Anthology Complex

by M. B. Julien

  "Give me your car keys." She asks me why, and I tell her because I need to talk to Silvio. "What are you going to do?" She came here because she wants me to save her, but I can't. All I can do is help. "If I don't talk to him he's going to keep hurting you." She thinks for a few seconds and then goes for the front door, then comes back with her car keys.

  I drive her to my parents' home and tell her that she has to stay there. When she asks me why, I ask her if she planned on asking me if she could stay in my apartment. She admits she was going to ask if she could stay there for a few days just in case Silvio decided to show up. No woman takes a beating that bad and then waits for the abuser to show up again.

  She agrees to stay in my parents' home as long as I promise to come back, which I do. Before she gets out of the car I ask her if Silvio knows where any of her family lives. She says Claire is out of the state and that even if Silvio found out where her grandmother lived, he wouldn't dare go there unless she was there and he found out.

  I tell her the door to the house is unlocked and we part. "Wait, wait," I yell to Lynne. "What's his address?" She writes it down on a piece of paper, and I begin driving in that direction. The one thing I'm hoping for is that I don't get stopped by a police officer because I don't have a valid driver's license.

  On the way there, as I get closer and closer, I feel more and more alive. I can feel my blood boil. I have strong sensations in my dreams, but they are uncommon in real life. Silvio, Silvio, Silvio, thank you. I haven't felt like this since 1947.

  Chapter 50:

  EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY

  Derek and Wallace, two young and upcoming co-workers in a newly realized drug organization, are arguing about the female anatomy. Wallace, who is nearly two years older, continues to support his claim as he says, "That shit comes out the pussy, man, I'm telling you."

  Derek replies, "I seen my moms use the bathroom and when she pees she sits down." Wallace replies, "So? You expect her to stand? Do you know how close they both are to each other?" Derek pauses.

  Wallace continues to speak, "Look why would God make the piss and the shit come out of the same place? We got two different places right? Why would they be different?" Another pause. "And why the fuck you be seeing your mom use the bathroom for?" Derek quickly replies, "Chill man, it's cause she don't be closing the door."

  After the two come to the realization of what they are discussing, they are able to interpret how truly bored they are. "There ain't shit to do around here," Derek says as he throws an empty can of soda at the wall. Wallace gives Derek an unidentifiable look, as to which Derek replies, "What?..."

  Moments later the two find themselves huddled over Wallace's backpack as Wallace pulls out a handgun. It is the first time Derek has ever seen a gun up close. Derek asks Wallace where and how he got it. Wallace explains to Derek how Rock told him he might need help protecting the stash from enemies and thieves.

  Derek asks Wallace if he could see it. "You seein' it right now ain't you?" "Naw man, I mean can I hold it?" After pulling the trigger back a few times and hearing the sound of the click, Wallace asks him how it feels. Derek replies, "It doesn't feel right."

  "What you mean it doesn't feel right?" Derek replies, "I'm not staying here forever." There is one last pause between the two, but the silence is broken as Wallace puts the handgun back in his backpack and says, "Remember, that's the kind of talk that got your brother killed."

  As I'm driving down to where Silvio resides, the quote "the best revenge is living well" continues to echo and ring in my thoughts.

  I'm about half of a block away from the building Silvio lives in when I see him standing outside with two other people. At first I want to call the whole thing off and continue driving, but I think of Lynne and her bruises. Her fucked up psychology.

  I park the car, get out and begin to walk towards them. Halfway in between day and night, I maybe should have came a bit earlier.

  "You like hitting women?" Silvio turns around, as do his friends. "Did she tip over from the first hit because she can barely stand with that fake foot?" Silvio attempts to talk but I cut him off, "How do you hit an amputee?"

  After I stop talking Silvio replies, "This has nothing to do with you." I tell him that when Lynne becomes bothersome to me because of his actions, that it then does indeed have something to do with me. He turns his back on me, so I give him a shove.

  He turns around and takes a good swing. The bruises on Lynne's face were on her right side, so when he tries to strike with his left arm, I put up my right arm to block it, and then give him another shove, but unfortunately one of his punk friends that I hadn't seen before grabs me from behind and Silvio gets off an even better punch that actually lands this time, but he only swings once.

  As I'm a little bit dazed, the guy who grabbed me throws me on to the sidewalk and holds me down. Silvio says, "Do you have anything else to say?" For some reason I start laughing, and as much as I want to stop so I don't get a kick to the gut, I can't. I actually don't stop laughing until one of Silvio's friends lifts up his shirt so I can see the reflection of a nearby light on his gun. Then I shut up completely.

  Not a second later I hear a police siren. I don't need to go to jail tonight, not for this. One of the cops is pointing a gun at Silvio's friend. The one who had a gun on him. The officer tells him to take out his gun and place it on the ground, he complies, and as he's doing it, he slowly says "Fuck."

