Anthology Complex

by M. B. Julien

  He wakes up with all types of paranoia, and when he realizes who I am, he tells me to get in the car. After I get in he starts to drive away. He asks me how I knew he was watching me, but I tell him that I didn't. I tell him I was just walking home and happened to see him in the car. He makes a right turn.

  He tells me that I need to be more careful, that there may be people watching me. I ask him who would be watching me, and he tells me that I don't really have to worry about that anymore. He says he's been sitting on my house for weeks waiting for the other crew to pop out, but they still haven't done so, and because they haven't done so they probably never knew that Jamal and Derek were hiding out here in the first place. He makes a left turn.

  He takes a glance at the rear-view mirror and then says, "You still gotta be careful though." He tells me about how a few days into the sitting, two cops started to follow him. He makes another left turn, and shortly after I see what he means when an unmarked but obvious police vehicle makes the same left turn. Damn you Jamal.

  Spider tells me that if the cops knew about Jamal, and if they were following him, then they might know about me as well. If they didn't know about me then, they certainly know about me now since I just got into the fucking car of someone who is probably a suspect in something. I ask him about Derek. "Derek? Derek's a strong kid. You don't gotta worry about him. We'll take care of him." That's what he tells me. I ask him about Jamal. The driver looks at the passenger, but the driver does not say anything.

  I ask him if he's doing this for me because I helped out his friends, and he says he's doing it "because the main motherfucker has this thing about respect." I'm guessing he means something along the lines of if you show him decency, he will show you decency, and because I showed Jamal and Derek decency he is showing me that decency back. Then Spider tells me about how he isn't doing this because he believes in the same thing, he's doing it because he pissed off the main guy and the main guy is forcing him to do it. He tells me about how when the main dude tells you to do something, you have to do it, because if no one listens to the head, to the man who has the experience, there will be no order. Not exactly in those words.

  After a few more left and right turns, we are back in my neighborhood and Spider decides to drop me off a few blocks from my apartment building. Before we depart, he tells me that if those cops decide to drop by, not to tell them shit. I tell him that I don't really know shit, and that I would like to keep it that way.

  For the next three days, Spider continues to sit on my location and then on the fourth day he disappears, but that doesn't matter because by now I'm already in the system. Now I find myself turning on my television and putting it on my favorite channel. It's been almost a week and there is still coverage on the school shooting. One teacher killed, one student killed, one security guard injured and a jogger who seems to have had nothing to do with anything injured.

  Now my phone is ringing, and when I pick it up I hear Kathleen's voice. Looks like she's back into my life. She talks about how they are going to do a massive prayer at church tomorrow for her son, and if I would like to come. I guess it's nice to know that the fact that he is her son comes before the fact that he is a homosexual. The next morning I find myself wearing clothes I haven't worn for so long around the type of people I haven't talked to in so long in a place I haven't been to in so long.

  Chapter 40:

  THE LOST CARPENTER

  Last night, I had a strange dream. I'm standing in front of the apartment building with a blueprint in my hand. The thing is the apartment building doesn't look like the apartment building that I know. It looks unfinished; it looks like there is still work needed to be done on it.

  Before I know it I have a hammer in one hand and a nail in the other, and I'm forcing a nail into the wall. After I see that the building is good and finished, I rest for a little while. Then I go back into the building and walk through each of the three floors to make sure the names on the doors match the names on the blueprint.

  They are all correct, however there are a few that are replaced with question marks. You can't know everyone in your life. While I'm on the second floor, I get to Lynne's apartment but I realize that the name Lynnette Parker is not on the blueprint. The name that is on the blueprint in the place of Lynne is George Johnson, which was the person who lived here before she moved in. Because dreams don't have timestamps I often have to figure out when a dream had taken place by considering the people I knew, the places I'd been and the things I'd done.

  I go into Johnson's apartment, and I feel that the apartment is not completely done well enough. I fix a few things in an effort to stop Lynne from losing her foot, and then I go on to the next apartment who has the tenant name of Joseph White. The last apartment I check is under the name Boris, with a last name that I can't read properly, and then I go back outside for another break after debating whether or not I should check the basement of the building.

  When I get outside I see Jesus and Moses sitting on a bench. I sit next to them, and Jesus says to me, "So you're going to build an entire city?" I don't answer him. He tells me that carpentry and engineering is hard work, then Moses cuts in and says "but it will not save you." Moses then gets up and he hands me two nails. They are much bigger than the ones I used on the building. Moses tells me that separate paths are what will save me.

