Eleven.

The computer beeped again. It was now pinging six times per minute. Whoever was sending these messages was getting impatient. I either could respond back or try making out of this lab alive.

And the choice had never been easier.

The running joke at the lab was that, even at these sub-zero temperatures, the coldest thing around here was my heart. Of course, they had no idea I knew of any of this – they would never say it to my face – but as Director, it was my job to know every single thing that went on in my premises. The tales of my cunning ruthlessness were etched onto the consciousness of every single person here.

And to me, there was no bigger compliment.

Beep-beep-beep.

Fresh from the academy, working here as a lowly lab technician, it wasn’t easy for me to make it big here. But what I lacked in talent or contacts, I made up for in my abilities to deceive and cheat, to gain someone’s implicit trust and to shatter it for my own benefit.

Beep-beep-beep.

And so began my ascent, from lab tech to operations manager, chief scientist to Program Director; a meteoric rise marked only by a trail of knives sticking out of backs. This was common knowledge, of course: there were only so many executives who could have unfortunate accidents before people put two and two together. Bear attacks on golf courses were rare, but if I wanted your seat, you best believe the odds weren’t in your favour.

Beep-beep-beep.

The torrent of incoming messages did not deter me from suiting up to leave. As the Director, I had access to certain privileges – as I very well should – and these messages were almost certainly people clamouring for help after the unexplained explosions earlier.

Me? Help them? I had found no reason to form any attachment to the people here, and neither did they. But now I had something they wanted: this raw power I had at my disposal, accrued over so many years with no support, no influence, only through my own efforts.

It was a man-eat-man world, and I was finally on top of the food chain. I owed no one but myself. I intended to help no one but myself.

Beep-beep-beep.

I zipped up my thermal jacket and took one last look at my office – a mausoleum to every life I had wrecked on my way to inhabiting it – as I took my private elevator to the helipad, where a helicopter was waiting to whisk me out of there.

As an uncharacteristic draught of hot air hit my face, any semblances of guilt left with me slowly faded away.

If a warm wind in the Arctic wasn’t proof of the Gods’ blessing, what else could it be?

-----

EMERGENCY BROADCAST (78) – MELTDOWN IN REACTOR. LETHAL RADIATION LEVELS.  ABOVE GROUND VENTURE FATAL. RETREAT TO BUNKER.

Ten.

I saw you stand at the altar, in that wispy white dress, and I couldn't help but think:

I was the luckiest man in the universe.

A hundred and twenty six pairs of eyes, all gleamed at you in their envious, vivacious stares, and yet only one among those many could call you theirs: me.

The steps towards you came effortlessly now, unlike all the times I played this scenario out in my mind: no hesitation, no cold feet, no second thoughts, just the image of you in my mind, your beautiful visage keeping all of my qualms at bay.

I will admit, even putting my tux on this morning, I couldn't help but wonder whether all this was right, whether I'd be forcing my love onto you by taking things this quickly.

But then there you were, with your hazel eyes and cheeky smile, and you reminded me of all those little things that had made me fall for you from so far away:

The way you'd hum showtunes while doing the dishes. You putting your left shoe on before your right, going so far as to take it off if it was the right one first.  The way you sang in your sleep, sometimes even singing whole verses before coming to. The way you'd hold back a smile in the midst of an argument, yet let the corner of your mouth twitch to show that you had forgiven. How you'd let the waterworks flow while watching your soaps, but deny crying every single time. The way your eyes glinted when you shared a hearty laugh with your fiance. The way you'd hug his arm on walks, when other couples were content with holding hands. The way you'd blush when you kissed him, like every time was the first.

The polaroids that adorned several walls of my house - our house, soon -  proved an unspeaking testament to my love, of how I deserved you more than anyone else. Shots of you in every conceivable pose - sitting amidst a pile of letters, standing over a heap of laundry, mouth agape as you try to stifle a yawn, shirt over your arms while you changed, your caramel skin bared as you showered, everything - kept me focused, kept me determined .

I am doing this.


My pace quickened, two steps at time. Four. Eight. Running straight towards you, the pistol slapping against my thigh with every step.



In and out.

One quick dash, one little tackle, and I'll have swept you off your feet and carried out.

Literally.

In and out.

Nine.

"What were the last words you spoke to your father?"

The sight of the casket in front of me had done nothing, but this question put to me by one of the many people garbed in black shocked me out of my trance.

