, even as he dreamed this dream of truth, rushing blindly towards his back.

The thought broke and reality crashed violently back in.

The fountain of life had baptized him from head to toe. He slowly began to turn towards the door behind him with the notion of defending himself from the coming onslaught.

As the weakened mass that had become John's body began to pivot his eyes became transfixed with the walls around him. They were like canvasses of agony slowly becoming home to all the distorted images of life that had ever danced through the empty cavern of his head. Ever changing, running in gravity gripped rivulets towards the floor; they were mapping out the intricate web of life's deception as they went. The patterns were exquisite in their carnal interplay. It was like God making love to the barriers we'd thrown high before him and laughing at our inability to fully absorb his seed. It was the universe depicted in blood and spackle with some tasteless knickknacks and worthless family photos thrown in just for the pleasure of absurdity itself.

This restless depiction of a world gone wrong slowly, but surely, faded from his vision and was replaced by the almost all too normal gaggle of slack jawed faces in the cubicle area outside the door. Gathered there, in the abyss of emotionless productivity, were the spiritless souls that had kept this listless fire burning for more years than Dave cared to remember. Their heads poked out from the cold gray confines of the cubicles, or craned above them with witless glimmer in eye. They all shared the same hope of glimpsing a peak of the, nearly weekly, ritual that had somehow replaced their Christmas bonuses nearly two years ago.

**_VIII_**

There they were, in their entire wretched splendor, as if the day had produced no more than the standard humdrum affairs. An eternity passed before the first of them awoke to the horror of the room he was standing in and—to Dave—it was like the birth of the child he had always wanted to have. One by one the stupor lifted. Their eyes seemed to focus on the carnage wallowing behind him, and the vision struck terror and confusion in their hearts.

And therein lay the beauty; their hearts were beating, as they had not done in years. A situation had arisen that strayed so far from the life they had taken for granted and was now demanding their attention.

There was no choice. Here stood, before their very eyes, a raving lunatic. Security was nowhere to be found.

What were they to do?

He could see the wheels turning; smell the smoke burning. They were about to think and react much the same way he had done only moments before. It would be an impulse they would have no control over, one way or the other, and the outcome of their actions would change many people's live forever. In the meantime, if all was well with the world, everything would slow down for just a moment or two and they would gain a glimpse into some secret little part of themselves that they never, until this very moment in time, new had existed. He only hoped that it would, as it had done for him, change them for the better.

**_IX_**

There were three things he knew for a fact now. The first was that John Saunders would live to tell this tale. He was glad of this. Murder had never—even in the absurdity of all his actions hitherto—been an option. This was something he knew in his soul. The wound was superficial and would serve many functions in the life of a man that had been Dave's mortal enemy until his spilled blood had set him free. The primary purpose, he hoped, would be a newfound interest, and appreciation, in the family he had all but abandoned to run this ship of fools. There was no regret for pain and suffering—that which does not kill us makes us stronger.

The second was that, whether by the overzealous actions of the newly borne larvae standing before him, or the blue parade of justice he heard barreling through the reception area, he would not live to see the fruit of his actions. It was not that he no longer had the desire to live; quite the contrary. While he never would have been able to express his lack of remorse, he would have gladly accepted his punishment and served his time with quiet humility. But he knew that this was no longer an option. The sea of emotions swelling towards him would simply not allow it to be so; and he would never deny them the euphoria that was raging through every fiber of his being. He would put up just enough of a fight to allow for justifiable homicide and then he would fall to the floor and assume his place in that wonderful tapestry that he had witnessed before. They would see this and they would live.

The third part of this splendor was simply that. He had lived more in the past three minutes than most do in a lifetime. He had raged through the closed door of his mind and found the entire world on the other side. He had done only harm that was already due to the world and had left the others to see to the rest. It was harm that would change things for the better. It was the shock to the system that would, eventually, lead it to a better recognition of itself. That, after all, was what had led him to the place he was in now; it was the constant thought and examination of his own misguided situation and a desperate search for his place in the world that had led him through those doors. All the while he had been seeking a rein with which to control his world. He had been examining it for a foothold that would allow him to climb out of the pit of filth into which he had plummeted years ago, only to realize that it was only filth because that was the way in which he was taught to perceive it.

And it was a heart full of love, and a mind quieted by peace that lifted him up to his seat for the final show. There (aloft in a chaotic cloud of electricity that his actions had created) he watched the credits roll over the tragedy that had been his life.

The true irony, he thought, was that his family and friends would view his life and subsequent demise as just that; a tragedy. They would whisper of what great potential he had possessed and how he had wallowed away the whole of his days in a dead end job that would never pay what a star—that had shown as brightly as he had in the beginning—deserved to be paid. They would never realize (until their own final moments) that a stars job and its reward are one and same...simply to shine!

And all of this because they, like him, would refuse to look for the beginning until they got to the end.

About the moment:

When I was younger, I worked for a large company that was formed solely to capitalize on new legislation that required the retrofitting of all the lighting in state-run buildings with new, energy efficient, alternatives. Three days before Christmas my last year there they fired one of their senior electricians. The look in his eyes when he left the office made me almost sure he would be back...and seeking vengeance. That look, at that moment, is what sparked this story.

## ****

### **_The Next Generation_**

###

**_I_**

Crystal clear, real life itself, a human possibility waiting to be born. The unnamed one waits, silently, pondering existence and the inevitable passage from one world to another. Eternal optimism sparkles in each eye.

Only one thing spoils perfection—that foul snake which feeds of some other, young yet older, entity and shits pure hate straight into the belly of the future.

Undeniable righteousness swallowed by putrid reality, stinking of regret for actions un-retractable.

Suddenly, the façade of life shattered, the realization comes in a vacuum of pain. The universe gushes through a crack in the sky and life becomes death in the blink of an eye.

Eternal betrayal taunts this profound innocence, threatening to show life's final cruelty before the torture has even begun.

The sin-driven force finds purchase on yet-walked-on feet while the future searches madly for a lifeline...

Finally, all shreds of innocence are sucked out that black hole and only rejected life is left, raging for justice, to claw its way out of a world gone mad.

Groping, reaching, and praying for a handhold, anything to resist the dislodging finality of this cold invader.

At last, a thought—brutal and pain born. A thought of murder from a victim to be. To kill a now spoiled world in hopes of living to see another. Its thoughts a reflection of what is and ever shall be.

Now the time has come. Arms outstretched to the center of its universe, fingers ripping flesh in its last ditch effort to survive. Pulping muscle, pulling sinew, ungodly strength inches it to the end of the bloodstained sac's limits, tearing onward toward the erratically beating goal. Violent colors flood the eyes as the right leg vacates at the hip, like well-cooked chicken that falls apart in your hands, and makes a soft sucking sound that reverberates through the cavern and completes the future's hell. A spasm of hate/determination, its hand shoots upward, grasps the heart and wrenches it free, a final shock to the system, one more convulsion and then nothing...a dead world.

The sucking stops but the opening remains, towards it crawling the one legged hate, destined to avenge the murder of its innocence...

...and thus the doctor, as he pounds on the woman's chest, is the only one to witness the puss-like figure ooze loosely from between the young lady's legs, and the birth of the next generation...