  Composition 1, Part 5

  Chapter 41:

  CALM THE DEVIL'S GRIN

  She tells you that second-person narration is when you use words like "you" and "your." At first you want to disagree with her, you want to see her reaction, but you know that she was the one who took all those courses on writing in college. So then the nameless narrator asks Julia what exactly third-person narration is defined as, and she tells the nameless narrator that third-person is when a narrator uses words like "he," "she," "they," "them" and "it" to refer to the other characters. She says words like "I," "us," and "we" are never used. She looks at the nameless narrator and watches as the narrator thinks about what she just said, and she says "Please don't tell me you are going to ask me what first-person is." I look back at her and laugh, and I tell her that I'm pretty sure I know what a first-person narrative is. The truth is I already knew the definition of all three perspectives. I guess back then I just wanted to hear her speak sometimes.

  The night has fallen as it has done so many times before and I ponder how many people didn't live long enough today to see it fall.

  Tao wants to prank call his cousin, but I tell him not to because I don't want my phone number on someone's caller identification. I don't want them calling back. He tells me not to worry, that he will do star sixty-seven so that the caller's information is blocked. How many times I'd like to star sixty-seven my life. He makes the call and for the duration I feel like I am a child again.

  Going on to the next subject, Tao asks me if I've ever seen that effect light has on the Sun when it's just above the horizon, how it looks like a square. I tell him that I don't care about the Sun or about his stupid illusions. Fuck you then. No fuck you, get out of my apartment. It's cool just give me the remote. No you really have to go I have to pray. Pray? You're not even religious. Did you find Jesus or something?

  I didn't find Jesus but I did find myself pushing him out of my apartment. At the very end, with only half of his body inside the apartment, he finally gives up and goes to his own home. Farewell motherfucker, don't come back. A social fragment.

  Lynne's door opens, she asks me where all the noise is coming from. She's not wearing the yellow dress, but she is wearing a yellow dress. She has make-up on, and perfume. In the words of whoever said it first because I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever say this about a woman, "she was a beautiful sight."

  I tell her that Tao fell down the stairs, and Tao who is standing at the top of the stairs about to go home gives me that stupid look and then opens his mouth to speak.

  Lynne told me that a green rose, while it is rare, is a beautiful thing to see
. That it represents mostly life and nature. All I can think about when I go back into my apartment is how pretty she looked, how nice she smelled. Then I hear two booms.

  I quickly realize that it's Tao hitting his ceiling, which is my floor, with a broom. Probably still sour about me kicking him out. I think about how one thing to me is the complete opposite to him. The thoughts bring me back to a dream I had where I am in Las Vegas, The Sin City. How I overheard two entities who looked to be that of children talking about a point which could be perceived as either perception A or perception B, but the truth of the matter was that they were both one in the same.

  Now I'm remembering a dream I had several years ago where I am talking to Satan in what looks to be Hell. I think he was giving me the tour. I asked Satan if he knew God as a child, and he says yes, he did, that they were practically born on the same day at the same time in the same place. He goes on to tell me about how good and evil are one in the same. That nothing is purely good, and nothing is purely evil. That every thing is purely perception. That we were designed to feel we needed to distinguish the two.

  Sometime later he's telling me a story from his childhood, one that included God. He's telling me about how they had just received responsibility on a new project, and they had come to their first big decision. Child Satan and Child God have to decide whether to set the universe on six or to set the universe on seven. Or to set the universe on both six and seven, however doing such a thing may cause later complications.

  Child Satan wants to set the universe on both six and seven as a means to endure trial and error so that the final project may be one hundred percent perfect. He wants all the details. Child Satan wants to witness any possible complications that may arise, however Child God explains that they have limited time to complete the project and that going through all the possible complications would simply be impossible.

  Child Satan, submitting himself to logic, agrees to what Child God has said, and they decide to set the universe on seven to maintain an order, some type of peace. Much time passes, and much work and effort has gone into the project, and by now Child Satan and Child God are now referred to as Adult Satan and Adult God.

  As they continue to work on the project they come across a part of the project that involves actually creating the life forms that would habitat the universe they have created. Eventually they get stuck when they have to figure out how, what we know as DNA now, will work in these life forms. Because life forms can only be set on six, and because they have already set the universe on seven, Adult Satan and Adult God spend centuries attempting to find a solution. Eventually Old God would suggest free will to Old Satan, but Old Satan would not agree. Old Satan's first argument is that giving the life forms free will will allow them to end their own existence. One might think twice upon hearing Satan argue for the safety of humans and all things that live, but as it has been said before, "one seldom recognizes the devil when he has his hand on your shoulder."

  "Knock knock," the apartment door says. I open the door and it's Mary. She hands me an envelope, it was mail that was accidentally put in her mailbox. I look up and say thanks, and I can't help but notice how sick she looks. She gives me a look as if it were my fault and walks away; I am almost positive that as soon as she gets in her apartment she is going straight to the bathroom for purposes of vomiting and diarrhea.

