When the Story Ends, He Kills Himself, Pt. 1

“Yet he continues to walk forward, cradling her lifeless body in his bloody, beaten arms. In the distance, he can see the small, red building. His voice catches in his throat as he screams for help. He knows that they can’t hear him, but still he screams for help, and still his voice is caught in the raspy, dry flesh of his throat. The wheeze of his strained breathing sends gravel and grit scraping through his lungs. Still he screams for help.

The man falls to his knees and he howls. The man smoking a small brown cigarette on the porch takes pause and stands up, hand resting on the pistol at his side. He first thinks that maybe it’s a dying animal. Some kind of bear or wolf looking for a cool place to curl up and die away from the glare of the fiery yellow sun. But as he squints his eyes and pushes the smoke and dust from his face, he sees the outline of a man and a woman.”

Gordon Searcy checked the clock on his laptop. 4:56 A.M. He had a page left of his story. Of his book. The book that he wrote. The book that he was almost done writing. The book that he had just read front to back for the fifth time in a row. Two hundred and six pages. Countless rewrites and edits. Words torn from sentences, pressed into other sentences, clumsily yanked out and then discarded before being recovered and jammed back into other sentences. Blood and sweat and tears. A life’s work sat in front of him. His life’s work sat in front of him. He ran to the bathroom and vomited.

Brushing his teeth and looking in the mirror, Gordon examined his face like he imagined a doctor might examine his face. Deep bags under his eyes meant that he wasn’t sleeping well. The graying hairs in his temples and the exposed scalp above his forehead would mean for most men in their forties that they were dealing with a little stress, but for Gordon, who was twenty-seven, it was a combination of a lot of stress and unfortunate genetics.

Gordon spat his toothpaste into the sink. Pushing aside his moustache and pulling at his mouth, he poked and prodded at his gums. His teeth were yellow, with splotches of white splattered across the few at the front. He gingerly ran his finger over what he hoped was just a canker above his top incisors. He wiped the water and leftover paste out of his beard with a hand towel that reeked of mildew. Sighing deeply, he pressed his thick, unkempt beard against his neck with his thin, wiry fingers. He was thin. He was very thin. If it weren’t for his bushy beard covering up his protruding cheekbones and skeletal jawline, he might describe himself as gaunt.

Gordon reluctantly stepped onto the scale in his bathroom. He tucked in his gut and looked down at the flashing red number on the display. 115. Gordon weighed one-hundred and fifteen pounds. How tall was he? It had been a while since he had measured himself, but he thought he was around six feet tall. Maybe he had shrunk?

He fussed and fretted about his physical appearance for the next hour. He ran a comb through his hair, first from left to right, then from right to left, then front to back, then back to left, then he finally pulled a thick wool hat over his head and dropped to the couch, where he became fixated on the length of his toe-nails. When he had finally trimmed them all to a uniform length, he looked up and saw his laptop still open to his book.

Gordon stood up and walked over to the machine. Tapping the save button multiple times and making sure that he had backed up all the data onto his portable hard drive, he lowered the screen of the machine until the soft whirring of the motherboard slowed and stopped with a gentle click. Gordon swallowed the knot in his throat and lay on his back on the couch. He had almost finished his book.

If he finished a book, he would surely need a biography to go into the flaps, he thought to himself. And nothing like the miniscule biographies that were pasted under the six year old picture that sat in the back of most of the books he had written. Those biographies were so… Gordon waved his hands in the air searching for the right word and came up blank. He closed his eyes and thought of his biography.

“Gordon Searcy was born, and when he was born, he was seven pounds eight ounces. He was born in a small town outside of Toronto, Ontario, but when he was six he moved to England where he lived until he was eight and then he moved back to Canada where he lived with his family until his mother left his father (who is an alcoholic) and stopped talking to him and he found out she died three years ago and even though he hadn’t spoken to her in over a decade, he still cried, probably more than he would cry at his father’s funeral. Anyways, he lived in Canada and still lives there, and he lives in a small apartment that smells bad and he has a roommate, but they aren’t friends, in fact they haven’t said anything more than “Good morning” to each other in the year and a half they’ve lived together, but he doesn’t make a lot of money because he has no skills beyond writing fucking terrible paperback novels and…”

Gordon sat up with a start. Could he say “fucking” in his biography? The book itself was mature and definitely had some course language, but was it unprofessional to have the word “fucking” in his biography? Would they have somebody write a biography for him? He pulled a copy of his third most recent paperback over to him and flipped to the last page. “Gordon Searcy was born and lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been writing since he was sixteen. When he’s not writing, he spends his time playing guitar and walking his dog, Roger.”

Gordon stared at the wall of his apartment. He had never played a guitar in his life and he was very allergic to dogs. He reread the biography. And then he reread it again, just to be completely sure that that’s what it said. He poured himself a glass of discount beer and flipped idly through the pages of the book. It was a little over a hundred pages long, and about a third of those pages were lurid descriptions of various sexual acts between the two main characters. He had been paid $300 upfront and was given 10% of the royalties each week. He wasn’t sure if that was a good deal or not, but it was the deal that he had made with several other books he had written, and he knew that he had enough money to pay his rent and buy some rice and beans each month.

Gordon put the book down on the coffee table and suddenly became very depressed. Two hours ago, his heart was racing at the prospect of finishing a new book. A good book. A book that he believed in and loved and felt spoke directly from his heart. A half an hour ago, his heart was racing over the length of his toe-nails and whether or not anyone would notice the dead skin on his heels. And now, in the moment that he was then currently experiencing, he found himself crying and wasn’t sure why.

He stood and sniffled as he sipped his beer and looked out the window at the brick wall that blocked his view. If it weren’t for that brick wall, he would have a perfect view of the Toronto city skyline, which he absolutely hated. Gordon hated the way Toronto looked in the morning and at night. He hated the CN Tower, he hated the smiling shopkeeps at the little boutiques, and he absolutely hated the glowing orange tint that the city took at night after a soft snowfall. But more than all of these things, Gordon hated that he couldn’t see them, and he cried as he drank his beer and stared at a brick wall.

