by Mark McGhee
“You know why motherfucker.” I smile.
He knows why.
Common courtesy.
I pull it out and wipe it on his jacket. It is quick and quiet. I don’t think he deserved it so easy, but I need to do it this way. I walk to my car and drive quietly away. As I turn on the boulevard, I see him slumped next to the newsstand – no one even noticed. It took less than five seconds from my asking for a cigarette. Timing is everything when you’re taking a life.
There are times when, no matter how much you want to explode someone’s head with a .45 round, you know that it’s just simply too loud. A silencer can make it easy, but sometimes, sometimes, you just know they don’t deserve the courtesy. A silencer is too sterile and pristine for some. You have a second, you must take a second for eye contact, but you cannot become part of it. You must take the look and keep it. Do it quietly, precisely, and walk. Quietly. Slowly. And there is a quiet satisfaction of driving a knife, or a finely sharpened screw-driver into a person that truly deserves it. A scumbag that doesn’t deserve the dignity of a bullet. Bullets are used for many things. Brave soldiers are taken down with bullets. Good guys. Bad guys. depends on your perspective – many heroes good and bad have fallen for good and bad at the sound of a discharge, the searing pain of a bullet. A molester doesn’t deserve the dignity of a bullet. Certainly not the surgeon’s precision of a silenced .45 hollow point.
And I sit seeing these things clearly. Thankfully. Seeing what happened in the days before here. A reprise from ravens, and mutilated wanderers, and dead eyes, and walking the sleep, and waking up in someone else’s hell. Just to be a place where I could hear and see what happened before here. I didn’t mind tending to the dead, the lost, the wanderers…as long as I wasn’t out there and one of them. In here I didn’t feel like one of them. Sometimes I helped one or two, here and there. As they saw me more, I could do more. As they were in need they saw me.
When they begged for cigarettes from the cashier that couldn’t see them, then seeing me, and a knowing. A glimpse of recognition, and then the attention turned to me. So I helped them day in and day out. When Sam came back he thanked me and I grabbed my DAYs wages. a bottle of whiskey and a few packs of smokes, and I headed back into my place. My Place. And these DAYs, these NIGHTs they pass by and I see. And I don’t walk the sleep. I see. I can see things so clearly and some things are fuzzy. I don’t want to walk, to look, wander. I know there is more out there for me, but why look for more when I know she is gone? Why look for blank eyed friends from the past. Here everything is coming back clearly and there are no ravens to taunt, to tear, to laugh, I can sit and see. For now that is all I want to do. I fear the day I might have to leave. It could come I know. Maybe I will have to, to see, or understand everything I need to, but for now, everything is flowing so clearly into my vision. I see everything so vividly. As the blood poured from my temple in fluorescent crimson candle apple syrup, these thoughts do flow through my brain, my being, my CONSCIOUSNESS. NOW.
How long this IS I cannot tell you. Seeing things didn’t necessarily make things clearer. Especially when it came to TIME. So I cannot tell you the exactly how much time passed. I know that I sat. I know that I watched. I smoked my cigarettes and I drank my whiskey. Sometimes Sam and I talked. Sometimes we said nothing. Sometimes we just watched the tortured souls. Sam always seemed to know more about people than they seem to know themselves. He could tell where someone was going. He could see the wreck they just crawled out of. I could too sometimes but not like Sam. Sometimes he would tell me in vivid detail how a person just died, but I couldn’t see that. I could direct someone to where they had just died but I was short on details. What I NEVER understood was how Sam new things about living people that maybe he should not understand. I didn’t press him. Sam was an enigma.
“Good morning sunshine!”
“Good morning, Sam.”
Sam was smoking a camel cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. It was indeed DAY. The sunlight blazed through the front of the store window. I felt very groggy. My head was pounding and I knew it wasn’t from the whiskey nor from the cigarettes. I didn’t get hangovers. Not HERE. No the pounding of my head here meant that I had been asleep. Sleep is something I’d found here when I started STAYING. When you walked the sleep you did not really sleep. You wandered around in a comatose state and it was not restful. Much of the time after walking the sleep it was just frustrating and agonizing because you did not know where you had wandered, who you’d seen, who had seen you, or why you had slipped. I know I told you this already. So on rare occasion now that I was staying here, I began to sleep again. It wasn’t often. In fact it was quite rare, but it did happen and more and more often. I can’t say it was restful I think it came from thinking too much. In trying to make sense of things that didn’t make sense. Still I felt that this time would have to come to an end. This, my oasis and shelter from the tortured, from the ravens, from people that I knew who did not recognize me because they walked the sleep. So many things I thought I understood when I first got here. I was so confused at first. I thought things that turned out not to be true. I thought I could do more than I could. I believed I was more in control than I was.