I didn't want to remember, but I felt like I owed the man this at the very least.

He'd come to the door to see me off, like always. He knew I hated it, but that didn't stop him.

It never did.

"Careful, son."
"You don't have to tell me, dad."
"I know, but I just want you to be safe."
"I know, dad."
"The roads can be real treacherous at ti-..."
"Dad, I think I'd prefer a car accident if it meant not having you drone on and treat me like a five year old."


Witnesses say that the car had been just exiting a tunnel when a drunk driver, who'd been snaking in and out of traffic for about a quarter mile, cut the wrong way onto the intersection and T-boned it.

Witnesses say that both cars were launched into the air, tumbling several times before landing on the sidewalk with a sense of perverse finality.

Witnesses say that the body - this body, the one that now lay in this closed casket in front of me- was flung out mid-flip, and dragged across the freeway before it came to a standstill.


And the last words my father would ever hear from me had been how a car accident would have been more preferable to his nagging.

Death was not without a sense of irony.

Perhaps my face had betrayed some emotions that I didn't dare share with my words, but he gave my shoulder a slight squeeze, as if to let me know it was all right, that it wasn't my fault, that everything was going to be okay.

He was wrong, of course.

Another of the men in black stepped towards me.

"They're taking the body away now. I think you should leave."

I wanted to take one last look into the casket, at those brown eyes, that sandy brown hair, all those little things I'd been glad to have inherited from my father, but I knew the time for that had long gone on.

Instead, I turned around and began walking.

And stopped.

The scene ahead reminded me too much of the tunnel that had brought me here: the pitch black darkness with the distant light reminded me too much of that tunnel on the freeway.

But there was that hand on my shoulder again.

"There is no pain there, no suffering. Trust me."

And so I walked, hesitant, wavering in my resolve.

But as I reached the light, all my fears vanished.

And as I floated upwards into nothingness, I couldn't help but take one last at the casket that held my mangled remains, and the father that cried over it.

Eight.

When you have it, it's dumped in a corner, a trophy to be admired, but only from a distance. You do pick it up, but only to ponder on the various cracks and crevasses that line its surface, the imperfections reaching across the line to slap you in the face. It may be a trophy, but its as close to a participation medal as there is. And then you lose it. You start to feel the raw ache of loneliness, the pangs of solitude, totally undeserved. You remember the cracks as untouched valleys, pristine in their beauty, the trophy as having had great sentimental value. You want it back, and you want it back bad. And when you do find it, back it goes into the corner. You tell yourself that it was easy to find, that losing it again wouldn't be that bad anymore, that it wasn't worth the search anyways. The valleys are only endless pits to fall through now, to get lost in interminably. Mankind only wants what it cannot have. Idiots.

Dreams.

She went from door to door, carrying nothing but a worn down rucksack, almost filled to the brim, begging:

"Could you spare me a dream, kind sir?"

Most homes she left empty handed, their tenants already having replaced their dreams with a cubicle job, with children, with a family life, with a big car, a big house, a bigger paycheck, and even bigger disappointment.

When she got to their doors, they'd meet her with the sort of demeanor you'd assign to a pallbearer laying someone to rest. Which, when she thought about it, was exactly what they had been doing, all their lives.

But if she was lucky, she got to a doorstep just as the people on the other side of it felt their worlds crashing down all around them.

They'd always smile at her, having finally found one of their like. They never asked why she wanted them, or what she was going to do with them. They only smiled, and smile they did, mouthing two words each and every time they gave her everything they could:

"Good luck."

She'd sit on their porch, and have a good look at their dreams before moving on.

And then she'd smile too.

The dreams she got from them were always broken.

She didn't mind, of course, for this was exactly what she was looking for. She'd hold them close to her own self, inspecting them with a sense of disconnected bliss.

But not to fix them, no. How could she go about doing that for others, when she never managed to fix her own?


She'd then sit on the side of the road, and sift through her bag, filled with dreams upon dreams, prised and begged from countless strangers, and pull out the only two artifacts among them that belonged to her: an elegant easel, cracked after it was thrown in a fit of rage eons past, and a framed Masters degree that once adorned her parents bedroom.

She'd hold her dreams next to theirs, and enjoy the warmth these dreams gave her, revel in the fact that she wasn't the only one who'd walked down the dreary path of watching their hopes and aspirations shatter into a million brilliant pieces.

