Anthology Complex (17 page)

A few more feet to my right there is yet another switch, and this time I
can't read the word, but I can tell that it's in yellow. As I continue to look
around, I realize there are hundreds of these switches, and as I pass by each
one, they are all titled uniquely, the ones I can read anyway. The only
similarities are that some are in red, some are in green, and the others are in
yellow.

"Murder." "Jealousy." "Friendly."
"Sacrifice." "Indifference." Those are five words that I
pass by on the walls. Eventually I come up to the switch titled
"Anger." I think to myself that if I turn this switch on, someone or
something, maybe even perhaps myself, will become prone to the anger disease.
After a while of thinking I convince myself that I am already angry, and that
this switch is suppose to be on anyway, so I flip it on, and I immediately find
myself outside in a city full of life.

People, cars, music, lights, yelling. I start to walk and after about
ten yards I notice that the people who I am passing by are looking at me funny,
but I don't know why. I walk for a few more yards and this continues, people
looking at me strangely as if I am not one of them. As if I am not their kind.

Finally I look down to see if there is anything wrong with me, and I
realize I have a bandage around my mouth. I look behind me and I notice pieces
of flesh and my teeth have been falling out behind me. I cover my mouth, my
bandage, and I walk into a store and head for the bathroom. How I know exactly
where the bathroom is remains a mystery, but I walk into a stall and I stand
there, trying to figure out what I will do next.

After a few minutes I hear the bathroom door open, someone walks in. The
person begins to talk, they begin to speak about how the project needs some
kind of loop function. Then I hear another voice, a different voice, a voice
that says the only way to integrate a loop function is by stressing a single
point.

They start discussing how this single point would be the basic function
and main center of the loop function. How the project itself will perceive it
as either birth or death, when it's really one in the same. How one will
perceive the action as "going away from" and another will perceive it
as "coming towards to." They say that with this point, the beginning
and the end is merely an illusion.

I open the stall door because I want to see who these people are, and
when I finally do all I see is a figure that seems to have a white light casted
on it, and the other figure is completely shadowed in darkness. They both look
up at me, and I realize that the outline of their bodies resemble that of
children. The dark figure hands me a composition notebook that is mostly black,
and then hands me a black pen. Shortly after, the white figure hands me a
composition notebook that is mostly white, and then hands me a white pen.

Opening both of the notebooks I assume they will be empty, but they have
both already been filled with words and pictures. When I look back up I see
that the two figures are gone, and I notice that something had been written on
the mirror in blue marker. "Welcome to the sin city." Las Vegas.

I wake up and I sit on the edge of my bed. The first thing I think about
are the switches on the wall, and the titles they were given. Then I remember
seeing the words denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, all
words we have seen from the five stages of grief. Yellow, red, yellow, red,
green.

I walk into my living room, the television is on; there is a part of me
that remembers turning it off, I always do, but there is also the part of me
that forgets. There is something on the news about past findings in a project
called the Human Genome Project, a project that started in 1989 in an attempt
to identify and map the many genes in the human genome.

These sorts of things, the human condition, they interest me, so I sit
down to watch, but unfortunately that part of the news is ending and once again
I find myself watching news about the violence in this city.

Two children, both girls, were victims to a drive-by shooting. The
reporter says the shooting more than likely has a relation to the thirteen
bodies found earlier this month in an abandoned apartment building, but there
is no concrete evidence. Regardless, the police department is furious and has
snapped due to the many recent homicides; who wants a higher murder count? The
random arrests and police brutality will start soon. Max out the jail cells.

I'm at the bus stop now, waiting for a bus to take me to a department
store where I can buy a new shelf for a few hundred homeless composition
notebooks. The bus, unlike some other things, eventually comes after such a
long time of waiting and takes me to my destination, which is also unlike some
other things.

Along the way to the department store, I see black and whites, a name
for police vehicles, and they are all over the place. If only the police
department had the funds and the man and woman power to do this every hour of
every day, crime might move to another city in another state that doesn't have
the funds.

Walking through a neighborhood, I see a lot of kids playing in clothes
that don't quite fit them right, playing with balls that don't quite bounce
properly. Sitting on the steps are the older kids who have seen and done a bit
more than the kids who will survive them. The kids who will succeed them.
Shouting from the windows of the apartment buildings are the mothers, who are
yelling at the little ones to come inside, or to not play too close to the
street.

The fathers, they are probably either gone, or too busy working all day,
every day, which also means gone as well. Then there are the kids who don't
have a mother to be shouted at by, because their mom is a single parent trying
to make ends meet. I think of Lynne and her two children, what it would be like
if they lived here. I wonder if there was ever a time that they actually did.

At the department store I order a new shelf, a better shelf, and they
say they will deliver it within three business days. The night falls and I get
on a bus that takes me in a different direction, and I'm finally back home.