  It turns out the man with the gun was on parole and was more than likely going right back to prison. My only hope is that he wasn't too close to Silvio, because if he was, then the blame of his going back to prison will be placed on me, which will inadvertently be placed on Lynne who will ultimately suffer the consequences because I am here in her name. Fuck.

  The officer slowly walks up to the man with the gun, smiling as he does it, and says to him, "Told you you'd be coming back." Some kind of personal thing between the two I guess. The officer then says, as he is heading back to his car with Silvio's friend in handcuffs, "The rest of you can go the fuck home and do whatever it is that you do."

  I quickly walk towards Lynne's car, and as I drive away, Silvio watches me. Yeah yeah, fuck you too bitch. Fragments.

  Driving down the same street but in the opposite direction is a detective named Steve Jefferson who now has Dante Mac in custody for possession of a concealed deadly weapon and violating parole. Steve says to Dante, "Have fun serving your full sentence and then some."

  Steve walks into the police station with Dante and begins processing him for jail. Steve also makes a call to Frank Mainor and tells him he has Dante Mac in custody. Mainor tells Ryan and they both rush back to the station to question him before his lawyer arrives.

  Mainor and Ryan attempt to explain how cooperating with them will reduce the sentence and provide other benefits, but Mac never says a word. It's nothing he hasn't heard before.

  Mac's lawyer shows up and the show is now over. The two cops and the lawyer exchange frightening words and then part from one another. Ryan says to Mainor as they are walking out of the station, "One step further away from catching a ghost."

  I drive back to my parents' home and find Lynne. I should just call the police for her, but somehow I feel that will anger her because she won't do it herself. She'll probably think I'm risking the well-being of Sarah and David.

  She asks me what happened, and I tell her that it would be best if she just stayed here for a while. I tell her that I may have angered Silvio even more, and I now realize that you never want to make a sociopath more angry than they already are because their reactions are unpredictable and unparalleled.

  She asks me if I will stay here with her, and I say no. She pauses, and then says that she can't stay here alone. It's too unfamiliar. That she will just go to her grandmother's house. I ask her if that's a good idea, that if Silvio can find her then he will cause trouble. She asks me why I can't just stay, and I just look at her. I don't have a reason, I just don't want to.

/>   After we talk about it for five minutes she decides to stay at her grandmother's house instead, claiming she feels too uncomfortable staying here alone. Is she afraid of something? She doesn't even know that there was a murder-suicide here. Imagine if she did.

  She drives me back to my apartment and then drives to her grandmother's home, hoping Silvio won't show up there. I really tried to help her. Protect her. But it wasn't enough. Oh well.

  I lay down on my couch to reflect the day's events but it's really just a task I use as a prelude to falling asleep, the only problem is I can't fall asleep. Like so many times before I become a victim to a brain with too much energy left to spare, but this becomes more beneficial than tragic.

  Because my apartment is so close to the building stairs, when Mary begins to walk down them as she groans from the pains of her pregnancy, I can hear her.

  At first the sounds that come from her because she is in labor confuses me, and when I open my door I see her slowly walking down to the next step holding on to the railing with a firm grip while she gently holds the bottom of her belly. The scene is extremely bizarre. Not because of the literal picture I am seeing, but because she is doing this alone.

  I could choose to just watch her, and see if she can get to the hospital on her own. Maybe she could, I'm not sure how much the pain hurts, but there are always times in our lives when we have to throw social and psychological fragments out of the window. Times where we don't have the benefit of picking and choosing which one we want to use. Which one we want to present to others.

  Instead we are left with the instinctive fragments; who we are in the heat of the moment. Some might argue that these fragments depict who we truly are. The ones that are not governed by any external influence which in turn allows it to maintain its integrity.

  I run up to her and grab her and put her arm around my shoulder. Tao and I are idiots for not recognizing that she was pregnant, not gaining weight. The thing is, Mary is a bit taller than the average woman and is normally very thin, so she isn't really showing like the average pregnant woman normally does.

  Step by step, we slowly go down each step. Wisdom is much too slow and much too graceful to catch up with you when you're running.

  When we get to the second floor, the front apartment door opens and someone begins to walk up the stairs. It's Boris, who just like me, is immediately confused. When he realizes that we need help, he puts her other arm around his shoulder. I think to myself that this would go by much smoother if we had a wheelchair.

  We get to the parking lot and to her car, and once again I find myself behind the wheel of another vehicle. There has been too much excitement for one day.

  Boris stays in the back with Mary as I drive to the hospital. The groaning doesn't get any lower, but it also doesn't get any worse. She tells me that I have to call her family and gives me her phone, and I tell her that I will do so after we get her to the doctors. Boris doesn't really talk much, probably because if he tried we would have a hard time understanding his broken English.