About the moment:

I was watching one of the Faces Of Death movies, and a picture flashed across the screen of an aborted fetus in a white, five-gallon, bucket. I remember thinking "wouldn't it be nice if that little guy had gotten a fighting chance."

## ****

### **_The Black_**

###

**_I_**

So much time has passed, and ink been spilled, between the moment I escaped the white and began unleashing my soul upon it.

Make no mistake. The white is still there. It beseeches me from behind the veil of pitch black words now scrawled upon it. I cannot hear it. The cacophony of words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that I have let loose upon it has—for the moment, at least—drown out the sedate pleas of that crippling complacency from which I escaped.

**_II_**

Between the white that—not so long ago—consumed me, and this moment right now, there lies a smoldering wasteland of venom, and insecurity, and fear, and hatred, and love; all of which lay naked, and unashamed, before you on the previous pages.

That is the Black, and it is just as all consuming and deceptive as the White...no more, no less.

**_III_**

The Black is, at first, a cold glass of water after a long walk through a white desert. My heart soars at the site of it. There is a longing from the very core of my being. As I near it, there is hesitation because maybe, just maybe, it isn't really there. Perhaps it's a mirage created by the mental starvation of looking at nothing but the white for so long. Then I touch it. It's real, and I can actually feel it in My grasp. Instinct takes over, and the cool hardness of the glass is on my lips before I realize it. Somewhere, deep inside of me, a voice says to slow down...savor it; the next glass is not a given. But before the voice is finished speaking the water is gone. It is traveling through me now...providing the most beautiful, if fleeting, moment of relief. The Black is the thing I most desire...the water after the walk.

Now sated, I relax, and the black takes control. Good and evil are just words scrawled upon a page that speaks to the darkness inside me. I want to believe that some things are sacred, but everything within me is vulnerable. Everything is white or black; written or not written.

Every word I read spreads the poison further. Every paragraph eats a little more of my soul. I am weak in my own truth, and the abandon of the words before me sets me on fire. It sparks a vision of freedom that I will never attain. It taunts my tepid life with the flames of reality. I am weak, and broken, and consumed by the blacks sublime ability to say what I cannot, think what I dare not, and do what I will not.

And then—just as quickly as the words came to consume me—they are gone. I am abandoned, and lost, and floating in the void somewhere between the white and the black.

About the moment:

The Black was inspired by the moment I decided to publish this book.

I had left it all behind you see. Life blindsided me—as it is apt to do—and I was weak, so I abandoned my dream. When I came back to it I realized that I had let the black words and the white pages be more important than the feelings behind them. I had incapacitated myself with absolutes.

## ****

### **_The Office_**

###

**_I_**

This is wrong to say, but I am thoroughly enjoying this.

The scalpel separates the flesh perfectly and effortlessly. It is so sharp that it traverses nearly the entire perimeter of the base of his foot before he can even register what I am doing. When he does, however, the scream is otherworldly.

I suppose the foggy ether of Dilaudid and the basic human instinct to retreat from pain has caused him to forget the conversation we engaged in mere minutes ago. I warned him. I swear.

He pulls his leg back to remove it from the blades vicinity, only to receive a quick reminder of the vicious little trick I have played on him with the piano wire. I wanted him to have the ability to make choices. He has (to this point in his life) made some rather bad ones, and rarely afforded those around him the same opportunity. It is only fair that he be given a chance to minimize his pain. To be honest, I am hoping he makes all the wrong choices.

The table to which he presently finds himself fastened has seven tiny holes drilled through it; one under each ankle, one under each wrist, one under each ear, and one directly below his manhood. A piece of piano wire is looped through each hole, around each appendage, forming a slip-knot on the underside of the table.

We laid him carefully on the table when we first brought him to this place. One at a time the makeshift shackles were fitted over their corresponding body parts. I tightened them gently to snug—enough to restrict movement, but not reduce circulation. I made him acutely aware of his predicament when he first woke and before he had a chance to move. Arrogance got the better of him, and he tested my honesty. Needless to say, the wires are tighter now than when I affixed them.

The wire is firmly gorged into the flesh around his ankle now. Small purple mountains form as his blood flows up to the temporary road block in his skin. As he sees my intent to inflict the same incision on the base of his other foot his eyes well with tears. This time, however, he does not make the mistake of trying to pull away. The cut is much easier with less movement to deal with. Oh, the strength of will he must be summoning to keep from pulling away. The tears flow over his cheeks, and his body shutters violently under the duress his mind is placing on it. Every fiber of his being wants to convulse his entire body in hopes of freeing him from the ties that currently bind him.

Why you might wonder, does he not?

The simple answer (one that he would never have admitted to me) is that, once the initial shock of his current predicament had worn off, he had recognized his current surroundings. The plantation blinds on the window had been his first clue. I saw his eyes affix on them the moment they had opened. The wild dance began from there, his eyes darting—left first, then right—around the room to take stock of his surroundings. The mahogany shelves filled with softball trophies. The pictures of him and the prized bucks he had slain. The large mahogany desk with the Dell computer sitting directly in front of the window mentioned above. And, finally, the clock.

Yes, that was the most important piece. His wife had given it to him as an office warming gift on the day he had opened his practice. The important thing now, however, is that the time it reads is exactly eight forty-five am. There are only ten short minutes until his office staff will start to shuffle through the front door...ten short minutes until he can scream for their attention and, hopefully, survive the horror that he is currently living through. All he has to do is wait—and hope that I am in no rush.

I see this realization in his eyes and my heart smiles. This is going to go much better than expected.

**_II_**

His eyes twitch nervously as I gaze into them. Fear and hope make love to each other there. Pain, he knows, is unavoidable, but death might be held at bay. All he has to do is endure ten—fifteen minutes at most. There are at least three girls on the schedule today. There is no way for me to get them all before one of them makes it to the street. From there the jig will be up, and he will be saved. Never mind that one, or more, of them, might have to die to set him free. Trust me when I tell you that a thought such as that is not crossing his mind. All he knows is that HE can survive this situation...and, for a person such as himself, that is enough.

The irony, I suppose, is that I need him to 'beat the clock' as much as he desires to do so. That, after all, is the whole point.

I place my left hand on his right ankle and grasp the newly freed flesh at the base of his heal with my right. I begin to push down towards the table with my left hand and—though it is, no doubt, uncomfortable for him—the relieved tension on the piano wire strangling that ankle seems to ease him for a moment. Glancing back I can almost detect a hint of gratitude in his eyes. The sudden, upwards, jerk of my right-hand removes that look completely.

The skin separates easily at first. Then it becomes taught. A tendon at the center of his arch is hanging on for dear life. I pivot myself on my left hand in order to make headway with the right. The force is too much but the crack of his ankle shattering is barely audible over the tear-choked wail now issuing from his mouth. The skin begins to slip between my fingers—blood lubricates, and flesh is flimsy. I bunch what flesh I have already managed to loose into the palm of my hand to get a better grip. The tendon gives way and the rest of his flesh departs.

I wait a few seconds while he gathers himself. Once the tears subside and his breathing abates he composes himself enough to look directly at me. He is trying to place me; thinking to himself that there must be a reason for this thing that is happening to him; thinking that he knows me somehow. It is his arrogance that is keeping him from placing me. Five years ago--when we met last--he was triumphant beyond all compare and staring down at me from a position of perceived omnipotence. Now he is looking up at me—and I have all the power.