As I'm entering the apartment building, I look down at Lynne's flowers,
and then up at the Moon that looks as if it's giving its light to these
flowers. These flowers, growing in darkness, they remind me of my feelings for
Lynne, and then I tell myself that the light from the Moon is coming from the
light from the Sun.

I open the door, walk up the steps to the second floor and walk towards
my apartment door, and I notice that Lynne's door is slightly open, and I hear
two women talking. I can immediately tell it's Lynne and Kathleen, they had met
once before because I was gone, and it seems they have met once again under the
same circumstance.

I go to her door and knock two times and then open it, believing that I
have the right to do so because Lynne only knows Kathleen through me, and I see
three women sitting at a table, and they see me and tell me to come in. I greet
Lynne, Lynne's mother, Emily, and Kathleen, and they tell me they ran into
Kathleen in the parking lot. That they were talking about Joe. I picked a great
time to come home.

At the end of the discussion, I learn that Kathleen took the liberty of
contacting the landlord and informing him that Joe was in a coma, and if she
could take his things from his apartment. With his rent being way overdue,
provided she had identification, he agreed, and she was to take his belongings
in the following week. That made me wonder what types of things Joe owned. If
maybe knowing about his possessions would help me better know the dreamless
identity of Joe.

One wonders if it is the things we own that define who we are. Will the
behavior of a woman who owns an expensive car differ severely from the behavior
of a woman of the same age and background who owns a cheap bike? Certainly it
will play some kind of role in something.

The party is over, and I go back home. The phone is blinking red, it has
a message. I hear the voice of Kathleen telling me that she was going to visit.
Kathleen, visiting, about thirty seconds.

The light stops blinking red, and then I remember the dream I had, the
switches on the walls. In particular, I remember that I saw the words lust,
gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride in red writing on the wall, and
realize that just like the words from the five stages of grief, that these
seven words were also from a popular list of words; the seven deadly sins. I
start to wonder how many other lists of words I may have unconsciously put in
my dream.

There is a knock on my door, it's soft, which means it's probably Lynne.
I look through this fisheye view and I see her wearing the same bright green
shirt she was wearing before, and for a second I fool myself into believing
that I know who she is, philosophically, and even if I can't see other things
because this view is so narrow, I at least know I can see her, and understand
her. This fisheye love.

These thoughts make me smile, but then she starts to walk away. I forgot
to open the damn door. I open the door and she looks back, I say hello. She
starts to walk towards me and smiles.

After the general phrases such as "how are you?" and "I'm
glad to hear that," she starts to tell me about how her mother was
visiting and was going to take Sarah and David with her for a little while so
that they didn't have to deal with their father, Silvio. As I'm wondering why
she is telling me these things, Mary walks past us.

Lynne says hello, but Mary doesn't reply. Maybe she is still bitter
about the parking lot thing. Mary makes me realize how much I hate people and
their tendencies. Flip on the hate switch and make me prone to the anger
disease.

Chapter 32:

IN BETWEEN OBSESSION AND ADDICTION

Piled up in the corner of the room are these black and white covered
notebooks that don't quite make it to the ceiling. Written inside of them are
tales of fiction that have a longing to become true. While this is each
composition notebook's final resting place, there is however always one that
takes the place of the other half of the bed I sleep in. The one that still has
pages to be filled, and is not yet ready to join the others. These are the
words of a therapist I was suggested to see many years ago. "Var intet
rädd." Those are the last words of a dead king.

The same day the therapist told me that I wanted my fantasy to become
reality, I asked him if he knew that there was a word for the killing of ants.
He says no, and I tell him that the word is formicide. I ask him if the reason
for this word's existence is simply for classification purposes, say, John Doe
kills ants in his basement so we need to classify him under the word
"formcide," or do human beings really consider this act of killing
ants to be anything but trivial. That ants deserve to be recognized as living
organisms.

He tells me that he doesn't know, and then the silence that is suppose
to be therapeutic comes. "What the hell am I doing here?" That's what
I think to myself.

I close the door behind me, the door to the room that those notebooks
sleep in, and on my way out I stub my left toe on the couch. Because of the way
my mind works, I purposely stub my right toe as well. Max out the balance.
Strange dreams, strange life, and somewhere in between, strange memories.

Sometimes the fantasy tries so hard to break through into the reality
that it becomes painful. One time I had a dream where my partner and I were
somewhere overseas and had a slave owner in front of us on his knees begging
for his life.

As I'm standing there with my gun pointed at his head, I realize that I
can't pull the trigger. It must be my first time. I also notice that neither my
partner nor I have masks or suits on, I'm thinking this is one of the first
events in the story about the thieves from New York. Anyway, the thing is I'm
so angry and full of hatred for this man that I start to taste blood in my
mouth, and then I wake up and find that I have been chewing on the inside of my
mouth, and when I open my mouth, some of the blood falls down and stains my bed
sheets. This is not the first or last time it happens.