Gordon threw the empty can into the bin as he flopped into his computer chair. He opened up the laptop and saw his story beaming proudly back at him. He smiled tenderly and ran his finger gently along the side of the screen. He put his hand over his mouth as he began rereading his story for the sixth time. His story. The story he had written. The story that was missing the last page. The story that he couldn’t finish. The story that made him so proud, that he would begin proudly referring to as his “magnum opus.” Gordon wept and sobbed loudly and messily as he began to read.

When Gordon finished this story, he would kill himself.

In Which I Am a Self-obsessed, Narcissistic Jerk Who Eats the Scraps of Those I Deride or: 2016 Needs to Be the Year It Gets Better. It Just Needs to Be.

In 2015, I was self-obsessed. I was fixated on my own misery, unhappiness, and chronic failure. And until the last few months of the year, my efforts were focused on resolving that, whether that was through attempting to communicate more openly and honestly, attempting to invest in pursuits that I felt would be more fulfilling, or crying over the phone as robots and cubicle workers with bored voices seemed to push me back and forth until I resigned.

If 2014 was the year I was knocked from my apathetic pedestal, 2015 was the year that my efforts to actually improve my life were met with rejection, bigotry, intolerance, and unavoidable failure. 2014 ended for me on a catastrophic note. A two and a half year long relationship was ended, my academic career was sent off course yet again, and I tried to take my own life several times. 2015 seemed to me a year of new beginnings; it started with a new, fresh relationship, several new career opportunities, and a generally more positive outlook on life. Over the course of the year, my optimism has been slowly eroded by every minimal effort I have taken being met with staunch opposition that I frankly cannot argue with.

At 24, I have no real skills beyond writing, and even then, I’m not published or focused enough to turn it into a career. I’ve been shown that because of my complete lack of understanding of basic finances or responsibility, I cannot be trusted with menial labour in a professional or personal setting. My brazen, aggressive, confrontational manner of conversation might seem charming or admirable to those of you that know me, but to the majority of people I have met this year, it’s become apparent that it is unpleasant, immature, and a massively undesirable trait.

Medication has proven useless for me. Therapy would be great if I could trust myself enough to follow through with it. The bulk of my days are spent hiding in my room watching television and playing video games. On the rare days that I manage to sit down and pound out some creative writing longer than a few hundred words, it all amounts to narcissistic tripe like this.

So what do I do in 2016? Well, in February, I am meeting with social workers and therapists to figure out concrete plans for the rest of my life. In all honesty, that will likely involve a low-responsibility part-time job that provides me with enough money to live off of. I’ve dismissed any aspirations I have formerly had about starting a family or a career as worthless. I am barely capable of providing for myself, and given the tiniest responsibilities to anything or anybody else, I collapse under the pressure. Maybe that will change with therapy, but for now, I can’t even think about that.

And beyond February… who knows? I don’t have a plan until December. The last time I tried to kill myself was impulsive and careless. I swallowed 79 pills in a fit of terror and immediately regretted it. It was an irrational action in response to a situation I couldn’t comprehend. It was horrible for everybody involved, and I’m sorry for that. But the past year has been a long fucking cavalcade of depression, alienation, and a complete loss of any self-worth I might have had. There have absolutely been good times, but I can’t count how many nights I have spent staring bleary-eyed at the TV before weeping into my pillow until I didn’t have the energy to stay awake anymore. This isn’t a good way to live, and right now, it’s the only way I know how. I don’t want to live like this.

If my life hasn’t shown any indication that it’s started to or might eventually turn around by next year, I honestly don’t know if I can say that I will feel it’s worth living.

I know this is grim and it’s an unpleasant topic, but it’s my life to do with or not do with as I please, and I feel that I at least owe you my honesty. It’s also important to note that I’m not giving up or committing to any plans or ideations just yet. This has been something I’ve been thinking about for a little over a year now, and I’m not taking it lightly. I’m making the efforts that I can to make positive changes, but I’m just so fucking tired. I’m not motivated. I’m not happy, and I haven’t been happy for a long time.

There is a German word, Weltschmerz, that means roughly ‘the disillusionment felt when comparing how the world is compared to how an individual desires the world to be.’ I have been experiencing that a lot lately, and it’s become far too personal for my liking. Seeing happy couples, parents with their children, successful business owners… All of these things are enough to make me depressed for a week. Am I supposed to avoid these things? Am I supposed to resent these people? Of course not. I’m truly happy for them, but I can’t be a part of a world where they exist.

I wrote this on an impulse and I regret it. It’s too heavy-handed, it’s too bleak, and it’s far, far, FAR too long-winded for my taste. But I want to be honest with you. This isn’t the way I wanted my life to turn out by this point. I’m not happy with this, and I’m not happy with the way this is headed. I know a lot of people will think “You’re still so young, there’s still so much time,” and I agree. But I don’t want to hit thirty and realize that I’ve gone too far to turn back. Honestly, right now I don’t even want to hit thirty. My life needs to change drastically and it needs to change now, and I have no idea how the fuck I’m supposed to do that. I am going into 2016 completely lost and confused.

So right now (5:30 AM, December 31st, 2015), I’m going to go back to watching the Simpsons, and I think I might write a story to follow this miserable blog post.

Here’s to a decent 2016. I’m really hoping it will be better. I’ll try to make some good jokes and thought-provoking posts for you no matter what. I’ll try to write a few stories for you to enjoy, too.

Thanks for reading.

Nat

Not writing and dying and dying and writing

“How do you make a sense of ennui interesting?” he asks her. He is scowling at the keyboard of his computer and his fingernails are tapping his cup of coffee. The screen’s glow reflects in the frames of his glasses until he lifts his head and looks across the room. He sighs softly and he knows she didn’t hear him. He is irritated at her because she hasn’t heard him, and he is irritated with himself for being irritated. He wipes his eyes with his dirty fingers and takes a deep breath and smiles.

“Hey, hon?” he asks, a little louder than before. She looks up from her book with mild surprise and smiles back at him. He feels like an idiot for being mad. He hates himself for being angry when he knows that he shouldn’t be. He smiles and he almost feels like crying.

“How do you make a sense of ennui interesting?” he repeats. She thoughtfully tilts her head to the side and her ponytail rests softly on her shoulder. She presses her mouth to the right side of her face and looks up at the ceiling. She finally shakes her head gently.

“I don’t know,” she says with a look of loving concern, “I guess that by definition, ennui is boring, right?”