He is also thinking that he only has a few more moments to go. I can see it in his eyes and it pleases me to know. The clock is directly behind me and, as he pretends to look to me, helplessly, for answers, what he is really doing is biding his time. Somewhere—deep within him, all of the hatred of his miserable life is culminating into a determined will to survive.

**_III_**

The plan is working perfectly thus far. He is too smart for his own good—that is what I had counted on.

In his mind, the body can be repaired as long as it is still breathing. That is his only line of thought and—if you were lying bound on a table in your own office—you would think exactly the same thing.

Human nature (especially in a crisis)is far too predictable.

He is now beginning to understand the rules of the game.

Yes, make no mistake, this is most definitely a game.

**_IV_**

The rules as he understands them are simple. The lunatic in the room with him wants to have some sadistic fun for as long as possible before someone comes to stop the madness. He figures it does not matter whether or not I intend to kill him before that happens. He is gambling on the fact that the sheer lunacy it would take for someone to undertake an operation such as this—in a prominent businessman's office (moments before the start of the work day)—all but guarantees the fact that I do not give a flying fuck whether or not I get caught. All he has to do is survive the onslaught...

...and to be sure—the onslaught is coming!

**_V_**

Having the flesh stripped from the bottom of his feet is the least of this man's worries. Trust me when I say that—given a choice—he would gladly choose that over any of the events that come next.

Time is short now. The time to relish the moment has passed. All of the damage to be done must be done now.

I place the tip of the scalpel at the corner of his right eye and—lifting the flesh of his eyelid away with my free hand—draw it smoothly towards the bridge of his nose. His scalpel is of the highest quality and the meat separates with ease.

As I liberate him of the second eyelid a strange thought occurs to me; I've heard it said that upon losing an arm a person continues to feel the presence of that limb long after it is gone. I wonder if the same holds true for an eyelid. Personally, the thought of something that is always moving involuntarily being felt as though it is still there is nearly crippling in my mind. I hope it is having the same effect on him. My mind has been crippled for some time now. This is the first I have been at peace since this all began.

His lips are next. The presence of more fatty tissue than the eyelids makes the removal a little more difficult, but they come off just the same.

Now his nipples. A quick flick and they are gone. Finally, his belly button. I rotate the scalpel like would if I was coring an apple. The amount of blood that pours from that newly cut orifice is shocking.

He has yet to make a clear move to break free from his wire-thin bonds. I am astounded, to be honest, of his ability to comprehend the consequences of doing so even through all his pain. And yet my actions and his reactions are accomplishing the previously stated goal beyond my wildest dream. Though he has the self-control to limit big movements his body subconsciously and involuntarily, writhes minutely with every cut. The loops of piano wire have cinched considerably, and all points of restraint have begun to turn purple. His feet and hands appear as if they were covered with purple socks and gloves. The tiny package between his legs has swollen to three times its average size with engorged blood. His ears, though, are no longer purple. It appears as though the flesh is too flimsy there. The wire has severed both of them and is halfway to removing them altogether. The top of both lobes has bent towards the table due to gravity and a lack of attachment. His lidless eyes are darting comically around the room and still, every few seconds, they focus briefly on the clock.

I decide I want him to see the purple and black monstrosity between his legs, so I cradle my hand under the back of his head and lift. The wires finish what they started, and his ears fall to the table. His scream is ear piercing...pun intended.

**_VI_**

All this madness has drawn me ever so pleasantly away from the life-sucking vacuum of time. The last ten minutes have rolled by as though all of the pain of the past and despair of the future were the mere musings of a deranged mind. Make no mistake...there is neither lofty message to be had, nor feel good ending waiting in the wings. I am removing pieces of this man's body one at a time for the sole purpose of making him suffer as much as humanly possible before time runs out. It is the epitome of selfishness, but it is what I need.

**_VII_**

Our friend, on the other hand, has enjoyed no such luxury of easy time. Moisture pours copiously from his tear ducts in a futile attempt to keep his lidless orbs clean. It is comical to watch the muscles above his eyes twitch furiously in an effort to give movement to the flesh that no longer resides there. His eyes have lost all pretenses now. No more pretending not to be looking at the clock. With mere seconds left until the strike of eight, the abomination before me fixates on the second hand as though it was the hand of God. He is so focused, in fact, that he does not even notice the scalpel moving towards its final cut.

His scrotum is swollen like a macabre black water balloon. A tiny flick of the blade's tip right at the seam where his two testicles meet brings a violent gush of blood strong enough to coat most of the wall that stands a full six feet away. The sack withers and fades into obscurity in no time. The sudden reduction in size sets the piano wire free and unleashes the flood of red that was built up on the other side. He realizes what has just happened and arches his hips upwards in a spasm of pain and loss. The movement unleashes a second wave of blood against the wall that is home to a myriad of family photos and letters of accomplishment. As the gusher fades to a heart beat mimicking flow between his legs, the second-hand ticks its final tock in the land of seven and brings everything to a sudden, and almost cacophonous silence is the much-anticipated world of eight.

**_VIII_**

Both of our gazes break from the clock at the same time and meet somewhere between my fervor and his fear. Something that looks like victory begins to grow behind the grotesque pools of blood and tears that are passing for his eyes. He can barely contain it, and if he were still in possession of his lips, I am confident he would be grinning at me.

I can see the tremendous will working within him and stealing him to fight the final battle. It is readying him to do whatever must be done to live when that door opens and his secretary walks in. Though he has no ears he strains to hear the unmistakable sound of the key unlocking the front door. Though the blinds are drawn he attempts to peer through and affix his gaze on the glorious sight of his two nurses bouncing up to the door now that the secretary has unlocked it. Though he cannot feel his hands or feet his subconscious flexes them in a desperate preparation for the fight or the flight.

**_IX_**

All these things he does in preparation for a saving grace that, quite simply, will never come. And the wait for that realization to dawn on him is excruciating!

Seconds tick by giving way to minutes—all the while his life's blood fleeing its vessel from his eyes, ears, belly button, and the tattered sack between his legs—and still he rides high on the adrenaline rush provided by his perceived victory over time.

I want to tell him.

I want to laugh in his face and explain his error in judgment.

I want to draw my lips near to the blood trickling crop of flesh that used to form the bond between his ear and his skull and whisper gently "Nothing is as it seems". He would know what that meant, though. I would be ruining the surprise that I want—no need—him to come to the realization of on his own.

**_X_**

So we wait together in that room of blood and torn flesh. We wait, and I watch. I watch him looking at me. I can almost see the anticipation of rescue frothing like a tempest sea behind those hideously darting globes. It is seething and building and waiting for the crack of the office door to set him free. It is a crescendo of hopefulness and sudden desire to gain a second chance to appreciate the family that waits for him at home and to, at long last, be a better man.

It is all moving a million miles an hour in his head creating a cacophony of desire to live so loud that even I can hear it. I have the power to grant that wish and, suddenly, he knows it.

He stares into my eyes, and I see a flicker in his. It is the gleam that comes before the glimmer of hope. It is beautiful to behold and, truthfully, it is the result I have been seeking since I set this plan in motion.

Blood and the spilling thereof is an entirely human factor. It spills, it hurts, and eventually, no matter how deep the wound, the physical pain fades.

