this is a genuine rare bird book
A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books
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Copyright © 2018 by Austin Thacker
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Set in Minion Pro
epub isbn: 9781947856431
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data available upon request.
For my father, who told me that I was only in a valley, and over the mountain was a town full of safety and health; that one day I would look back at my time in the valley of death, and it would only stand as a moment in my life. His wisdom and reassurance is one of the reasons why I’m alive, he is my hero, he is my rock.
For my mother, who carried a sea of love, endless grasslands of pain, and mounds of strength on her shoulders while my life hung on the weight of dental floss and the will of God. I don’t know what I would do without her.
For Lylah Lee Paton. I watched your funeral video another time and can hardly keep it together, even after so many years. We fought the same battle at the same time, yet I would have gladly taken your place. Although I know deep inside that once you left you never stopped smiling, and therefore you were victorious. Jesus said “Daughter, run to me,” and you ran. Then you flew. (August 15, 2010–August 26, 2014) Choroid Plexus Carcinoma.
For Sebastian Meyer. Hey, man, I am sorry that I didn’t visit as much, but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing another friend. I prayed until I fell asleep on the floor, my tears drying on my face, hoping that God would agree with my demands. Yet God works in mysterious ways and wanted you home. Save a spot for me, as well as a Wii controller and we will play Super Smash Bros Brawl once again. This time though, not one of us will be in pain. (January 20, 1996–June 7, 2016) Grey Cell Lymphoma.
For the nurses, Dr. Kopp. and Dr. Katsanis, who all saved my life. I will always be grateful, and my debt will never be paid.
For Savana Sasser, who has stuck by my side through middle school, cancer, high school, and now the beginning of adulthood. You are my best friend.
For my PTSD. You are like a rattlesnake on my doorstep, once I step into the fresh air you attack, sinking your fangs into my pride, and my hope for a better tomorrow. Yes, the pain from you drove me to this laptop, and your pain drove the thoughts that created the tragedies for my novel. Yet everyday I will step outside and face your pain, everyday I will bear your venom and use its wisdom to sculpt a better tomorrow. Yes, you make me feel petrified, you make high school all the more difficult to relate with others, but one day I will grow an immunity to your poison, and when you strike, my smile will not fade, and my wisdom will continue to prosper.
For God, who has given me more time and saved my life.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
noun
Medicine
A condition of persistent mental and emotional stress occurring as a result of injury or severe psychological shock, typically involving disturbance of sleep and constant vivid recall of the experience, with dulled responses to others and to the outside world.
—Oxford English Dictionary
Contents
The Rage
You’re Asking Too Much
Irony
Shades of Blue on the Yellow Canvas
The Telemarketer
Love Filled Lies
The Society Boxed in Mirrors
The Prayer
Breaking Point
Umbrella
The Last Day of Freedom
Yesterday
Tomorrow
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
The Rage
July 30, 2017
It’s time. Gather up, children, around the tree, come on! Hurry and rest around the bark, I want to tell you a story. It’s a very upsetting tragedy in a small town that deals with a man, a woman, and their unrecognized love that is on its worldly end. Listen children, carefully. To every whisper and detail, because this story has an end, but hinted throughout from the irony of life and shown through a pattern of worldly chaos, through a life of constant defeat and a single victory.
It began with the rain, slowly, willingly falling from the dark clouds above, making the scorched dirt into a soupy heap of muck, while the cacti stood like monuments to the sky. Thunder rumbled with rage, building up, then slowly subsiding, while the cold-blooded creatures of the Sonora Desert were resting and avoiding (but at the same time cherishing) the chilling winds from this steady storm. The mountains blackened the horizon, only periodically lit from the neon-blue streaks of lightning coming from the gray sky, incubated perfectly with friction, pressure, and most of all, heat. This is nature’s natural rage, rage toward pollution, rage toward global warming, rage toward humanity. Besides the thunder, there was no sound but the tapping of the rain onto the concrete roads in a well-timed pace, while it drizzled down with an absolute sense of detest toward itself. Everything was colorless without the rage: the animals, the buildings, and the desert filled with its low, prickly cacti, all casting even darker silhouettes than night can offer. Except for one pair of police headlights, with an engine noise growling steadily, in a way harmonizing with the rain from the car’s idleness and vibrations.
The dark outline behind the driver’s seat window stared lazily at the rhythm of the raindrops tapping on the front windows, tap…tap…tap. In his free time, he lifted weights, never breaking his record, never growing stronger than he already was, as every day he lifted the same light weights. Old age slows down the growth of muscle, but Mark Wegman never thought he was old. He had brown hair and five o’clock shadow flooded with individual grays, a forehead with deeply imprinted wrinkles, as well as well-defined hands and a body full of many forgotten scars, but he still saw himself as twenty-three—as the heroic, muscular magician, marine, lover, father, and motivator for all. Those bright green eyes were the same, this was true; those young, passionate eyes had always been the same.