He slumps on the couch and runs his fingers through the thick, bristly beard that covers his face.

“I’m just…” he trails off as he exasperatedly looks for the right words, “I’m just trying to write something.” He slumps even further down on the couch as the words fall on his stomach. The page is an awful mess of words and phrases and verbs and sentences that he knows even his own mother wouldn’t want to read.

He closes his eyes and scratches his forehead. He narrates everything, and he doesn’t say anything. He writes about the way his cat runs back and forth through the hall chasing the shining red dot from the laser pointer. He writes about the curves of his lover’s body and how they excite him more than anyone ever has before. He writes about the beautiful trees that line his street and the wonderful nakedness of their branches in the winter. He writes about the heartbreak and loneliness that he has felt and is feeling. He writes about being depressed. He writes very frequently about being depressed. On his worst days he writes about suicide.

And he never says anything. His words are incredibly hollow and bounce helplessly around the pages. They can’t tell you how amazed he is by his cat. How peaceful and united he feels with his lover. He can never explain how the images of branches dancing together in their naked glory soothe him to sleep on the nights when he sleeps. He couldn’t tell you how much it hurts to be alone and how lonely he feels. He couldn’t express how depressed he is. He could try, but he would never be able to tell you how depressed he is. On his worst days, he would keep everything he wrote to himself. Because there is a deep fear inside of him that he doesn’t want read. He’s worried that it’s the only truth he understands and the only truth he could write about perfectly.

So he stops writing. For days or weeks he stops writing. Never months, never years, though some weeks are longer than others. He stops writing and he screams and he cries and he cuts himself mercilessly and tears at the skin on his back and pulls his nails from his toes and gnaws at his tongue and he peels the muscle and sinew from his legs and scrapes at his bones. The entire time he is not writing and every moment he is not writing he is dying. On some days he enjoys the pain itself and on other days he enjoys inflicting it upon himself. But he is always dying.

And once he has died enough, he knows that he can write and he can speak. He knows that to write and to speak, he must suffer. The only thing that inspires him is misery.

He writes about the boy who kicks the tin can down the sidewalk, and he says that that boy imagines himself in the tin can. That boy blames himself for his mother’s death, and that boy dreams that he can kick himself further and further down the street until he can kick his guilt away into the river.

He writes about the couple that lovingly hold hands while walking through the park and kiss each other on the nose when they stop under the old lamppost. He says that the woman is truly in love with the man, but that the man is only with the woman because he needs someone to love him. The woman knows this, but she truly loves that man and hopes that he will grow to love her. He never will, and she will hang herself when he falls in love with another woman. The man will not go to the funeral and will only think about her four more times in his life.

He writes about a woman who doesn’t exist. He writes about a woman who he looks up at from across the room as he scowls at his keyboard.

“How do you make a sense of ennui interesting?” he writes about asking her.

He writes that she walks over to him and kisses him softly on the cheek through his bristly beard.

“You look around it,” she says to him, pulling him off of the couch and out the door and making him feel like he could say to the whole world that he was happy. He would write and he would say that he was truly happy.

I Rearranged the Furniture

I rearranged the furniture in my room and swept the dust and tattered receipts and the makeup you left behind into the garbage. I washed the mould out from under the bottles in the corner. I rinsed the sugary build-up out of them and I peeled the labels off to see what was underneath. I put them in a different corner.

I cut off all of my hair and got new tattoos. You got tattoos and you were happy. I wanted new tattoos to be happy. The needle stained my skin and now people know me for the patterns etched into my arms, etched over burns and scars, etched over the pale innocence I believed I had lost. My hair grew back and I wear sweaters in the winter.

I started writing stories about you and me, but mostly about me because I don’t remember you. You take up a corner of my mind and your back is turned to me and you ignore me when I try to turn you around. I throw bricks and tears and late-night texts that go right through you and into that dark corner. The stories are never about you. I can’t bring myself to insult you and mean it. I blame myself and I take my medication and I don’t remember you.

I remember my glasses falling to the floor in slow motion. I remember lying on the couch in my underpants on a Tuesday afternoon. I remember leave me alone. I remember legs curling further than I could reach. I remember do you resent me? I remember grow up. I remember silence. I remember silence. I remember silence. I remember it shouldn’t have happened. I remember we’d keep in touch. I remember the cold sting of the lack of your fingers. I remember the exhilaration wearing off.

You cried in front of a squirrel and promised you’d visit and shook your head angrily and smiled your crooked smile and above all, above all of these things, you are all so incredibly beautiful and I regret none of you and you regret all of me.

Little black cat. Elephant. A baby duck cooked inside an egg. Snoopy. The warmth that filled my chest when I smelled your hair as we danced in a snow globe and my world fell apart. You thought my dream was about you. Cigarettes at a comedy show. The noise you made when I held your hands.

These were our private and personal worlds. These were the lives we created together, and you will not recognize the others, but I have lived them and lived with them and they are what created this life. I hope you will love them as I loved them and love them. I hope you will hold them so close that they grip my heart and it stops beating and you smile because you knew me well enough to know what I always wanted.

Last Meal

The tangy salt of the soy sauce bounces off of the bland, rubbery texture of the egg. The wet noodles are soggy and over-boiled and they fall apart before I can slurp them into my mouth. There are no combinations of flavours in this dish. There are no undertones. There is the overwhelming saltiness of the soy sauce that bounces off of the bleak, vulcanized texture of the egg.

I am eating in my bed, surrounded by four bare, bone-white walls. It is cold, but I am sitting on top of the blankets. It doesn’t matter that it’s cold. I like that it’s cold. I like the numbness that builds up in my toes and I like stretching them and rubbing the numbness out with my hands. I like how brittle and useless my fingers feel in the cold. It feels like I imagine being old would feel like. I would like to feel old at least once. Not old in the way that people use it to refer to nostalgia or when talking to a younger person. Old in the way that you feel when you can’t have kids anymore and you know you should have retired years ago but you’re still working your dead-end job and living in a sad bachelor’s apartment and you think back to that girl you loved way back in the day and you break down crying because you can’t remember her name. I want to feel old. I want to forget her name and feel sad. I want to feel like I’ve earned my right to feel sad.