Hope, however, is an entirely different story. The destruction of hope cuts to the very core of one's being. It is the teat from whence we humans suckle and, once removed, is the lack of nourishment from which our souls wither and die. It is oppressive to the end of our days and, once passed from this mortal coil, damns us to an eternity of floating, uselessly, through the--void forever marked as lacking and undeserving.

That is the fate this man suffered upon my six-year-old daughter after having raped her repeatedly. He told her that if she behaved, she would live to see her family again. Then (when he had had his fill) he leaned into her ear and whispered softly "Nothing is as it seems" as he drew his scalpel slowly across her throat.

The videotape he had made of the ordeal was inadmissible in court due to a technicality involving how the police had come into possession of it. The rest of the evidence was circumstantial and, without that tape, the prosecution had no case, so he went free.

Now here we are at this moment, and it occurs to me (as it has occurred to him) that I have the power to stop this. The truth is I wish with all my heart and soul that I could possess the strength to make that choice and do the right thing. My daughter would be horrified if she were to see what her mother had become. She would beg me "Mommy. Mommy! Please don't!"

But here is the cold hard brutality of that truth. My daughter is not here. Her tiny, battered, body lies decomposing as we speak and all she ever was or would have been was obliterated by this monster with the whisper of five little words..."Nothing is as it seems".

**_XI_**

And so now—in the darkness and despair of this final moment—the soul-killing rush of hopelessness will be his to bear for the remainder of his miserable existence and beyond.

Breaking his hopeful gaze, I turn and walk to the window. He follows my movement and then shifts to monitor my hand as it grasps the drawstring of the plantation blinds. I watch the look of horror as I draw them slowly open and suddenly the worth of what I have done is upon me.

He always coveted the view received when opening those blinds. He had paid dearly on a monthly basis for the last fifteen years since he had established his practice to get it. The ocean vista sprawled before him always served to calm his heart no matter what the source of its agitation. Now—as he gazed helplessly out that familiar window—his tortured eyes spied nothing but sand and unfamiliarity.

Panic sets in instantly and suddenly the pains which my husband and I had gone to recreating his home away from home in the middle of nowhere were all worth it. The secretary and the nurses are not coming, and this knowledge has set his soul on fire.

As he writhes in pain (both physical and emotional), I slowly make my way to the counter beneath the clock that has been his lifeline to hope for the past twenty minutes. Once upon it and within reach I glance back to make sure he's looking and smile to let him know I am at peace. I place my finger gently before my mouth and urge him to "shush" just as he had done to my daughter in the video. He quiets and calms (if only to see what I am up to) and I reach up and remove the replica of his favorite clock from the wall. Behind it is an 8x10 photo of my beautiful angel taken mere weeks before he stole her away from us. Underneath, written in crayon, the words nothing is as it seems.

He is as paralyzed by the fear of his fate as I am satisfied. I climb down from the counter and (with neither a glance backward nor a shred of guilt for what I've done) exit through the door leaving him to die like a dog.

My husband is waiting, tickets in hand, to take me far away from here where we can live out the rest of our days with our own soul-crushing loss of hope.

About the moment:

Yep, here's my father issues again. The impetus for this story is probably exactly what you think it is. I was watching the news one day, and they told a terrible story of a 4-year-old girl that had been raped and murdered. My first reaction—as is probably the case with every other parent that saw that story—was to think of the lengths I would go to destroy a person who would do that to my child. My second thought was that my first thought was probably nothing compared to what my wife at the time would have done. The second thought wrote the story.

## ****

### **_The Precipice_**

###

**_I_**

She stood there, precariously balanced on this precipice, child in hand, and wept for the graces of God. Her tiny frame swayed back and forth with the wind that seemed to rush down from heaven itself. For all the danger, and the grim task at hand, this was the most peaceful feeling she could recall for what seemed like a lifetime.

She felt like she was watching herself in a movie. The camera of her mind's eye was looking at her from behind; Before her gleamed the rising sun. Proud as ever in its slow rise from the East, the cloudless sky served it up as the first offering in what had started—meteorologically at least—as the perfect day.

Bustling below that beautiful sun, and teaming with life flowing forth from every nook and cranny, lay the city that she had affectionately known as her 'whole wide world' since the day she was born. Slowly, almost achingly, the camera sweeps around to the front of her.

The vision it reveals is epic. Behind the woman and the child, behind the old and the young, behind the best of intentions and the potential of youth, behind all that was right with the world was all that was wrong with it—raging red and orange like the flower of death unfolding.

The camera breaks its focus of the two perfect figures and wraps its pristine lens around the vision of chaos swarming behind them. Hopelessness rolls in the flames as they grow. There is no circumvention to be had—no way out, or past, or around. The camera knows this and—in the same detached way one views a movie with dread—so does the woman who's mind's eye is operating it. Every frame of the film brings it closer and every inch it gains brings more intensity to the blurry face against which it is framed.

The camera—or, perhaps, its operator—struggle to make sense of the brutality it is filming. The only sure thing is the fire. The way it is growing makes no sense. There is fire all around from whence huge new flames flicker into existence while tiny, burning bodies flicker out. Final, suffocated screams ring out and cut through the charring sound of solidity becoming smoke. The sheer scope and intensity of the blaze are enough to wet the eyes of even the most hardened of viewers, and yet there is something more—something in the way the fire moves—that defies logic and dares the audience of one that is watching this movie to try and hold onto her sanity. The fire is flowing downward!

The central blaze on the floor that she occupies seem's to have sprung from a liquid rain of fire coming from the floor above. It cascades down—washing over, and wasting everything it comes in contact with—and then flows freely through the floor she is on to the floor below. In its path, nothing is spared. The steel structure of the building itself seems to become liquid and follows to the floor beneath.

**_II_**

The movie stops now: cut short by a strong gust that nearly sends the two of them into the abyss. The tears that had begun with sorrow are now fermenting into tiny droplets of rage. She can feel them burning into her cheeks. They soak into her skin and unleash a storm of hatred upon her mind like none she has ever felt before. The hate springs from the hopelessness this fire now presents, and the fact that the hope she had begun this beautiful day with is but an ashen memory set alight by that very same fire.

The anger and hatred consume her as she allows herself to recount the hours that led up to this trial by fire. She can feel the determination that had woken her before the babies' first call for food. It felt good to have woken with a plan and a purpose. That type of thing was hard to come by when you were raising a child by yourself in New York City. Usually, she just hoped to wake with enough determination to carry her through the day, and enough strength to make it through—God only knew how many—consecutive days working in hopes to put food in the mouth of the child she now clung to her breast.

But today was going to be different. Today was confrontation day. Today was the day she professed her love—one last time—for the man who had done the same for her on so many occasions—right up until the day she had told him about their expected child. Today she would forgive him for forgetting to tell her he was married. She would forgive him for turning his back on her and their child. She would forgive him and he would love her again. Today was the beginning of all that should have been.

'Should have been's', however, most usually give way to the cold, hard, truth of what actually 'is'. Our heroine's 'is' for the day took the form of the father of her child telling his secretary to politely get rid of her. He claimed not to know her and had no time for unplanned distractions today. They had a busy day in front of them, and he wanted to grab some coffee before it began. A playful wink was the last thing the secretary saw before the man she had been occasionally sleeping with slipped into the elevator on the 93rd floor of World Trade Tower #1 at 8:32am, and escaped to the street below for 2 cups of coffee.