  The mail is from some Abraham Lincoln fundraiser thing. Lincoln has always interested me in many ways, but I'm not big on charity. I throw the envelope in the garbage and then begin to think about a story that has been told about Lincoln for many years. How one week before his death, he had a dream of someone crying in the White House because someone had died, and when he asked that person who it was who had passed away, the person told him that it was the president. Lincoln walked over to the coffin, and when he looked inside, it was his own face that he saw.

  "Shut," says the car door. When I look outside I see Silvio standing next to a car in a nice suit, and I see Lynne approaching him. I'm assuming she looked so nice today because she was going to go out with Silvio. Silvio must be very charming and very manipulating if he can come back from beating on his wife. It almost pains me to see her make that long slightly limped walk back into the past to relive those moments, but thinking about the time when she brought me to where she used to live, that might actually be what she wants.

  Chapter 42:

  THE BROOKLYN TOWER

  I put one of the pins down on a specific part of the map. I tell my partner that we'll wait on that side of the street until he comes out of the house and starts his day. We had been following a law enforcement officer around because we were positive that he was crooked. Corrupted. He played the role of a detective for the local police department, but he was much more than that.

  "We know that he walks his dog over to the newspaper stand every morning, but we can't risk taking him then because of the noise that damn dog might make." So instead my partner says we wait until he goes in for work. "But what if he's off that day?" My partner says that we keep sitting on his house until the day he has work.

  What we realized after the first few days of following him was that the police department isn't necessarily where he works. Because he works in the homicide department, the entire city is potentially his work location, and because the entire city may be his work location, we found ourselves following a man who has no pattern. There were some nights when he didn't even go home to his wife and kid.

  "We will have to take him at night when he is in a place where there is no one around. Probably a crime scene that he is revisiting." My partner looks at the map and says, "Let's hope the crime scene he is revisiting was a good enough place to commit a crime."

  The alarm clock strikes four a.m. and I tell him it's almost time to go, to make sure he knows where his mask is. We drive out to where the law enforcement officer lives and wait on the side of the street we agreed on.

  There are probably more good people in the world than there are bad, but these good people may only be good because they fear the consequences of being bad. If the consequences to our actions were nonexistent, how many people do you think would still be considered good people? All that is left is the idea of decency. That anyone who still does good and refuses to do bad is doing so because the instinct to be a decent person still lives with them. The question is, seeing as how we are human beings, while you are still a good person and every one else is now running around being bad, who wins in the end? You for having morals, or them for taking advantage. Is there even a winner, or do we all just lose regardless.

  What if you can't tell if the law enforcement officer is good or bad even after you've questioned him for just a little over two hours? That even after you've threatened to throw him off the tower he still implies that he is a good man.

  So many times in life we get it wrong. We can find disgust in someone we've never even met, or someone we don't even truly know. In tales of fiction there are always purpose characters who are meant to make you feel a certain way. They may only appear when they need to serve their purpose in the tale, but what if the person telling you the tale is wrong about them. What if they aren't as bad as you are told, or what if they aren't as good.

  We end up leaving the law enforcement officer alive at the top of the tower, but we leave behind much more than that. We attempted to take him during the night while he was walking away from someone's house. We assume he was questioning a witness of a recent double homicide he was assigned.

  As we grab him, a vehicle drives up and two men get out demanding us to let him go. It appears as though we weren't the only ones watching this officer.

  Shots are fired, the two unidentified men are killed, and we drive away with the law enforcement officer. In the pursuit of a man who we now have found innocent, we had killed two men we didn't know. Two men who may have been officers of the law, who may have also been some of the few remaining good. On the drive back I ponder what side of the line I fall on.
/>
  "As soon as we grabbed him, they started firing shots at us." "No, we grabbed him, then they drove up and told us to let him go. Then you started firing like an idiot." "I only unloaded because they were shooting at me." "Did you even see where they came from?" "They were either watching us, or they were watching him, but either way they were already there." "Did you see anything that identified them as police officers?" "No, and they sure as hell didn't say anything about it either." "I would feel a lot better knowing we just killed two guys who were maybe going to kill a police officer." "Yeah well we won't know until tomorrow."

  I didn't say that was a dream because of the events that took place and the characters that were mentioned. Knowing these things always helped me separate reality from fiction when it was hard to tell the difference. When dissecting a memory and trying to figure out if it happened in this world or another.

  Often times I have dreams of Maria coming back, but I wake up to find that it was a dream. If one day she does really come back, I won't know if I'm awake or if I'm asleep. Things like this are what make you go crazy. She comes back, and even after days I'll still be questioning if I'm dreaming or not. As for right now I know that I am awake because I've never been so irritated in my life. There is a bug flying around in my apartment and I've been chasing it for the past ten minutes.