I shouldn’t feel this sad. I should feel happy or angry or miserable or something youthful and energetic. But I don’t feel any of those things. I just feel sad. The saddest feeling is acceptance. When you begin to feel sad, I think that you are a little shocked by how sad you are for no reason. It’s surprising to one day wake up and you just aren’t happy to see the world. You get out of bed anyways, but you just can’t shake this feeling that there’s something wrong with you and there’s something wrong with everyone and there is just something so inherently wrong about everything. It’s upsetting and confusing to not feel the way you did yesterday. You were happy and hopeful yesterday, and now you aren’t.

And then you get angry about being sad. Maybe you punch a hole in the wall. Maybe you call your girlfriend names she doesn’t deserve to be called. Maybe you scream into your pillow until you fall asleep when you know there’s nobody in the house. But you’re angry, and you don’t contain it. It’s impossible to contain. You’re so sad and nothing you do works, so you get frustrated and become bitter. And that bitterness stays inside of you forever, nestled in your pathetic, broken heart.

You’ll hurt someone you love, and then you’ll realize you need some help. So you go to the doctor and you ask for pills. The doctor gives you pills, tells you to take one a day at breakfast. So you do. Maybe you feel a bit better after a few weeks. Maybe you don’t. You go back to the doctor and say that the pills aren’t working. They give you new pills, and you go home and everything gets a little brighter. Then it dulls down. Then you take all of the pills and when you walk out of the hospital with a new bottle of pills, you realize that nothing is going to work. You’re stuck like this for the rest of your life.

That is truly depressing. But you can’t kill yourself. You already tried and it didn’t work and now you have a hard time looking your friends in the eyes because you’re deeply ashamed of yourself. You know that they love you and now maybe they even love you a little more, but you’d rather sit behind a computer and make jokes than actually sit down with them for a cup of tea. You cry. A lot. More than you should. You even drink more water because of how much you cry. You cry so much that you actually start to think it’s pretty funny. But even if you’re laughing, you’re still crying. You are always crying.

That’s when you give up. You stop crying and when you look in the mirror you notice that your eyes are a different colour. Were they always that colour? Were they always so dark? How are you sleeping? Who cares? Who cares. You shamble around your apartment that you used to be terrified of losing. That terror has faded into a dull ache in your back. Sometimes you play guitar, but singing is hard for you because of the cigarettes and alcohol and your vocal cords have atrophied from disuse so your voice cracks when you try and hit the high notes. Sometimes you write little stories, but nobody pays you to do it. You just want to have some kind of record that you existed. You just want to know that you exist because there are so many days when you find it so hard to know that you exist. There are so many days that just seem like one long day that won’t end.

The saltiness of the soy sauce lingers in my mouth and the churning of my stomach makes me feel nauseous. The fork rests in dirty, undrinkable slime at the bottom of the bowl. You miss her, but you can’t remember her name right now. You lie back and smile and cry and smile and cry as you fall asleep on top of the blankets. You are so happy to be so cold. You have never felt so cold in your life.

Alright

Alright. I love the way the lights flicker in my kitchen. Makes me feel like I’m not the only thing in this house wavering and teetering on the edge. It makes me feel like I’ve got a partner. Like we’re the only things holding the other back from bursting and just laying into ourselves.

I love the way that the tea bag of sleepy-time chamomile and mint and cinnamon and hibiscus and just a little sprinkle of peppermint sags and bobs and drowns itself in my cup of steaming hot water. I love the way that it looks defeated and worn when it’s done steeping. It knows how much I hate it, not because of what it is (there is nothing finer than a good cup of tea, even if it comes from a single vacuum-sealed bag), but because of how relaxing it is. It knows how I thrive on that rage, and it knows how ashamed I am of the difficulty I have bringing it in check. I love the way it sits, soaked and leaking, next to its dried out brown brothers on the plates I’ve neglected to wash.

I love the way that my inner monologue snarls and growls at everything it finds contemptible, which is everything. There is something immensely satisfying about the grimace I wear in my mind when I think about fame or fortune or happiness or sadness or wealth or war or growing old and dying peacefully in my sleep or taking my pills and feeling good about myself. There is something thoroughly pleasing about picturing myself as a starved hyena pacing back and forth in my cage until I fall down and the clatter of my ribs against the bars makes everyone wince. There is something powerful about telling myself that I am not weak, I am just ill and weary and hungry.

I hate the way I love my anger. I hate that I revel in thoughts of violence and rage before catching myself and weeping into my pillows. I hate that I have pills that I need to carry with me as a security blanket. I hate being lucid and sober enough to understand how unpleasant this all is, and I hate being drunk or high enough to forget that I can’t just act the way I want. I hate how long it took me to complete this paragraph because I don’t want to make you worry about me or you or anyone. Nobody is in danger. But I’m definitely in trouble.

Now I’ve finished my tea and my eyes are getting heavy and wet and the tears are coming soon and I can drain myself into my pillow and fall asleep. I can fall asleep and have beautiful incredible delicious amazing dreams where I don’t fear or angry or sad or rage or confusion or wanting. It’s just existing without mattering.

Here Is the Truth

Here is the truth. You are a terrible artist. You are untalented filth. You need to give up immediately. Quit. Just sell your guitar, burn your canvas, tear up every page you’ve ever written, because you’ll never get anywhere.

You aren’t getting any better. It’s been years, and you aren’t getting any better. Quit. Just stop. Your gut feeling? The feeling that tells you to keep going despite how soul-crushingly hollow any of your efforts always feel? That feeling is wrong. You need to give up and go home. Go back to school and get a job as an accountant. Find a wife or a husband. Settle down with a mid-five figure salary, have kids.

You’ll be happy. I know a lot of people say that that sounds boring, but you’ll be happy. If you keep doing what you’re doing, if you keep writing and painting and dreaming, you will not succeed. I am the bearer of bad news. I am telling you that if you are unhappy, you will be unhappy forever, and if you are happy, you aren’t a real fucking artist. You aren’t a real artist anyway. Your hands are too slow. You fingers shake too much. People cringe at the sound of your voice.

You will never get respect. Nobody will enjoy your art. You will be cold and miserable and alone until the day you die, weeping and wishing you’d done something else. In death, your works will be buried with you and forgotten as the flesh rots from your bones. The maggots will eat your innards along with your name. You are and forever will be nothing.