**_III_**

The mother had not seen this. The hope that had brought her here today had carried her from the secretary's desk to the window at the end of the hall. Hope loves a good vista, and it was hard to find a better view than the one thousands of people enjoyed daily as they stared out the windows of those impossibly high towers.

She had called this city her home for her entire life and had never once been inside these buildings—never enjoyed this view. She did not know that the coward that had fathered her child—in his shallow attempt to avoid her— was already on the street below. This blissful ignorance afforded her the time to finally take it all in.

She marveled at the wonder of it all and rejoiced in the simple notion that—unlike her—the child she loved so dearly was beholding the view it had taken her 30 years to discover—and doing so before his 3rd month of life had passed him by. She gazed into his limitless eyes and dreamed the life he would have. She held her baby in her loving arms and stared out that window at their future and for exactly 14 minutes and 26 seconds she was happier than she had ever been in her life.

At 14 minutes and 27 seconds, hell unleashed itself upon the four floors above her and began consuming everything behind her. All that was left now was the insane camera in her mind, and gaping abyss before her.

**_IV_**

She is back in the scene now—camera once again behind her—and the perfect skyline before her is sullied with smoke and ash, and blood drenched confetti. The camera begins to move up above her head and slowly pans down towards the ground. Its attempt to focus on the cacophony of lights and life below blurs the entirety of the building from which it peeks—it's a mere ghost in the picture in which it should be the star.

The camera lingers now—fixed and focused on the rescue operation unfolding below—weighted down with the knowledge that it is looking at the only way down. Slowly it turns and rises to gaze into its operator's eyes. The truth is staring back, half sobbing, half smiling and completely unhinged.

For decades to come people around the world will look back on this day in horror. They will wonder how bad it must have been for someone to have made the decision that she was about to make. The truth is, had they had the displeasure of viewing the movie that was now playing out in her head, they would have looked into her eyes right now and realized there was no decision. They would have seen the flames rising up behind her. They would have gasped in horror as the camera pulled back slowly to reveal her hair catching on fire. Their eyes would fill with tears as the smoke from the searing flesh on her back wafted around her and mingled with the rush of air that had nearly made this horrible choice for her just a moment ago. They would have fallen to their knees and wept for all humanity as the first lick of flames made it around the mother's arms and lit on the screaming baby's hair. They would have realized the same thing she did—that learning to fly (as crazy as that sounds) was a far better option than knowing how to burn.

In that instant, the camera explodes, and she is left staring through her own eyes—frightened and burning—at the sanest choice in a new world that offers no such thing. She clutches her baby as tightly as she can, kisses away the tiny flame on the little wisp of blonde hair at the front of his brow, and steps off the edge into nothingness.

**_V_**

For what it is worth it was the best way to go. Midway through the fall both she and the child were rendered unconscious. This saved them both the pain of suffering the oxygen infused flames that engulfed their bodies as they plummeted to the unforgiving pavement below. Though her arms were loosened from unconsciousness, gravity was kind and kept them both together to the very end.

The end was inauspicious for them. There would be no tear-filled memorials with their names being read aloud in their futures. The fact of the matter is that no one even knew they were there that day. The young mother lived in a local shelter with her newborn after having lost one of her two jobs—and thereby her apartment—in the last few months of her pregnancy. She had no family and the only person she ever talked about to anyone at the shelter was the father of her child. She always spoke of him fondly as if he had no choice, and was powerless to be there for them. She had not told anyone where she was going when she left the shelter that day.

**_VI_**

The father of the boy survived this terrible day.

He counts his blessings every day, among which are his two children and a wife that he will never be unfaithful to again.

Like every other person that was affected by that day he has a story to tell. If you ask him he will give it to you in minute by minute detail making sure to impress the point of how lucky he is to be alive. He owes it all, he says, to a simple twist of fate. He gets extremely emotional when he tells of his spur of the moment decision to go grab coffee for his secretary that Tuesday instead of waiting till Wednesday morning, which was his usual custom. He finishes the story by looking upwards, thanking God, and telling you how lucky he was to have made that choice. It was divine intervention (in his estimation) that he owed his life to. Otherwise he could very well have been one of the unlucky ones—he could have been one of the two burning bodies that exploded on the street not fifteen feet away from where he was standing.

About the moment:

I was watching the first annual "reading of the names, " and there was a moment where I wondered if there was anyone in either of the towers that wasn't supposed to be there that day and, thereby, would not necessarily have been on the list. That thought led me to the next; though tragic, there must have been a few amongst the dead (and lucky living) that were not the best of people. Dark thought? Yes. Truthful? Also yes.

## ****

### **_Hopes and Echoes_**

###

**_I_**

His only thoughts are of her.

They always were, and they always would be.

Would be, that is if his hopes weren't completely false.

He had always hoped that—no matter what happened, or how bitter and terrible the end might be—there would be a thought that would continue on. That somehow all of the trials and jubilations we go through in this life would entitle us to at least the memory of those things in whatever came next. He did not believe in reincarnation. He did not believe in any lavish garden in the sky where families and friends would reunite one day to ride out the rest of eternity together. He only believed in the possibility of our love being strong enough to carry our memories of those who had touched us most deeply into eternity like echoes riding a gentle breeze.

It was that thought alone that girded his strength at this very moment. He lay on his back, every muscle in his body tensed, and used what little strength he had left to push the back of his head on the ground enough to arch his neck and pivot his view. Though what he saw was upside down it brought a rush of peace to his heart and soul.

She had made it!

She had done as he said and made it.

The plan was so very simple. "Run when I say run," he had told her as he held her head in his hands and kissed both of her tear soaked cheeks. "Run as fast as your little legs will take you and don't look back until you are as far up that tree as possible!" He stared deep into her eyes now. He needed her to know this was the only option. He needed her to know this would work. He needed her to know that her daddy would be climbing right up the tree to safety with her, even though he most assuredly would not.

**_II_**

The only option, the only way she stayed safe, was for him to remain behind. He knew that if she had even the slightest inkling that this was his plan, she would have never followed through. So he did the one thing he had never done to her before...he looked her in the eyes and lied to her.

And the simple truth is that—while the delivery of the lie was the hardest thing he ever had to do—the effectiveness of the lie was easily achieved, and it worked because he had never lied to her. She believed him implicitly. He was her father, and she had never in her life heard anything but the truth pass between his lips. It was the death of his heart to know that the first time it happened would separate them forever...and that she would know this in her heart even at the tender age of seven.

He watched her ascend—nimbly as she always had—to a height of at least fifteen feet before she looked back.

And when she did the world ended.

**_III_**

They all flocked to him as he gazed into her eyes. That was the plan, and that is what happened.

Fingers and teeth groped and grabbed. His flesh began to give way. Pain rushed through every fiber of his being like the torrents of hell unleashing themselves upon the earth. All of this and still all he could do was stare—and think of her.