I thought I was making sense of things around me. I clung to my anger. Into my frustration I sank. I bathed. I drank and smoked. And somehow I thought I had a handle on things. And my arrogance, there was no end to my arrogance. But it served me at times.
I really had believed that somehow, for whatever reason, I was different than the rest of those wandering around. I was no different. I was susceptible to being yanked into someone else’s hell, someone else’s misery, someone else’s dreams. I had thought I could walk and learn. Maybe I could help others. Maybe I could help myself. Eventually leave this place with some dignity. But I had traveled so much, and wandered through so many places, where my soul was tortured. And I saw so many others like me.
“Sam, I think it might have to go soon. I don’t want to. It just seems like there something I have to do. That I can’t do. Hiding here.”
“I don’t have all the answers, kid. I know you think I do.”
“I don’t know what I think of you, Sam. But I’m thankful for you just the same. I needed this time. There’s souls worse off than me wandering around out there.”
“So you wanna go save them? Are you gonna help people over to the other side? Go kill some ravens maybe?”
He chuckles and lights and other cigarette. He pours a shot of jack Daniels into his coffee.
“Come on Sam. After all this time, you’re going to fuck with me?”
Sam laughs and takes a long drink from his coffee. He blows a cloud of smoke into the air. His eyes are twinkling.
“I just wonder what it is you’re looking for. You’ve been back here so many times. And now you seem to have found a place where you can find yourself. I guess I wonder what it is you will find.”
“I’m not sure. When I dream, and that is not always, I see ravens, and I see destruction, and I see things that I do not want to see.”
“Perhaps you should listen.”
“To dreams?”
“Why not?”
“You want me to listen to dreams. This seems like one big dream. Not a good one. A nightmare.”
“But you’ve been out there. You seen that there are much worse places to be. Would you rather walk the sleep? Would you rather be picked apart by ravens? Would you rather slip into the hell of another’s sleep?”
“No.”
“Then stay awhile longer. Not for me so much, though you are a big help. I grow weary of this existence. I grow weary of dealing with the dead. And I cannot stay here very much longer. So maybe stay while.”
“Ok, Sam. But I know I have to go out one last time. I’m not sure why. But I have to go.”
Chapter 17
So the end of my life sometimes takes form and sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes things are very clear here as I watch people alive and dead buy
snack cakes, booze, cigarettes, and everything else that places like this like to sell. And I watch the people come and go. ALIVE and DEAD. I watch them come and go. I come out when I need to come out. But sometimes I just STAY. And WATCH.
And I think back now to the last DAYS. When I was ALIVE. Memories. Last DAYS on that side. ALIVE. When I was checking my money. When I realized I’d given away so much of my money. I drank away, and smoked away, so much of my money. And I had nothing but a few thousand dollars left. I had wandered up and down the coast, from Eureka to San Isidro. I had wandered down deep into Mexico. Along the coast all the way to the end of Baja. I’d seen things I didn’t want to see. I saw things beautiful. I saw things vile. I lived on the boundaries of civilization and human decency. Of people living. Of people surviving. Of people vacationing. As a bum. A homeless, seemingly penniless, rag picker, all the while carrying around thousands of dollars in my tattered jacket. My Doc marten boots were shredded and torn. Too many nights soaked in ocean water and then dried in the sun. I recall I had given up going to thrift stores for new clothes. I had stopped caring. So I dragged myself inland. And I slept at a mission in Santa Ana. I stayed there for some time. I worked little odd jobs and did whatever the mission asked me to. I even put money in the offering at church when no one was looking. Slowly, I began to see things a little more clearly.