But you can change that. You can abandon your art. You can do something about it. You can be fulfilled. You can have a family that’s proud of you and kids that love you. You can have friends that you like to sit around and drink beers with, and you can get a little boat that you take on the river when it’s sunny in July. You will never want for food or shelter. You will never have another sleepless night where the sheer terror of uncertainty smothers you and snakes its way into your lungs. You will be happy.

And if you know all that and you still won’t stop, then you’re an artist. If you will take that misery and hopelessness and terror and you make peace with your sadness and loneliness and hunger, and you take that and you accept it because you only know that you want to make art, you are an artist.

And you will die and you will be forgotten and you will never be appreciated or loved, and you need to hold that so close to your heart that it becomes you. You need to know that that will happen and you need to want for nothing more in life than to make your art. You need to write with your blood, you need to draw in the sand, you need to sing until the whipping wind tears the song from your throat and leaves you choking as it screams. You don’t need to be willing to die for your art. You need to have already died.

Should the Arrow Fly Further, part 7 (finale)

Xiu Zhang had waited a week. It had been a long, slow week. She had tinkered endlessly with her prosthetics. She had drank countless cups of scalding black sludge. And every hour, like clockwork, she had brought up her map and checked the little dot marked G.E.’s position. And every hour, she found that it only moved between the garage where it worked and the apartment complex where it slept. There had been a few times she had gotten excited when the dot swerved down a side street or seemed to waver in front of a building, but it always quickly went back home or to work. Xiu Zhang had waited a long, slow week.

Xiu sat up in her bed and stretched her arms above her head. She swung her legs over the side of the mattress and cracked her neck forcefully. Lighting a half-finished smoke she pulled from the ashtray, she cleared the crust from her eyes and brought up the map on the pull-out monitor. Checking the past eight hours of footage, she saw the little dot break away from its usual route for a little over an hour. She blinked twice and wiped her bleary eyes. She replayed it. On its way home from work, the dot marked G.E. had taken the subway and made three stops. Xiu leapt out of her bed and pumped her fist.

“I’ve got you, fucker!” she yelled to herself.

Taking a few breaths and regaining her steely composure, she sat back down in front of the monitor. Cross-referencing the three stops that Ellison had made, she found that the first stop was just a convenience store. He had only stayed there a few minutes, so she concluded that he had been buying cigarettes or something. The next stop was a stationary shop. Strange, but not completely out of the ordinary. Again, he only stayed for a few minutes, and Xiu concluded that it was just to pick up supplies or to meet with a contact. She fast-forwarded the footage. The little dot wandered back and forth nervously in a small factory estate. Xiu checked the address on her database and found that it was listed as having been demolished in 2023. Bringing up the street view, she found a dilapidated building where an empty lot was supposed to be. Xiu grinned to herself and lit a cigarette.

As she waited for night to fall, she tightened the bolts in her legs. She oiled the joints in her arm. She ran tests and rundowns of all the implants and programs she had installed in her head. She was going to go in tonight, and she was going to take Prometheus out. She was going to get revenge for Wei, she was going to save her sister, and she was not going to be stopped. Xiu checked the compartment in her leg where the EMP grenade was stored. She felt the grooves of the numbers on each spot and memorized which number correlated with which colour. Red, yellow, blue, blue to arm. Four, two, six, six. Triple tap green to detonate. Lucky number three three times. Xiu smiled softly to herself. Wei had always been a sucked for the old superstitions. She swallowed a mouthful of sludge and blew out the door.

Xiu stood outside the abandoned factory estate. During the late twentieth century, this building had been used to house factory labourers who would work in the factories nearby. When the factories had closed and industrialization was outsourced to more rural parts of China, most of the buildings had been condemned and demolished. But this factory estate still stood defiant and beige, framed by sleek black skyscrapers in the distance. Xiu hopped the fence silently and snuck through a smashed window.

The inside of the building was pitch black and crumbling. Xiu stepped swiftly over fallen beams and shards of smashed glass. She perked up her ears and listened for any sound of movement. A small scurrying through a corridor on the lower floor. Not likely to be him; a man who calls himself Prometheus is likely to place himself on the highest floor, Xiu thought to herself.

Xiu made her way up a winding staircase. She lightly dragged her right hand along the wall. She was feeling for any rumbling, any footsteps, any indication that there was someone at the top of these stairs. She paused for a moment and just felt. A steady thumping, going from one side of a room to the other. Muffled by a thick carpet. Confident paces. He was two floors up. Xiu sprinted up the stairs as fast as she could on the tips of her toes.

She stopped outside the door and listened again. The footsteps were still present, rhythmically pacing back and forth. Mechanically pacing, in perfect tempo. A million thoughts flashed through her head. She would kick the door in and rip his head off. She would torture him and make him beg for mercy. She would tear his arms off and mangle his body like he had done to Wei. A powerful, deep, commanding voice rang out from the other side of the door.

“Come in, girl.”

Xiu froze. She had been perfectly quiet, she was positive of that. Had he heard her? Did he have sensors in the building she hadn’t noticed?

“I can see you through the door. X-ray vision. Open it up. No need to be afraid.”

Xiu was not afraid. She was angry. She gripped the doorknob and turned. She stood up straight and stepped through the door forcefully. Her mouth was open, ready to bark something at Prometheus before tearing him to pieces, but she found herself completely taken aback by what she found inside. In contrast to the bleak, desolate interior of the rest of the building, Prometheus’ room was stunning. There was an antique desk made of oak sitting in the middle of the room, the most current model of computer openly displayed with a retro-chic monitor. The carpeting was thick plush shag, and even through her boots, she could tell how soft and cushiony it was. On the rich wood pane walls hung a variety of trophies, paintings, even decorative plates. And in the middle of this surreal scene stood Prometheus swirling a glass of fine brandy.

He ran his hand over his matte black scalp and smiled at her with obsidian teeth and unblinking orange-red eyes. “Don’t let my looks frighten you, dear,” he said with a chuckle, “I’m more man than most.”

Xiu did a quick rundown of his augments with her ocular scanner. Advanced power outputs, several lethal weapons systems, and a built-in server running the fastest internet she had ever encountered. Prometheus laughed and gave her a quick twirl.