However, there was one major difference between then and now that separated him from being the man he was before. A difference that he had been struggling with every day for the past twenty years and, in one way or another, would struggle with for the rest of his life. It was every individual struggle, every disaster that had taken hold of him and his own family. Each one, carrying its own level of strength, its own weight of guilt toward his inability to control, weighing on one side of a scale, with the other side being sanity, tolerance, acceptance. These were his demons: they were a legion, roaming freely in Mark with contentment, satisfaction, and comfort. Each one, very glad to be there as much as the other, as if Mark’s mind were a private, gated community with notoriety in its higher status. But there was one demon that was significantly larger, more ruthless and active, making the others seem petty, almost meaningless. This demon was the reason why Mark was so unstable, why he stared at the rain the way he did.
This demon was the memory of her in their youth. Her rosy cheeks, lovely brown hair, and chocolate-colored eyes.
She’s like an angel from heaven, he’d always thought. Now Mark looked at a chipped pine-green door and longed to see Mary standing in health, smiling with intent to hug, paint, cook, and cry tears he never could. But behind the door lay a sick woman, who could only cry, couldn’t cook or draw, but (as he k
new with certainty) needed his love.
Her immune system made visitations risky, though. Only a lone nurse could enter and only to adjust the singular air-conditioning unit on the windowsill and to change her IV medications hanging on that solid white pole. Mark could hear her whistles on the other side of the door (but could never distinguish the difference between her and the air-conditioning unit, as they both exhaled with such effort). He then decided that he had a choice: to see her one last time and both die from this degenerating airborne illness, or to wait for the single nurse to strike eureka and give them the freedom to spend whatever their youth had left to offer. For now, though, he could only visit her through frantic panic as the memories flushed through his eyes, while he moaned and cried on the floor as the dwelling thoughts continued to torment him, as the scale of sanity began to lean more toward chaos.
Then, while he continued to gaze through the rain in his idling police car, almost out of nowhere, Mark Wegman began to smirk. It was a devilish smirk that sparkled through the muscles from his aged face, which soon morphed into a wild grin, then a hysterical fit of laughter, uncontrollable and frightening. He thought of stopping—in fact, Mark wanted to stop—but like a cat who has been drawn by curiosity, he had no power. Tears rolled down as his deep laugh continued, as he pounded his hand on the driver’s window and stomped his foot like a mad dog. Then, as swiftly as it began, it ended, all the insanity. The unwavering urge to laugh off his present madness ended. He then continued to stare nowhere in particular, just at the raindrops, streaks of wet residue left on his face—he didn’t bother to acknowledge it. The scale, once so balanced, now stood crooked as his sanity slipped from sight, and madness now powered his ATP, exiting the mitochondria of his cells, powered by every breath he took, then released through every step taken. His hatred seeped through his pores; his despair leaked through his eyes. Mark was no longer a ticking time bomb but more like a mine in the jungle of Vietnam—a little weight on his shoulders and everything would fall apart. The world would know his name.
The silence was interrupted when his phone began to vibrate violently. Mark reached deep and picked it out, always hoping it was Mary, her wonderful voice shining like it did once before. His phone was an old Motorola Microtac 9800X from 1989, nicked and tattered in so many places, as a twenty-five-year-old phone should be. He found comfort in its consistent dark gray color, the single antenna, and the simplicity. Mark saw who it was and quickly opened it, like a child reaching for a twenty-five-cent gumball.
“Hey Mark, I was wondering if you and your wife would enjoy some Mama’s Pizza! I brought a family size into the station and a medium for you and Mary! The pizza is fantastic, and she might eat a little once she smells the delectable pepperoni! The healing powers of pizza are always surprising!” Mark smiled again and responded.
“Mary and I would love that.”
“Well look out your window, I’m right here. Thought I’d drop by so your night isn’t such a drag.”
Mark quickly turned his head and saw Tom knocking on his window. His dark skin, jet-black hair trimmed short, and skinny composition were a warm sight to Mark, like the unrecognizable scent of childhood or a reunion back to your hometown after decades of absence. The police officer remembered continuous nights of them together at the marine station, drinking soda and eating spaghetti with Mary. Mark loved Tom like a son.
“It’s a slow night,” Mark later stated while glancing at the raindrops, Tom sitting by his side with a feather-light smile.
“That’s great! This means no crime!”
“No, there’s always someone lurking. Someone we can’t trust—I can feel it tonight. I can feel the need for justice and authority.” Mark’s voice became dark like the air.
“Mark,” said Tom. “Tonight’s a good night, with good intentions. Even when times are rough, you can trust that God is with you.” Tom turned on the radio, and a country song about the western frontier was on.
“You’re right Tom,” Mark happily stated, although he was slightly bitter toward God’s name.
The police radio rang and Mark picked it up. Tom was already gone. In fact, Tom disappeared long before. Mark imagined Tom setting up the medium pizza with pepperoni at his house, maybe giving the nurse two slices, one for her and one for Mary. The nurse might shake her head and demand that it simply does not fit in Mary’s liquid-based diet, but Mark trusted that Tom could get it past the nurse. There was still a long night ahead for Mark.