And then she'd move on, content.

But not for long before she would have to start begging again.

Seven.

its funny
sometimes
you lift them up
let them reach places neither
of you ever could
and then you say
to yourself
"they aren't
coming back to help"
but when their hands stick
over the cliff edge
to pull you up
you decline
because
you'd rather be right
than up there with
them


its funny
sometimes
they give you their all
lift you up to places neither of you
could reach on your own
and
when you look down
arms oustretched
to do your part
they don't want in
like the real treasure was
down there all along
and they were just waiting
for you to be
gone
so they didn't have to share

Cliché.

Let's pretend that we have time.
Let's tell ourselves -
White lie upon white lie,
False hope upon false hope -
That it's going to be alright.
And when our worlds collapse
My hand in yours, yours in mine
When we have to let go
Let's pretend nothing ever was.
Because it's easier to have never had
Than to have and then have not.

Six:

he writes because
he hopes that
somewhere down the line
someone might say
"sure
he had his flaws but
he could simply write them
away"

five:

She was the lone exorcist to the demons of my past.

Thoughts.

A poem scrawled between paragraphs on AC generators, a piece of prose that was definitely not about haloalkanes, yet found home among their like, little stories that filled in the gaps where he was to have drawn in parts of the human anatomy;

You could tell he didn't want to be a doctor or an engineer: he wanted to write.

Sadly, it was never his choice: it had been written into his fate, by a handed-down assumption that these were all there was, that unless your son tended to human lives or machine lives, he was going to die a penniless pauper, make nothing of himself. Like some sort of sacred edict, it travelled down generations, unimpeded, unopposed, unquestioned, the lives it ruined in its wake, simply collateral damage.

Four:

They never needed an excuse to leave. The slightest of provocations was all it took for them to barrel out, en masse. And before he knew it, they'd be out of his control.


It was why he never felt at ease, why he was always confused:

Tears are not the sign of a man, they always said. 

twentyfifteen.

To you and I: Happy New Year.

To the gentleman across the street, whose chronic depression has gotten the better of him time and time again: "Happy" New Year.

To the single mother on her third shift at the fast food joint, still working overtime to support her family, to whom the monotony of her job has become akin to a working hazard: Happy "New" Year.

To the little girl in the Intensive Care Unit, whose cells continue to multiply cancerously, and to whom the doctors have asked for last wishes: Happy New "Year".

Untitled

“I have to sort my books!’ she cried,
With self-indulgent glee;
With senseless, narcissistic pride:
‘I’m just so OCD!’

‘How random, guys!’ I smiled and said,
Then left without a peep -
And washed my hands until they bled,
And cried myself to sleep.”


                                              -/u/Poem_for_your_sprog

Lines

[Me and ticklemedead, whose work can be found here, took turns supplying a line each to write this. We weren't really trying to write something good, just something we did to pass the time.

In case you're wondering, the alternating lines which are actually good are hers, the others are mine.]

He walked away from the storefront, walking the slow, deliberate steps of someone at the end of his rope.

He looked down at his feet, they seemed perfectly sure, at this last moment, when for every other moment in his life they'd never known which way to go.

And yet, here they were now, dragging him along to the very spot he had lost her.

The dust in the air, the patch of sky above, the earth underneath his feet, they were witness to that day. He could still hear faint echoes of her words if he closed his eyes. This place had retained them, phantom words held back.

"They all look so pretty, Daddy! I want all of them!"

He clenched his eyes shut. The poppies hadn't all bloomed that day but today the field before the edge was in full bloom. A blood red carpet before a jutting edge that ended abruptly. The scent was starting to call to him.

It reminded him of his stupidity that day, it reminded him of how he'd simply let her go. And twenty years later, she'd done the same.

He'd known as soon as he'd received the divorce papers. He wouldn't get custody and Anya wouldn't be allowed to live with him. He'd known his wife or rather ex-wife was not meant to be a mother. She didn't know Anya's favorite toy or how she needed a story and a nightlight to sleep. He'd known all of this and yet, he'd signed them, he'd went along with the court's decision never once fought against it.

She wasn’t his child, they said. He wasn't the biological father, therefore he couldn't have her, they'd claimed.

He should have seen it coming. Anya had always needed him. If he'd tried harder to stay in her life, maybe she wouldn't have come to their spot that one last time.