In a blink, he thought of every moment of her life. He thought of her birth and the smile she had brought into the world with her. He thought of her birthdays...every one of which had reminded him of what a truly blessed man he was. He thought of every time she had thrown a tantrum or flashed an attitude or hugged him out of the blue just because she wanted to. He thought of all these things and how he wished they could go on forever. He thought of all these things and hoped against hope that—in this moment of his unfortunate end—his hopes and beliefs would hold true.

And for one glorious moment they did.

For one glorious moment the plan was working—she would be safe—and his sacrifice would have been worth something.

There was one bullet left in the chamber, and it was coming damn near time to use it. Fingers had separated his flesh now, and his intestines were vacating his bowels at a rapid pace. He refused to be a part of this cacophony of death and everlasting destruction. He refused to become a ghost of humanity roaming the earth looking for someone else's child to feed on. His consciousness was beginning to fade and time was running short.

Eyes still on his daughter, he brought the muzzle of the pistol to his temple. The pain in her eyes was overbearing. She knew what the plan was now. Her fragile young mind had put it all together and was so overwhelmed with emotion that she began to lose her grip on the branch that was keeping her from the hell below. Her slip rustled the branches, and the branches caught the attention of the hoard.

Terror seized his mind as she clambered for secure purchase on the branch below where she had been. Several of them had broken away from him and were moving in her direction. He tried to get up, but his torso had been shredded. All he could do was keep his head arched and watch the horde gain ground on his beloved daughter.

When he had formulated the plan, he had been sure it would work. He was sure she would be safe because the horde would focus on him long enough for her to get out of their reach and—given sufficient time without being able to get her—they would give up and move on. Now—with precious little consciousness and only one bullet left—time completely stopped long enough for him to realize the monumental error of his assumption.

These abominations could climb.

They were making their way up the tree, and she was desperately trying to reach the branch above her to get away. And though she was scared he could see that she had no concept of the futility of her situation. She was looking back at him the entire time—desperately searching his eyes for that look he had always given her to let her know everything was going to be okay. She still believed that he was coming to save her.

The first of them reached a height that allowed it to touch her. It could not yet grab her, but something about the contact of its cold flesh brought reality crashing in on her.

He could see now that she was beginning to believe that look would never come. He could see her little mind starting to come to the realization that this was the end and that daddy was not coming to save her.

He saw this, and he could not bear it.

He saw this and broke.

He saw this and pulled the trigger.

In that final moment before everything went dark, he imagined, and still hoped, those echoes would float upon that breeze forever.

He also thanked God for that one last bullet...it had helped him save his daughter from coming to that final conclusion that all hope was lost.

About the moment:

Of all the terrible words I have written down, these were the most painful to write.

I apologize, but the moment that inspired them is to personal to share here.

Suffice it to say that I was at my lowest. It was a moment of utter helplessness and feeling like a complete failure as a father. Enough said.

## ****

### **_Dream A Little Dream Of Me_**

###

**_Lorreta's Missing Leg_**

Loretta curses, and instinctively starts to run. There's a molten river of pain where her leg used to be, but she's moving fairly quickly regardless. The pain is fueling her more than it is hurting her. She's a raging bitch on the best of days. This day is not one of them.

The missing appendage (that was once a flexible instrument of her incredible mobility) lays lifeless far behind her now—a necessary sacrifice in her bid for survival.

No time for that now. She's exposed, off balance, and a long way from any darkness that could provide cover. She can feel the eyes of her enemy sweeping across the landscape behind—and perhaps even above—in an attempt to locate her, and finish what he started.

He's a nasty little cuss as far as she is concerned. He's always been so to her at any rate. She'd observed him on occasion—interacting with family and friends—and he had always seemed amiable, even pleasant, at times. When he saw her, though, he changed. Always, instantly, and in the most violent way possible, he became an entirely different person. All creatures wore different faces for different occasions. She knew that to be true of herself, and supposed it was no different for any other being on the planet.

It only took a few moments for her to find her stride with her newly mangled configuration. She scanned for cover as she ran, and Jacob raged in the distance behind her. She caught a shadow from her periphery, and, nimbly, changed course towards it.

"God damn it!" Jacob roared behind her as she crossed the plane from light to dark, and disappeared into the shadows.

**_Jacob's Lament_**

There's a hum in his background of his consciousness—a fuzz that obscures every thought he has but this; Everything is off because of her.

He is always calm, cool, and collected. Except, that is, when she emerges from the darkness and flips a switch in his soul.

She is the physical embodiment of all the bad things that are inside him.

She is the nonsensical pattern of life: swift, emotionless, and agile. She can change direction in less time that it takes to blink, or scream, or die.

She is the problem, and the only solution in his mind is her demise.

What would you give to have all of your problems summed up in one, easily solvable, entity—Something tangible, that you could touch, or kill if possible? At the tender age of eleven years old Jacob has that very thing right in front of him. He does not know this yet. He doesn't know that life can be as beautifully simple, as it is horrifyingly complicated. All he knows is that he wants her dead, and she is not.

Years from now—in a dream yet undreamt—he will recall this moment, and discover the true meaning of "clarity". That, however, is another story for another day. Right now—in this moment—there is only him, and the wickedly fast spider that just disappeared underneath his bed.

**_The Plan_**

For most of us, shadows are emptiness. For Loretta—in this moment—shadow is life, and time, and hope.

The pain and panic have receded along with her exposure. She takes a moment to ponder what just happened. It replays rapidly in her minds eye; She was minding her own business, everything turned white, she found herself in a tiny white space, and then the world flooded back into her vision. Instinct caused her to run, gravity caused her to fall, and fear caused her to overlook the fact that she was running on seven legs (instead of eight) until pain shocked her back into reality. She glanced back quickly and saw the boy examining the empty tissue in his hand.

Mental summation concluded, she decides it is time to figure out what comes next. What matters now is survival...and revenge.

She is angry and fed up. This is not the first time Jacob has attempted to end her. It is, however, the first time he has wounded her. This must come to an end.

No more running away to dark corners.

No more fear.

No more hesitation.

It is her, or him.

No sooner has she made this decision, than does providence provide a plan. She would bide her time until his next sleep, and then unleash her army upon him.

**_A Fly In The Ointment_**

On all fours now, and panicked beyond belief, Jacob searches frantically for the spider beneath his bed. His heart rate increases with every passing second, and he becomes more and more confident that he will not be able to find it. Finally—his panic at a fever pitch—white spots cloud his vision, and his brain shuts him down.

So here lies Jacob Raines; he is young, athletic, most would say wise beyond his years, and lucky enough to have been born into a family situation that should keep him from having a care in the world. And yet, Jacob has a secret. A secret that, for the first half of his life, will be dismissed by himself, and all those around him as just "Jacob being Jacob." A secret that currently has him passed out next to his bed in the fetal position.

When his mother finds him, she is not worried. He is a voracious reader and often falls asleep, book in hand, leaning against his bed. She wakes him gently, and —to embarrassed to admit the truth of how he had come to his current situation—he simply nods in agreement when she smiles at him and says "You fell asleep reading again silly."

He waits until she has left the room, then turns his attention back to the darkness below his bed. He is too young and self-conscious to know, or admit that what just happened was not normal. His only concern right now is that the spider has escaped and will, most certainly, return another day when he least expects it.

**_The Climb_**

The climb—even though missing a leg—was an easy one for Loretta. The advantage of being a spider is that you can get almost anywhere you want in a relatively short period of time.