“Like what you see?” he said, “I’m the foremost model of humanity. I’m almost completely inorganic. I’m almost completely permanent.”

Though his face was permanently peeled back in a skeletal grimace, Xiu thought she detected a hint of resentment and longing in his voice. He bowed to her softly.

“You are Wei’s girl, right? Unfortunate what happened there. He was a good man.”

Prometheus held his brandy up to the light and swirled it pensively. “But he wouldn’t give me what I want. What I need. In a way, he still won’t.”

He swiveled his head toward Xiu with lightning speed. “But I’m sure you know about the thumb print scanner? Doesn’t work if he’s dead, unfortunately. But I’ll figure it out. And then I’ll give it back. I promise you, I will give it back. And you can save your sister.”

Xiu’s heart raced with rage at the mention of Qiu. “What the fuck do you know about my sister?” she shouted at him.

“Oho, it speaks!” Prometheus said in mock amusement, “Next to nothing, other than her name, her birthday, her blood-type, her grades in school, and exactly which hospital room and bed she is lying in right this second. She must have gotten banged up pretty badly to need this little beauty, hm?”

He pulled the tiny lockbox from his suit jacket pocket and twirled it playfully in his palm. “I promise you that she will get it if she needs it. But I need it first. I can make the world a better place. You smoke? I can smell it on you. Go ahead, light one up.”

Xiu stood motionless, glaring at him. He laughed again. So confident. Arrogant. Proud. “Polite to a fault my dear. When I was a boy, I thought I would live forever. As I got older, I realized how foolish it was to think that, but I at least believed that I would live to an old age. Get a job, get married, have kids, all that. And then cancer. Lung cancer, specifically. It had spread almost overnight, torn through my lungs. The doctors said that without a transplant, I would likely die. Even a transplant may have resulted in my body rejecting the new organs, and I would have still likely died. But a mysterious benefactor appeared. A scientist, a technologist, a man of vision and dreams. He said they had created a new technology; a set of mechanical lungs the size and shape of normal lungs. With my permission, they would implant the experimental creation inside of me. Well what did I have to lose? I said yes. And when I woke up, I took a breath. I took the first breath of my life. And I could taste the filth of mankind filling my lungs.”

Prometheus paused and took a deep, satisfied breath. He took a small sip of brandy and placed the glass on the desk. “The technologists declared the implant a rousing success. The technology had taken perfectly, with no risk of rejection. And I felt good. A month later, I returned to the doctor, and they found the cancer had spread to my liver. I demanded a new liver, and they said they could only hope to put me on a transplant list. The wait could be years; years that I didn’t have. So I returned to the technologists, and they gave me a new liver. But the cancer spread. When it spread to my legs, they provided new legs. When it spread to my jaw, they gave me a new jaw. And as they kept going, fewer and fewer scientists wanted to help me. Called me a freak of nature. Said I should just lie down and die like a man. If technology is not meant to serve mankind… to preserve mankind, then what is it meant for? When the last scientist turned his back on me, I turned to the underground. I had heard about secret augments, tinkerers and inventors who cared not for the laws of man. I sought them out, and they were more than happy to experiment on me. Every piece of flesh I could tear away was a piece of mortality I shed from my body. But the cancer still spreads. It spreads slowly, I have made sure to that, but it spreads. The only way for me to completely remove it is this.”

Prometheus held up the lockbox again. Xiu made an effort to control her breathing. The man was insane. He had to be insane. Who would want to live forever? Who could want to replace their warm, soft flesh with cold steel? She felt the nails on her left hand dig into her palm. On her right hand she felt nothing.

“This,” Prometheus continued, “Is an incredible piece of technology. The nanomachines self-replicate using organic tissue, slowly yet effectively replacing the brain and imitating the firing of neurons. Imagine it. A mechanical brain slowly taking the place of the organic brain. The philosophic questions are endless and unanswered. Would I still be the same person? Would my being die with my organic brain? But philosophy is left to philosophers, and I am no philosopher. I am a humanitarian. I want to be the first man to rise above our need for organic bodies. But I want to be far from the last. I promise you, I will save your sister. And I will make her so much more.”

Xiu dropped her jacket to the ground and walked towards him. She let out a roar and launched her fist at him with all her strength. Prometheus effortlessly side-stepped the blow. Xiu lashed out with a kick, followed by another. Prometheus blocked the first with his forearm and caught the second in the crook of his elbow. Twisting her leg, he flung her down on the plush carpet.

“Dear, I can do this all day and night and then a few days more,” he leaned down to eye level, “But I would rather not. I am an extremely busy man. So I ask you: will you continue to fight, or will you save your sister’s life?”

Xiu spat in his face. His orange-red LED eyes shone back at her without so much as a falter. “I’m going to kill you for what you did to Wei, and I’m going to save my sister’s life.”

She pressed her palm against his forehead and fired an organic bullet from her arm. Even through all of the electric and mechanical nerves, it was an extremely painful feeling. Xiu reeled in shock and looked back at Prometheus. He lay on the ground, his head smoldering. He let out a groan and sat up. “Ouch!” he said mockingly, “That kind of stung. Well, girl, you’ve made your choice. I’m sorry it came to this. For what it’s worth, I’ll still save your sister.”

He bent over Xiu and lifted her in a monstrous bear-hug. She shrieked in pain as he popped her ribs with crushing arms. She glared into his orange-red eyes and gritted her teeth as she dipped her hand into his suit pocked. She found what she was looking for and tossed the lockbox over to her coat near the doorway. Prometheus laughed. “That’s your final action? A minor inconvenience? You petty, petty shrew.”

Xiu bent her leg at an impossible angle and reached into the compartment in her calf. Feeling the numbers on the small orb, she pressed down four times. Four, two, six, six. Lucky number threes. Three small beeps came from the grenade, confirming detonation. Xiu looked at Prometheus with contempt.

“This is for Wei.”

A jolt coursed through her body and then she felt nothing. Prometheus’ eyes flickered and faded, the orange-red flame finally extinguished. His grip loosened, and they collapsed to the ground together. Xiu’s arm and legs were useless. She struggled to breathe, and she could feel her heart palpitating and flittering under the stress. She dug her left hand into the shag carpet and dragged. And she dragged. And she dragged herself with all of her strength until she finally reached the jacket.