She might not have carried his blood within her, but he knew he was an infinitely better parent then her mother had ever been.

But in the end, it counted for nothing. Her mother may have driven her to the spot but his absence had pushed her down that cliff.

He made his way down to the field, determined to find the best flower there to mark his last act of giving.

He picked a poppy that seemed to a brighter red than any on that meadow. He walked to the edge and let it fall. Its descent looked as beautiful and tragic hers must have looked. He stared until it seemed only a drop of blood relenting to gravity.

"For Anya.", he muttered, twenty years too late.

He'd known what he was here for. He sat back on the field. The poppies a sea around him, their scent canceling every other sensation. He knew he had another five minutes before the scent took over and it would put him to sleep.

He smiled. He wasn't going to the Other, he was just going to visit Anya, like he had done sparingly in the preceding years. Except this time, he never had to leave.

He could feel the exact moment when it happened. He closed his eyes, drowsing into a sleep no one could wake from.

Except...

"Daddy?"

Late Night Philosophers

“Someday, we’ll all be able to say what’s on our minds, without stumbling or stuttering.”

“I read something online that went something like that! Someday, we will be able to say… No, what? That’s wrong. No, we never say what’s really important to us… What? No, it was so DEEP, like, how can I forget? Um, we never say what really matters? We never say what’s really on our minds!”

“Explain to me how that’s deep again, I’m not seeing it.”

“I thought it made plenty sense. We never really say what’s on our minds, what’s…. I think there was something about, you know… Okay, let me explain the basic idea:

I don’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something to the effect that, um, we never voice the thoughts that really matter to us out loud. That’s what they meant. Yeah. It makes plenty sense: we don’t talk about things that matter, right? No, we sometimes talk about the things that matter, but most of the time, we just tiptoe around the elephant in the room.”

“I don’t think you could really tiptoe around the elephant in the room, because, like, have you seen how huge their ears are? I mean, they’d probably  hear you tiptoeing around them. It wont really be a tiptoe anymore, will it?”

“…”

“Yeah, I’m totally missing the point. I had a cooler explanation, but it sounded something like that, so yeah, it’s deep. That’s deep, bruh. Very deep, bruh.”

“Actually, if the elephant sorta swished its head, we’d go flying, because flappy ears.” *short pause* “THAT’S A METAPHOR FOR TALKING ABOUT THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, because the elephant keeps pushing us away. So the matter… WHAT. Oh my God, I’m starting to sound so weird, Oh God…”

“Are you one of those underappreciated genius type people? Because that was really very profound, and… Yeah. Stuff. And things. Yeah. Okay.”

“I might be, I might be. In a few years, I’m going to not be able to handle my genius, and snort cocaine, and die, OD’ing.”

I've Run Out Of Titles To Give.

[Unpolished, because this piece doesn't make sense. I've given up on it.]

"Twenty Six Year Old Stabbed To Death At Glengow Park"

Even after thirty one years, looking at that headline still brought tears to his eyes. Three decades hadn't changed a thing; he still missed her. 

She still visited him, though, her ghastly silhouette serving as a reminder of her words as he held her in her last minutes on Earth. 

"No matter where I would go, or how I would go there, I promised you that I would always love you. This doesn't change a thing, babe; I love you. And I'll love you more, even from the afterlife. As long as you promise not to tell anyone what happened. Ever."

He'd held her in his arms and cried. Held her till her aroma was imprinted into his head, held her till every chasm of her body found a foothold in his mind, held her till the cops had to physically pry her lifeless body away from him.

Everyone had a thousands tongues for her at the funeral, of how she was the best, how no one compared, how they were all facing a huge loss. But those words were all empty to him. All he wanted was to see her face once again, to hold her hand, to look into those warm hazel eyes, and melt away at her cheeky smile, one last time. 

They asked him what if there was anything they could do to help, but he knew that they couldn't help with the only thing he desired: to undo those events at the park.

He wanted to shout out to the world what had happened, who had pulled her away from this world, but they had both been staunch believers in Karma; he wanted her words to be preserved with this pristine action.