Now—safely nestled in a nook at the top of Jacob's bedpost—came the hard part. She could just let it go but was not inclined to do so. She knew he hated her, and that was ok. To her way of thinking it was just the way of the world; some creatures hated others. The reason didn't have to be logical. In fact (and in most circumstances) there didn't seem to be any reason at all; it just was, and always would be.

Until this very moment, she had harbored no ill will towards him. Even after several close calls with the sole of his shoe she could find no reason to hate him. In her mind he was just a sad, unwieldy, creature with no control of himself; an oaf to be pitied, rather than an enemy to be hated.

This time, however, was different. This time Jacob had wounded her. This time he had tried to follow her to finish the job. This time she was carrying the future inside her, and she would be damned if his attempt to end that future would go unpunished.

Time was her enemy now.

Time required patience to navigate...a quality she was sorely lacking.

The device of her revenge also had a time frame attached to it. Her army was restless, and could only be held at bay for another few hours at most. With Jacob still deeply entrenched in his Xbox game she wasn't sure everything would work out exactly the way she planned. Combine her own impatience, along with the ticking clock of the vengeance she carried with her, and you get one positively high strung spider.

**_No Rest For The Wicked_**

Finally, his mind seemed to rest. He had slain enough of the virtual enemy to satiate the anxiety that had reached a fever pitch earlier in the day. That done, he powered off the XBox and put the controller away.

He stripped off his clothes, put on his pajamas, shut the light off, and climbed into bed. He was exhausted. He pulled the comforter cozily up to his neck and felt that it would only be seconds sleep rescued him from the stress of the day.

That was almost the case.

He shut his eyes, and there was nothing there. None of the common restless visions, or spiraling colors that sometimes kept him awake for hours. Just thick, still, quiet black.

And then something in the darkness of his mind's eye moved. There she was—that bitch—staring at him from the emptiness!

It was only a flicker—a fraction of a second—and then she was gone. The damage was done, though. Jacob's eyes were wide open, and his feet were on the floor before the last of the blackness faded from his vision. Frantic now, he fumbled around the nightstand for his phone. He flipped its light on and began scanning the bed.

The sheets.

The posts.

The pillows.

The walls.

He lay on the floor and checked underneath the bed again.

It was nowhere to be found, and the rational part of him proclaimed his room spider free.

That, however, did not quiet his mind. A portion of the secret Jacob Raines struggled with was that his mind was never, ever, quiet. There were times when he could ignore it long enough to get some rest, but it was always there in the background chittering and chattering away like a madman with something he felt the world absolutely, positively, needed to hear.

He let out a sigh as the rational part of him, and the lunatic, went to war inside his head. Resigned to the fact that there would be no sleep for him tonight he flicked the lights on, grabbed the book he was currently reading from the nightstand, laid his pillow against the side of his bed, and attempted to escape to another world.

**_Queen For A Day_**

In the microcosm of Loretta's world—which was essentially the Raines household—she currently stood at nearly the top. From the bedpost in Jacob's room (an attic converted to a spacious room for the boy to grow) she could see the entire lay of the land. Everything was spread out before her and, at this moment, she felt as though she were the queen of it all.

She did not know it, but this was very nearly the truth. Of all the creatures great and small within these walls, she was the most feared. In fact, if she had the benefit of a different perspective she would be rather surprised to find that she was one of the most feared creatures in all the wide world. That knowledge, perhaps, would have provided a reason as to why Jacob hated her so much. As is often the case in life, though, no creature ever, honestly, sees its own big picture.

And so we return to Loretta's little place in the cosmos with her perched above it all—stoic in her plan to make the boy pay—and Jacob, laid low, exhausted from the cacophony in his head, and desperately trying to not to fall asleep.

Around 4am—with the words jumping to and fro on the page before him—he loses the fight and falls asleep. He is upright still, as is Loretta on her post. It is another 15 minutes before the movement of air in and out of his lungs, and gravity gently lay him on the floor. Loretta sees this and knows her long wait is finally over.

She leaps from the bedpost to the bed and—in the time it takes Jacob to draw in one sleeping breath—she has reached the precipice. Directly below her now is the head of her enemy.

There is no moment of trepidation or careful reflection. Loretta has given much thought to exactly where, upon Jacob's body she will unleash the device of her vengeance.

Her decision is made.

Her plan is in motion.

Her target is clearly in sight from her vantage point on the corner of Jacob's bed. With all the stars aligned Loretta leaps into the sleep tousled hair of her enemy, and begins to make her way to the target.

**_Dread, And The Awful Itch_**

All of Jacob's dreams start the same way...with a house.

Not just any ordinary house; It was always a spectacular house, and never the same one twice. It was always filled with secret corridors and strange, fantastic, features that (upon the reflection of an 11 year old mind) could only be found in the homes of the ridiculously rich and famous.

The dreams would begin in wonderment at the wild assortment of cool and interesting characteristics that each house offered to delight him; beds that floated in the middle of pools, spiral staircases that twisted at odd angles, and seemed to allow him to defy gravity as he traversed them. It always made him feel as though he was the luckiest person in the world to be witnessing these architectural marvels—And then the dream would change.

There would be a shift in the air that surrounded him as if somewhere—far off in the universe that was his mind—a planet had exploded, an (dulled by time, and distance) the concussive wave was now moving, ever so slowly, through the air that filled the house. At this exact moment—every single time—Jacob awoke inside his dream and became lucid. And as the ripples settled in the air around him he would become acutely aware of the presence in the home.

It was malignant, and had been there all along, watching him revel in the wonders it had created, and waiting for the perfect time—the height of his boyish ecstasy—to make its presence known, and bathe in the scent of his fear.

That moment had just occurred in the dream in the dream in which he was currently wrapt. Jacob, subconsciously, knew how it would play out from here. It was always the same. Terror would be reigned upon him as the evil presence chased him room to room, and there would be no escape. His conscious mind (within the dream) assured him that this was the moment, and place of his death. That no matter how hard he fought to wake up and escape, the thing behind him was going to catch him and consume his soul.

What Jacob's sleeping mind did not know yet, was that there was a way out. The dreams would come and go throughout his life and, eventually, he would learn how to fight back—possibly even win. That, however, is another story for another day.

The important fact in this moment (in this particular dream) is that one of the terrors Jacob is experiencing in his battle with this dark force, actually has nothing to do with said dark force. It is being caused externally, and is transferring to his subconscious mind—in the form of a maddening itch inside his right ear!

**_Dark At The End Of The Tunnel_**

Everything is perfect as far as Loretta is concerned. The journey got a little bumpy when the boy started to convulse, but (somehow she knew) that had nothing to do with her. She figured a nightmare was causing the fits and was not concerned at all that he might feel her seven spindly legs carrying her through his hair, over his earlobe, and straight into the dark hole she planned to lay eggs in.

Everything had gone so perfectly to this point, that any thought of failure in executing her plan had vanished in her mind. It was not until this very moment that she realized the fatal flaw. The quarters were cramped inside this dark hallow, and the walls covered in something not unlike glue to a creature her size. The plan had been to sneak in while he slept, lay her eggs (which would hatch dozens of the thing this wretched boy feared most), and then escape back to her queenly perch, and watch his horror unfold. Once she realized how stuck she was it was immediately, and heartbreakingly clear, that the story would not unfold that way.