  We get to the hospital and hand her off to the doctors who get busy with her quickly, and for the moment, Boris and I are on the sidelines. We sit in a waiting area and don't say much too each other, save a few facial expressions. I look through Mary's phone and find a contact named Sister who I then call and tell about what has happened.

  After a little bit, a doctor tells us that Mary is only twenty-one weeks pregnant, which as he explains is a very premature birth. The doctor says they will be performing a Caesarean section, and that the survival of the baby, given the degree of prematurity, is entirely up to fate. Not in those words.

  After he departs from us, Boris says he cannot stay, that he has an important appointment. Definitely not in those words. Not even in that grammar.

  About ten minutes after he leaves, Mary's sister shows up with another woman who I later find out is also Mary's sister. I should have fucking left with Boris.

  We go through all the motions and then they leave to go find out more about their sister. Neither of them had any idea she was pregnant and had even less of an idea who may have gotten her pregnant, which is to say they pretty much didn't know anything about anything.

  After they leave, I walk to where Joe resides so peacefully. What I would give to sleep like that. Sure, I've slept, but I haven't really slept like a baby on my own terms for probably over a decade. Okay, that's a lie, every once in a while I do sleep like a baby, but it's rare. That is not a foreshadowing of the baby's tragic death.

  I go back to where I had been waiting and the time from the clock begins to tick again. Mary's sisters are no where to be found. I sit there, in a way trying to fall asleep, but also trying to stay awake. At the same time I'm wondering why I don't just leave.

  Sometime later Mary's sisters come out and tell me it's all done but the baby is having complications of his own. It's a he.

  They show me the way to where Mary is, and when I finally see her she looks different. Literally and philosophically. It is reported that there are about thirty thousand genes in the human body. These are one of the findings from the Human Genome Project; a project started in 1989 by human beings to try and understand the makeup of life more clearly. The project itself trying to understand God and Satan's project. Trying to figure out what they are. I've had many dreams before where I see God and Satan in a room that is painted with white walls and they are walking about the room flipping switches on and off. Some of the switches go up and down, others go left and right, and the remaining few are actually dials. What they are trying to accomplish, I am not sure, but it takes them a very long time to get it right.

  Mary. After spending fifteen minutes with her after her son has been born, I notice that she's made a transformation, but to be honest, she had been making the transformation for as long as I've known her.

  It's like a force has come along, a force such as love, and has changed her. Changed her mathematical formula. Her genetic makeup. The paleomammalian complex. She's not angry, but she is scared. Scared because she doesn't know what will happen to her son.

  I leave, and I take her car back to the apartment building as she requests, and her sisters stay with her as her son decides whether he wants to stay in this world or not. I have to say, it will be a tough decision if he happens to see what goes on in the inner city.

  As I walk into the apartment building and as the Sun is falling, I take a look at some flowers I haven't seen in a while. I have become so used to them that I forget they are there. They seem full, complete, but it's a shame their creator is not here to see them with me. I'm just glad that they are normal. At least I think they are. It's all very subjective.

  I lay down on my couch. Mr. Nosleep is still here, ruining my day. I turn on the television and find the news channel. A story about a recall. Something bad with some eggs. Interesting. After a few hours, I finally fall asleep.

  A few days later, Mary comes home with her son. Her sisters accompany her, along with her father. One of her sisters comes to my apartment to let me know that every thing went fine and asks if I want to come up to see Anthony. I tell her that I would love to. I actually do want to.

  I get up there and greet every one, and then I see Mary holding her son, Anthony. She holds him out to me and gives me the chance to hold him. I take him, and I swear I have no idea what's going on. Every one is just smiling, the baby is just silent. It's like one of my bizarre silent dreams.

  Even though Anthony fought to stay alive, there is a good chance he will have developmental problems. Holding Anthony reminds me of a dream I had where I learn that you don't need religion to be a good person. You just simply need to come face to face with the evil in the world. Think of it as Newton's third law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A lady gets raped and a year later she opens up a support group for women who have been raped.

  After a while I leave her apartment and go back to mine. I go to my bedroom and go to the window and look do
wn the street, thinking of Mary and her transformation. Wondering if the light of Anthony can keep her warm and calm. Now the Sun has my attention and I stare at it through the window for a while. I'm staring at the Sun, mom. I lift up my window and get rid of the glass that protects my eyes from the Sun, and then I really stare it.

  As I'm staring at it, I think of my childhood and how every time I'd look up at the sky my mother would tell me not to stare at the Sun. I listened and looked back down even if I was actually staring at the clouds and not the Sun.

  You find yourself staring at the Sun for too long and you start to compare where you are mentally now as opposed to where you were mentally as a child. You slowly begin to realize that the Sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older. Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.

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