Chapter 18
Now I see, in the end. That NIGHT. The END. I didn’t have an apartment. I was living in a storage unit very close to where I died. I had rented that unit. I’m not sure how, but I had rented it. I closed it at night time and I slept there. I had rigged the outside lock to look secure when it was down so the security guards didn’t find me, or worse, so I didn’t get padlocked in. During the day I wandered around Santa Ana. I sometimes ate at the mission because of my appearance, but on days that I drank lots of whiskey, and didn’t care anymore, and my shame didn’t nod at me, I would go and get a hamburger. I made sure that I was back at the storage area before closing. And sometimes, when my stomach growled from no food. When my body shook with terror from no alcohol. I slid the door up a few feet and slipped into the night. Headed for the store. And I would return to my unit. Close myself in to my safe little place. And I would sleep there. At night, when I couldn’t sleep. Even when the whiskey couldn’t make me sleep. I would sometimes walk around. And this liquor store was a place that I came. Sam’s Place. Perhaps I could have lived this way longer than I did. But for chance I came out on the wrong night. I was seen. I was seen by someone by chance. Someone that knew someone that was looking for me. Looking for me for a very long time. Someone that knew me, or least recognize my face, and they told someone that I was not DEAD. That was I very much ALIVE. And those people, those people that wanted me dead, well, word finally got back to them. I was not dead. My life was dead. My existence was dead.
All that I had loved and held was dead. But I wasn’t. Any shred of decency, of personhood, of respect, of anything anyone would hold dear, all of that was dead. But I was still walking around. And that was a problem. I shouldn’t be walking around. I had crossed lines. I had done things that should not have been done. I had crossed people that should not have been crossed. People that you do not cross. People that no one crossed. And though I had done things that I believed were right, in my own mind, had justified them, for those that felt I had done wrong, I was alive, and that must not be so. And so the wheels were put in motion. And it took a long TIME.
I had wanted to die
more than anything
I had ever wanted
I sought death in that moment
One touch away
One ounce of pressure
In that moment
I wanted nothing more
But I could not
I simply could not pull the trigger
Because of her sweet face in my mind
Baby face
Chubby
Angelic
I was here and I did not need to be here. And yet I still had no place to go. In the beginning I always believed that I could leave. I always believed that I could go. And the beginning.
I thought there was some of them waiting for me. But now, I do not believe that.
Maybe I can go. But there’s no one who will be waiting for me. I have no faith or belief that anything will be better than what I have now. And still even though I don’t know how or will it can be out there, I will walk, I will wander, a walk the sleep. I will leave this place and I will leave the safety of Sam. I will leave the safety of my room and wander again. Not because I want to but because I have to. And I cannot explain why. But I have to.
The morning I left was not unlike any other DAY. The liquor store was very empty. Sam was late, or maybe wasn’t coming in at all. He knew I was leaving. Maybe Sam felt he didn’t want to say goodbye. Maybe he thought. Maybe he knew. I was never coming back. But I was sorry to not say goodbye. I was sorry not to thank him for all he had done.
I walked out and I walked into the sleep.
I walked the sleep DAY.
DAY in
DAY out
I walked.
NIGHT
I slipped into many places cold, and dark, and evil. I walked in nothing. I saw people that died.
I saw people I killed.
I saw people I cared about.
I saw people I hated.
I saw people I loved.
I just walked and didn’t look back anymore.
A fog of despair and hatred.
For all that I saw, it did not matter anymore.
I came back and rested. I smoked. I watched.
Sam and I didn’t say a whole lot to each other after I returned.
I just walked in one morning, grabbed a pack of smokes and a bottle. I went to my room.
Days, weeks, months, many years maybe.
MANY YEARS.
I’m not sure. I just decided one NIGHT to leave again.
It was the right TIME.
I walk into the NIGHT.
It is late. I take a last look at the liquor store and see Sam looking at me from the cash register. I wave a final goodbye. I’m glad I can leave this time when he is there.
He nods. I walk into the parking lot and head north of Dyer Road.
I feel something in my hand finally.
A plastic bag. I start to look inside the bag.
But I don’t.
I don’t need to.
I know what’s in the bag.
I know.
A brushing against my leg. King. My dog. He looks up at me with his doggy smile and wags his tail.
“Thanks for coming back boy.”
I look back to the store and I see Sam looking at me. He nods. I give him a wave and walk south towards the 55 freeway with my dog.
Best dog in the whole world. KING.
Walk
Come with me.
Take my hand as we walk the sleep. There is a warm comforting hand. Embrace it as we walk together. Come down with me. We shall wash our souls from the pain and find solace there, my love.