From the pocket, she pulled a small tracking device and pressed a homing beacon. Several miles away at Lionel’s dingy pet shop, an alarm began to beep. A small monitor showed him Xiu’s location, and he would know to go find her. Xiu held the tiny lockbox in her hand. She swiped her thumb slowly over the scanner, and with a little confirmation ping, the lockbox clicked open. In the middle of the box sat a tiny micro-chip, no bigger than Xiu’s thumbnail. Xiu’s heart began to fail, the rhythm become slurred and erratic. Her lungs strained against her broken ribs. As her vision clouded and darkened, she looked into the lockbox again. Pressed against the top of the lid was a small photograph of Xiu, Qiu, and Wei, smiling and holding each other in the sun.

Xiu Zhang lit a cigarette, took a deep breath, and died.

Should the Arrow Fly Further, pt 6

Xiu Zhang squatted next to the garbage cans in the alley and pulled her hood up over her head. She ran her fingers along the old flintlock pistol in her coat pocket. The woodgrain on the grip was rough and chipping away. Lifting it gently and weighing it in her hand, she ran her palm over the butt of the handle. It was a smooth, soft brass, dented and bruised from being used as a club. The orange-red cherry from Xiu’s cigarette sent up wisps of smoke that twirled effortlessly through the pouring rain. She focused on the smell of nicotine, the delicate claws of smoke that painlessly scratched her lungs with each deep inhalation. She sat motionlessly and watched the door of the garage.

As she extinguished and lit her fifth and sixth cigarettes, she heard a latch unlocking from the inside of the shop. The door was lifted open, and the man inside crouched under it before fumbling for his keys in his dark blue sweat shirt. Xiu stood up and walked swiftly over to him as he bent over to lock the door.

“Where is Prometheus?” she asked in a chilly monotone.

The man gasped and turned to her with his eyes wide in fear.

“Who the fuck are you? Where did you come from?”

Xiu punched him hard in the chest and he fell backwards. She crouched and looked directly into his eyes. She activated all of the implants in her head, and her irises glowed menacing neon green. She heard the whirring of the gears next to her eyes, and she knew he did too.

“Gibson Ellison. You know where Prometheus is. You worked for him. You still work for him. Where is he?”

Ellison looked around nervously and squirmed backward until his back was against the garage door.

“L-listen, lady,” he stammered, “I know you must want this Prometheus guy really bad, but I don’t know who that is, I’m just a guy who…”

He trailed off as she stood up and pulled the pistol from her coat pocket. She examined it, balanced it in her hand, twirled the weighty object effortlessly in her fingers. She crouched next to him and smiled cruelly.

“Gibson Ellison,” she repeated, “You know where Prometheus is. I’m sure of that. Do you know what this is?”

Ellison eyed the weapon cautiously, unsure of what she wanted him to say.

“I-it’s an old pistol. Please, please, I have a family,” he begged.

Xiu stood again, flipping the gun in the air and catching it by the barrel.

“Don’t worry,” she said calmly, “I’m not going to shoot you.”

Midway through his sigh of relief, Gibson Ellison felt a searing pain crashing into the side of his kneecap. Screaming and howling, he grabbed at his limb, as though trying to squeeze the sensation out of his leg. Xiu paced back and forth calmly.

“I’m going to hurt you very, very, very badly. I am going to make you suffer. I am going to make you wish you had answered the question when I first asked it. Where is Prometheus?”

Choking on his tears, Ellison looked up at the terrifying silhouette that stood in front of him. Without taking her burning green eyes off of him, she lit a cigarette that hung limply in her mouth.

“Please, please,” he begged, holding his hand in front of her, “I just worked for him, if I tell you where he is, he’ll…”

Ellison slumped to the wet concrete, sobbing.

“You know my name,” he said through his wet cries, “What else do you know?”

Xiu brought up the file she had saved on her hard drive and read from it mechanically.

“Gibson Ellison. You were arrested in 2034 for armed robbery, released in 2038 for good behaviour. You were placed in a rehabilitation program for which you failed to report to in 2039. Since then, you have been living under aliases and performing small crimes and smuggling deals for various criminal organisations. Most recently, you have been delivering and receiving unmarked goods for an unknown benefactor, alongside two other small-time criminals, Alexei Ivanovich Liebemann and Johann Alan. Comparing Liebemann and Alan’s activities in the past year and a half to their activities beforehand, it becomes obvious that the three of you were working under a single entity who was orchestrating all of your meet-ups. Prometheus.”

Xiu looked at Ellison through her display.

“Is there anything else I should know?” she added.

Ellison looked at her before dropping his eyes to the ground. “Does it say anything about my son?”

Xiu read through the file again, then once more before looking at the man. He held his head in his hands and was crying softly.

“No, it doesn’t,” Xiu said.

Putting the gun back in her pocket, she crouched down next to Ellison and turned off all her implants. She extended a cigarette to him, which he placed in his mouth with a shaky hand.

“I have a son,” Ellison began, “He’s a good kid. Had him after I got out. Tried to move away from crime, into a family. His name’s Ray. I love him. But he’s, ah… He’s hard to manage. He’s got health issues. Makes him sad or angry or too happy. Never thought that was a thing. ‘Too happy.’ Sounds weird saying it.”

“Get to the point, Ellison.”

“Right, right, sorry. So it makes him kinda crazy. Not much you can do about that. Pills help a bit, but pills are expensive and he doesn’t always take them. Hides them under his tongue. Pukes them back up. Usually he’s real good, but sometimes when he’s mad or feeling too good, he doesn’t like the pills. Things are getting hard to control, he won’t go to school, he’s hurting people, he’s… He’s talking about hurting himself. Killing himself. We’re scared, we don’t know what to do. We’re so tired from taking care of him, and we can’t afford his meds, and… Then I get this letter. An old-fashioned letter in the mail. Never seen one that wasn’t junk. Says that if I do a few things, they’ll get a neuro-inhibitor implanted in the kid. Regulates his chemicals, makes more if there aren’t enough, gets rid of some if there are too many… I dunno how it all works, but it works. Haven’t seen him like that in years. He’s happy, but not too happy. He gets frustrated, but he takes a deep breath and calms down. He’s in control of his feelings, and we can see the boy we raised. The kid we love.”