The officers that showed up at their place promised him they would find the one responsible for the "heinous" and "devastating" crime, and have them behind bars within weeks, but he recognized those large empty words again, and shrugged them off. However, he realized he'd help them as much as he could, aid them in the case as far as was in his power. He wanted nothing more than her killer to pay for what he'd did. Going back on his word was out of the question, but while he wasn't willing to break the law of his promise, he had no qualms about bending it. He had promised her he wouldn't tell them who took her away from the world; he hadn't promised her that he wouldn't help them arrive at that conclusion by themselves.

But that was all in vain. Weeks turned to months turned to years, and soon the case was all but forgotten, buried under shrouds of red tape and other cases with a heavier bankroll backing. 

As he leaned back in his armchair, waiting for her to visit again, he thought off all the things he now regretted, things he'd hoped to be accountable to her for, somewhere along the line.

He regretted not asking her out throughout high school. He regretted having stayed at work on her birthday. He regretted not proposing earlier. He regretted not putting the dishes in the dishwasher when she had asked him to. He regretted not saying "I love you" more often. He regretted not getting the apartment that she so badly wanted.

But most of all, he regretted slipping that knife in between her ribs, that night at the park.

Three:

I
don't
belong.

I
couldn't
care.

Two:

"Mum and dad, all your pills are arranged in order in the third cupboard from the left, absolutely NO REASON TO SKIP THEM. Love you loads, xoxoxoxoxo"

As they carried the body away, he read and reread the bloodstained letter, his booming laughter echoing through the torrent of tears that flowed down his face.

"Typical her: worried about our meds, even with a slit wrist."

One:

You could tell from their faces: they had seen things they weren't supposed to, gone through things no one their age should ever have to go through, two faces that had lost everything but each other.

He held her hand, refusing to let go.
"If you jump, I jump, remember?"

She looked him in the eye, squeezed his hand, not a single telltale of what they both knew was going to happen.
"That was the one reason I hadn't done that till now."

They both jumped.

The "I Have Writers Block, But Need To Post Something To Convince People My Blog Isn't Dead (And Boy, Is This Going To Be A Long Title!)" Post

They say you are at your truest when you fear for your life.

"I'm gonna wet myself."

"Um. Ooookaaaay."

"You know, I've always wanted to die facing the ocean."

He was pale as a ghost, but then again, I was too, most probably.

"Really?"

"No.  But if you make it, I want you to be telling people how I got my dying wish, not that my last words were about how I was going to wet myself."

Higher and higher we went, my heart hammering with each inch we rose, the people down below now mere specks.

"I'm deathly afraid of heights."

"Really? Then this was a very poor decision, yeah?"

"I thought it would be fun, okay?"

"Been there, man. Been there."

"Oh yeah? Like when?"

"Right now. I might be more scared of heights than you, actually."

A lurch as we stopped.

"Tell my mother I love her."

"And if I don't make it, likewise."

Freefall.

Nothing prepares you for freefall.

We fell and fell and fell.

We screamed and screamed and screamed.

And then we stopped falling, and stop screaming.

My heart fell back from my throat, beating faster than ever.

I looked at him.

He looked at me. 

We laughed our faces off.

"One more round?"

"You sure, man?"

"Never been more sure in my life."

"You're gonna regret this.  We both are."

"Maybe. Maybe not. "

We got back on.

Climbing higher and higher again.

"I changed my mind. I'm getting off now."

"It's too late."

"..... to apologiiiiiiiize."

"ITS TOO LAAAAAA-"

We fell.

We screamed.

We hit the ground.

We laughed.

"The sixth time was the best."

"You wouldn't know. You blacked out."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"... maybe a little."

"Can you believe we just did that eight times though?"

"Nope.  In one piece, that too."

"Wow."

"Wow.",  he agreed.

"Ta'aal ya Aboudi!"

He turned off into the distance. 

"Um, that would be my parents. I think we're leaving."

"Oh. Okay. See you around, then?"

"Yeah man. I guess so."

Jeremy was staring at me this entire time.

"The Saudi kid giving you a hard time?"

"Nah. He was a real nice guy actually. We bonded almost instantly. Weird."

"Really? What's his name?"

"No clue."

"No clue? You just sat on that ride about thirteen times with him."

"Eight. And yeah. No clue."

I never met him again.

Funny, isn't it? How you could meet someone who you would feel completely compatible with, and the next thing you know, they're just another memory in your head, one you cannot do anything about?

We were two tangential lines, never destined to meet again.

And yet, that one moment we did meet? 

Worth it

Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap.

The people I meet on each flight?

They're single-serving friends.