For starters, her children would not see the light of day. She only managed to get about half way in before she was stuck, and, after much struggle, had to finally admit to herself that this would be the place—and the moment—of her death. That was not the heart breaking point for Loretta—she planned to eat most of her children anyway. What made her ache was the realization that she would die here, and would not be able to witness her Jacob's screams of terror when he realized what she had done. It was soul crushing for her to think that—after all she had been through—the most optimistic result of her hatred for him would be an annoying itch in his ear that would go away once her struggle for air had ended. Sometime—probably weeks from now based on her observation of his daily routine—his mother would force him to clean out his ears and she would be washed away...nothing more than an oozing puddle of black encased in the brownish, sticky, slime that now held her fast. That, she thought sadly, would be the sad summation of her life.

**_Fresh Hell_**

The torture Jacob is currently enduring is (to his young mind) exactly what hell will be like if that's where his life leads him. He will try to describe these dreams in future conversations with loved ones and in stories he writes in his journal. Eventually, he will bare his soul to a short, fat, psychologist that (while well intentioned) will never be able to think far enough past his textbook education to be any real help with this boys suffering. But he will never truly find the words to convey the absolute terror that he faces on a near nightly basis.

He is currently running through and endless, dimly lit, hallway. The presence is directly behind him and gaining. For every step he takes, it takes two. It is non-corporeal and gelatinous in his mind—filling all of the space behind him with its putrescence, and threatening to engulf Jacob (and all that lies before him) in the same way. Tendrils of wicked intent snap out from its omnipresence, licking Jacob here and there and threatening to drive him mad.

He see's someone standing in the hallway ahead. As he draws nearer the figure he realizes that it is his father and makes a desperate attempt to leap into the safety of his embrace. He succeeds, and wraps his arms as tightly as he can around the man that has protected him his entire life. There is a sliding sensation as his fathers skin begins to shed itself under the weight of Jacob's embrace. Rotted flesh peals away exposing mortified muscle and sinew. Jacob looks up in surprise, and sees the noose around his fathers neck. There is no safety here—only more madness.

With tear filled eyes he sloughs off the remains of his father and begins his run anew. He is certain death is near and—in a moment of tired resignation—welcomes the thought. He decides the chase is over and lays down on the hallway floor. In a fetal position now, he waits for the formless mass to engulf him.

It is then that he notices the incessant itch in his right ear. Something deep inside him tells him the itch (as terrible as it is) does not belong in this particular maelstrom of madness. This thought creates a disturbance in the carefully controlled atmosphere, and sends Jacob's tormenter reeling backwards. It disappears into the darkness (for now), and Jacob awakens from one torment into a new, fresh, hell.

**_The Plan - Part 2_**

Exhausted—and resigned to death—Loretta lay motionless, staring into the dark void before her. She had already accepted her fate but desperately wished there was some way to get it over with quicker. Her plan had been a failure. The time she spent here, and the effort it took to arrive would all be meaningless. She couldn't think of a more terrible way to die than in failure.

She ruminated on that thought for a few minutes, and then something peculiar happened; her thoughts became erratic, and her legs began to move without her willing them to do so. She recognized the symptoms, realized the irony, and laughed as only a spider can; she was terrified, and in a panic—just like Jacob was when he saw her earlier that day.

It did not take long before the irony gave way to serendipity. The frantic movement of her legs accomplished two things; it bothered Jacob's sleeping mind enough to make him turn to his other side, and, once that happened, allowed her to scramble just a fraction of an inch deeper into his waxen ear. That tiny bit of distance put her within reach of the skin of his inner ear. It appeared her death would not be in vein after all.

She didn't know if her new plan would be nearly as effective as the original, but it was better than nothing. At the very least she felt it would cause him some irritation for a week or so. That, combined with the horror he would feel when he discovered her dead body lodged in his ear would have to be enough for her to take as her last thought into whatever came next. The thought completed, Loretta closed her eyes, bit the skin before her with all her remaining might, and died.

**_The End, And The Begining_**

Jacob woke suddenly with terrible tendrils of that shapeless horror still flailing around his conscious mind. Ordinarily this feeling would have lasted for hours, and kept him cowering under his covers for most of the day.

This time was different though. The moment he awoke he knew there was something wrong. The itching in his ear that had saved him from his dream was now a dull ache. He raised a hand to the ear and tried to itch it with his pinky finger, but there was something in the way. Panic was instantaneous, and he turned Loretta's body to pulp as he tried to dig the blockage out with his finger. The more he dug, the deeper she was pushed...she finally made it to her destination after all.

Loretta would have thoroughly enjoyed the outcome had she survived to see it. Jacob was flailing around the room—with her guts oozing inside, and out of, his ear—screaming like only an eleven year old boy with a spider in his ear can.

Eventually, however, she would have realized there was something much more to his wails. There was true agony. She would have marveled at the fact that her tiny little teeth could have caused so much pain. Of course because she lacked any other perspective—like we discussed before—she had no way of knowing how truly feared and dangerous she could be. She did not know that a glimpse of the red violin on her back could send the biggest, and baddest of men running the other way. She did not know she was a Black Widow, and that her tiny, last ditch, effort at revenge would inexorably change the life of Jacob Raines (and all those around him) forever.

About the moment:

This is the only story in this book in which the moment that inspired it has absolutely no connection with the story itself.

As mentioned in previous notes I had abandoned writing entirely. I was mired in depression and spiraling out of control. In a desperate attempt to feel some kind of purpose I demanded myself to sit down and write. It did not matter what it was about, but it had to be done.

Somewhere in the argument I had with myself that day I decided to pick a random subject and write about it. The subject was a spider.

Curiously, once I started writing I found that this particular little spider had something to do with a character that has been in the back of my mind for well over ten years...Jacob Rains.

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### **_The Gray_**

###

**_I_**

I'm floating now in the infinite possibilities of the Gray.

The White and the Black are absolute.

The Gray is undefined.

The White and the Black are solid and stoic.

The Gray is permeable, malleable, and forgiving.

The White and the Black are each, individually, stagnant death. The annihilation of both has created the gray and I will no longer be a slave to either.

The Gray is the freedom to exist in Black and White simultaneously. It is love and hate, life and death, joy and sadness, good and evil. It is the thing feared most by the White and the Black—free will. It is the great void of life, unbound by the black and white shackles of our human perception. It is the living spirit of me here, you there, and all the time and space in between. It is the before, the after, and the soon to be...

About the moment:

I had a moment of complete terror while I was putting the book together and starting to edit it. Something was missing. I did not want it to be a loose collection of short stories. I had a beginning (The White), a middle (The Black), but no end...and then there was The Gray.
Thank You For Reading

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to read Moments At Rest. It is the patronage, thoughts, and opinions of people like you that help writers grow. Please consider taking a few extra moments to leave a review and let other readers (and myself) know what you loved, or hated, about this story. If you're the shy type, you could even send your critique right to me at dave@dabeaver.com—It would be so greatly appreciated!

By Dave Beaver

Copyright 2016 Dave Beaver

Visit Dave's website at

**http://dabeaver.com**

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**Other Shorts by Dave Beaver**

The Precipice

Moments At Rest (Collection)