“Mark,” the old, portable Bearcat BC200XLT blurted out through its ancient speakers. “We have a call on a suspicious character driving around in a yellow Toyota Camry at the neighborhood on Sixth Avenue and Elm Street.”
Mark swiped up his radio with quickness and responded, “I’m on North Sixth Avenue and Speedway, I can check it out.” He set the Bearcat down, revved the police car in cocky, explosive joy, and sped down the road with exhilaration.
The town was silent; water gathered in multiple corners of the cracked street, and rain poured from the sky. No one was out because of the harsh storm, so this poorly cared-for town was eerie, an incubator for unlawful acts, or so Mark desired. Action, adrenaline, a chase against time, chancing his cards with death. A drunk homeless man like in Grand Theft Auto would have been like a flakey almond and butter-coated bear claw to Mark. Or even better, if there were also a child in the back seat, hysterically crying, wetting their trousers, and gasping for air. Mark would then get shot, and in his final breath of consciousness, he would shoot the bastard right in the creases of his forehead for everything that stood for justice. This was what he dreamed about. Yes, he had a gun. He had snuck it into his car without anyone’s prior knowledge that morning, since he was only a community resource officer. This yellow Toyota Camry, what do you have to promise? Mark thought. A raffle, with promise for something more than teenagers past curfew, neighbors bothered by loud music, and sometimes even periodic prank calls. Yet as Mark dreamed on his way toward every case, he deeply and darkly craved.
There was another goal, though. Another craving, another haunting desire on his way to any call. Aaron, Mark thought, I’m going to prove you wrong.
The car spun down toward the intersection of North Sixth Avenue and Speedway, with an unnecessary siren echoing through the city. The drive wasn’t long, and when he reached his destination, he swerved onto the slightly elevated road. There was clear water running down the street. Mark passed the sign reading East Elm Street, only visible with those shimmering headlights. “Toyota Camry, yellow,” Mark whispered under his breath. “Toyota Camry, yellow…Toyota Camry, yellow…Toyota Camry, yellow…” Then he found the suspicious car.
Mark slowed abruptly.
Why prove Aaron wrong? Aaron controlled Mark’s calls; he controlled his contribution; that’s why they always called him directly through the Bearcat, called him by name. Mark wasn’t dumb. He knew Aaron was the one who enforced it. Aaron knew how much stress was on Mark’s shoulders, but Wegman had cravings—he desired something more.
Mark’s lights warned the other driver, but the siren helped him understand. The Camry was being signaled, and the driver finally caught on. The yellow Toyota Camry pulled off to the side of the residential road.
Mark then waited as he recorded the license plate through the Bearcat back to the station, but this didn’t take more than fifteen seconds at most; he also waited for something more. Maybe a chase would begin, maybe the driver would take his chances on the road instead of the law. Mark dreamed, but nothing. Then soon he began to feel uneasy, a little frightened himself, but Mark didn’t understand why. After about five minutes, nothing. He smirked and decided it was time to end the charade. The officer reached for the door and an old-school ticket book, then stepped out into the damp atmosphere. He was killing time like the car ride, creeping his way over through a stroll between the gap from his window and the Toyota trying to build tension. A slow, prideful, and empo
wering walk many police officers practice, but his was especially slow, one soft step after the next, knowing that after the arrest, there’d be nothing to do for the rest of the night. That’s how Aaron worked; Mark hated Aaron. He studied the car, the old yellow Toyota Camry with the paint chipped off every corner. Mark took note of everything.
“Probably bought at a yard sale,” he grunted while chuckling as light as a feather and feeling his well-aged hand over the Camry. Chipping off the paint, expanding the Malaria-colored chipped corners, a color between faint yellow and camo green, until he finally made it to the driver’s window. Mark then knocked on the Camry, and ever so slowly, the driver of the vehicle manually cranked the creaky window down.
“License and regist–“
“Here you go, officer,” the young boy squeaked and passed over the car’s information. He then turned back to the Camry’s ancient squealing vents and attempted to stay warm.
Mark glared at the boy and smiled. I’ll have fun reading your rights while I push your face in the mud, he thought. The police officer then began to look at the paperwork given to him, getting drenched in the rain. Mark couldn’t care less. He first studied the registration, then the license, searching for what he usually found in his runs: children past curfew. On it was a picture of the same boy with short, thin brown hair, more color and weight than he presently wore, as well as his same glowing blue eyes, much fainter in his current appearance. The boy also smiled brightly in the photo; you could see the excitement on his face. Mark found it to be tacky.
“Mr. Tyler…Castillo.” Mark paused for a few seconds to glare at the boy. “You’re sixteen. Is this correct?”
“That is correct.”
“And you are driving this late at night, is that right?”
“Yes,” Tyler Castillo said with guiltless acceptance. Mark raised his eyebrows, but with more anger than shock.
“And why is that?”
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