Xiu leaned over and gave him another cigarette, which he gladly accepted. As the lighter illuminated his face, Xiu looked at his soft, heavy-lidded eyes and realized that she didn’t feel pity or rage towards this man anymore. She felt sympathy. Ellison took a deep breath and continued.

“So I get a call. Guy on the other end asks ‘How do you like the new implant?’ I tell him that I love it, it’s great, can’t thank him enough. And he says…”

Ellison took a deep haul from his cigarette. His hands began to shake again, and as he placed the cigarette back in his mouth, the cherry lit up his face with a violent, strobing red-orange.

“He says it’s a bomb. He says I work for him now. And if I refuse to co-operate, he kills my son. So now I do this. Or my son dies. So, I’m sorry lady, but I can’t tell you where he is, or he’ll kill my son. You can kill me, or torture me, whatever. I’m just telling you right now that you won’t get anything out of me.”

Xiu stood up and extended the man her hand. He reached up and she lifted him to his feet, wincing slightly as he put weight on his bruised knee. Looking at him from under her furrowed brow, she exhaled in defeat.

“I understand,” she said, “Go. I won’t put your son in harm’s way for my own sake. I promise.”

Ellison’s lip shook and he nodded quickly before limping out of the alley and into the brightly illuminated main street. Xiu watched him turn the corner before bringing up her ocular display. Flipping through the pages to her map of Hong Kong, she watched a little dot marked ‘G.E.’ get into a cab and head home for the night.

She ran her fingers through her hair as she walked past cheap dim sum stands and cellphone vendors who hawked stolen goods. She felt bad for having tricked Ellison, but she understood that he would have never talked. He wasn’t tough like her, or mean like her, or intimidating like her. But he loved like her. She knew that he would never have talked because she would never have talked.

She stepped into her apartment and ordered herself a cup of filthy black sludge. Sitting down on the bed, she massaged her temples. Bringing up her map again, she watched the little G.E. dot come to a stop in a little apartment complex. She imagined him getting in bed next to his wife, who slept peacefully. In the other room of the apartment was his son, who slept peacefully as well. And she imagined that little dot tossing and turning, terrified that any moment, he would lose it all.

She knew how close she was to Prometheus. She knew how close she was to saving her sister. But she would wait for Gibson Ellison’s sake, and for his wife’s sake, and for his son’s sake. She would make sure that he had no knowledge of the tiny tracking devices he had inhaled when he smoked those cigarettes she had given him. She would follow his movements carefully for a week, taking care to note every stop he made that seemed strange or out of the way of his daily routine. And when she found which stop hid Prometheus from her, she would strike hard and fast and deadly. She would be a snake darting down a rodent’s burrow. When she was done, Gibson Ellison would sleep peacefully alongside his family.

Lightning-Blue

There was a boy in a town I passed through on my way to Canada. The year must have been ’67 or ’68, because those were the years I was wandering through the Midwestern United States, which is where this happened. I was still acting as a doctor to earn rent and board in towns that hadn’t seen so much as a bandage in decades. But this boy in this town, his parents brought him to me, telling me he was infected with a disease that made him repulsive. They had kept him locked in his room for months. This was done not to prevent themselves or the other townsfolk from contracting whatever ailed him, but because he made everyone in town so uncomfortable that they had requested he be quarantined until his disease passed. The parents begged me to come to their house and examine him. The boy sat on a small stool in the corner of their living room and stared sullenly at me with large, dull grey eyes.

The parents hardly made eye contact with me, but I made a note of how hard they avoided looking in the direction of the boy. The effort with which they averted their gaze seemed as though he was performing obscene acts on himself and cackling madly about it. But he just sat there, his heavy-lidded eyes looking softly through me. I began asking the parents the standard questions that I ask parents before an examination.

“Have you noticed any strange lesions, rashes, scrapes, blisters, bruises, or anything of the sort?”

The father looked at the mother inquisitively before responding.

“No, no, we’ve seen nothing like that. But his skin is vile and mottled and hideous, like he’s pulled it on too tightly over a warped skeleton.”

Looking back at the boy, I saw nothing of the sort, but I continued with my questions.

“Have you noticed any vomiting or poor appetite? Any excessive sweating or bad odour?”

“No, we haven’t noticed any vomiting, and as far as we know, he eats what we give him. But everything that comes from his mouth is putrid and rotting and stinks like eggs left in the sun.”

The boy smiled softly as he looked at his feet.

“Sir… Ma’am… Could you tell me exactly what is wrong with your boy?”

The father again looked at the mother, his mouth hanging open. He turned to me as though he was about to say something with complete and utter conviction, but had simply forgotten what he was about to say as the words hit his tongue. The mother grimaced and blinked madly with one eye, trying to recall some blindingly apparent fact about their son’s illness. Finally, a look of calm appeared on their faces and the father spoke to me.

“He’s simply revolting, and we can’t have him in town in this condition.”

I nodded my understanding and asked that they leave so that I could continue my examination. I beckoned the boy over and began checking his vital signs, all of which were normal. As I continued my examination, I attempted to speak with the boy.

“So, you parents tell me you’re sick. How have you been feeling?”

He smiled tiredly at me.

“I’ve never felt better.”

“Have you noticed any bumps or bruises on your body that weren’t there before? Any strange feelings in your tummy or your head?”

“No, sir, I feel as right as I have ever felt. More right, even.”

I scratched at my beard and stared at him quizzically.

“Well, we’ve got to figure out what’s going on otherwise you’ll never get to go out again.”

His grey eyes flared a shocking lightning-blue.

“Maybe I don’t want to go out.”

I stood up in disgust and shock. Walking brusquely into the kitchen, I explained to his parents that there was nothing more that I could do. I spat at them that their son was fated to be confined to their house for the rest of their waking days. In a rage, I turned without nodding a goodbye to them and slammed the door behind me as I stormed out of their house.

It was only a day later that I realized what had happened. There had been no reason for me to be so disgusted by the child. There had been no reason for me to be angry at his parents.

I tried to return to the town, but I could not remember how I got there or how I had gotten out. I tried contacting the parents, but as I spoke to the operator, I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names. I’ve told this story many times before, and each time, some details slip and fade away, while other details change subtly or drastically. There is only one thing that remains constant.

His grey eyes flared a shocking lightning-blue.