he found one crumpled cigarette in his breast pocket straightened it gently, expertly between his palms put it between his lips and lit it
He was on the roof watching the afternoon skies
a bit drunk
He pointed at the plume of smoke he exhaled and said, “The trick is to stay in the game until you’re the only one left. It don’t matter how good you are or how you evolve. Just stay in the game until you’re the last one.”
The smoke vanished before him, raising to the skies
He nodded. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
He finished the cigarette and went back down to the wedding
"The hell happened this time?" we asked but we knew it had to be another street brawl
He was known around town for those
for always starting shit and then losing horribly
There's no honor in winning he used to say. If you win it just shows you picked on someone weaker than you
Wise words of a drunk man
"So who was it this time?" we asked
and he said, "Some fucker from the bar."
"No shit. And why though?"
"I heard him talking. Said that his wife ran away from home and left him with the kid. Some four year old. So I asked, where the kid at then, an' he looks at me with the side eye and says the kid's at home. An' I asked how the hell he leaves a four year old alone at night like that, and then he tells me to mind my own business. He probably locked the kid in the basement so he could come out and drink and get shitfaced. I know motherfuckers who do that. I used to be one of 'em. So... I hated myself through him and him through me. And there was but one quarter of a step from there to a fight. We held it outside an' I got my ass kicked. Meaning I chose my opponent wisely. I always do."
"The guy left his kid locked in the basement so he could come to the bar and drink?" we asked
He seemed to think deeply about it. Wiped some blood from his face in the meanwhile "Yeah!" he finally burst. "The asshole! Hey, I know, let's drop by his place and give him a lesson. Let's make the night better for that poor kid."
"Right," we said. "An' where would that be? Where's he live?"
"Oh fuck. I should've asked him before swinging at him, no?"
"You should've done many things, old man. But for now, why don't you go home?"
He shrugged. "Ain't got any. I mean, not anymore I don't."
We put together some money and sent him to the nearest bar. Enough to get him through the night
The next day there was news of a homeless man dying in the streets
We're still trying to figure out if it was him or not
I'm afraid he was a bit too good at picking opponents
he was one of those writers whose bio said something like 'It is not my choice. The muse possesses me like a demoness and I write because not to do so would mean to have my soul tortured by a thousand bites and scratches of her fiery fangs and gelid claws. The only way to delay her devouring my soul is to put the next word down. And I strive to do just that. My destiny is therefore set in stone. I am a writer.'
he was also an amateur photographer and filmmaker Currently exploring the niche of torture porn
He was 34 and still lived with his parents who apparently didn't understand his artistic side and were constantly trying to crush his dreams into oblivion with ridiculous, outworldly demands like 'When will you get a real job and move out?'
He pitied them Pitied the blindness of their souls the deafness to real art and the artistic nature that oozed from his very being
It was like they had Jesus Christ in the flesh in their house but would not understand or care to acknowledge it
Poor souls
Anyway his latest project got him in a bit of trouble with the law
Something to do with a seventeen-year-old staring in one of his experimental movies
and now he knew he had it all figured out Just like the Messiah, he had to die, had to suffer to no end so that the blind herds could come to know his truth and understand his art
He denied his parents when they tried to hire him a lawyer
Had been Before he suicided Overdosed on some pills or something like that
He had a few novels to his name and some short story collections
Other than that he only left behind a daughter who several days after his cremation brought her boyfriend to her house and said to him, "Look, since you wanna be a journalist and call yourself a big fan of my dad’s works, I’m gonna give you something to write about tonight. For your magazine. An article about the departed genius."
"Really?" He smiled, expecting her to share some of her father’s unpublished manuscripts or something like that. It would surely aid in his journalist career. Put him ahead of the competition
But she grabbed the urn that contained the great writer’s ashes and said, "Yeah. Look, I’m gonna pour these into the toilet and take a shit over them. You can write about it and take pictures too."
"What?"
"Hey, you don’t meet up with a story like this every day. Take it or leave it."
perched on top of his desk the doctor looked down at him as a teacher would at a failing student
"Say," began the doctor, "are you even trying to stay alive? Or do you seek the quickest death possible that can't be labeled as downright suicide? You smoke all brands of cigars and add up to three and a half packs a day and drink random alcohols you can pick up and keep at it until there's no more in the bottle. Your liver is done for. The lungs beg for death with each tentative of breath. Veins are as rigid as rusty pipes. You don't even have feeling left in the skin. So what's your big idea, pall?"
Despite all his shortcomings in the health department his eyes were as limpid and innocent as a newborn's
He pointed them at the doctor's and said, "Oh, I have many big ideas, doc. Thing is, they're only big in my head. Once they come out and others see them... Well, they just aren't so big no more. Average at best. And that's what I do all day. I get those big ideas out of my head and try to show them to others."
The doctor took off his glasses. Watched him in a new light. "Buddy... did you not understand the question?"
He sighed. "Doc, I think you didn't understand the answer. So let me spell it out for you in your own language." He cleared his throat. "I'm a writer."
The doctor put his glasses back on. "Ooooh, now I get it. Hah, why didn't you say so from the start?"
"That's the problem with us, doc. We never like to admit it up front. Only the young and those who actually made it will say it up front."
"Ooook, in this case... Well, I guess there's nothing I can do for you, nor is there anything that has to be done. For a writer, you're perfectly healthy."
"I know, I know. I just wanted to see if I could get some morphine..."
they have faces and souls and they stare back from their blue canvas, down on his dirty, snot-smeared face
It’s a warm sunny day but the bottom of the shallow, dry well is cold and full of critters
Well, no problem. The sky is so pretty with all its smiling faces that he won’t even cry. He’ll stay there and look up. Still waiting for mother to return and pick him up
she lived alone and didn’t do much around the house
Ate TV dinners all day and drank and complained that she couldn’t sleep at night
Had a pretty nasty case of insomnia
What can you expect from a girl with snow-white hair and coal-black eyebrows? some had said
Obviously they weren’t referring to her insomnia but her other mental issues like being bipolar and depressed and other such things
You could try to sleep with her and the sex would be quick and then you’d have to spend the rest of the night listening to her talk about recycling being actually harmful for the environment
«Seriously,» she’d say. «People need to understand that the stuff just gets shipped overseas to third world countries where it’s burned or dissolved in chemicals to extract precious metals from it. That’s how it works. And it’s harmful for nature, harmful for everything and everyone. People have no awareness. They’re all so damn selfish, it’s ridiculous.»
The last guy who fell asleep during her speech had his foreskin folded and stapled shut
«Hit me!» she urged him. «Choke me or fuck me up but don’t you dare ignore me again!»
it was her dog that had to be put down not his He only saw the good boy for the past two weeks or so
Yet it was him who couldn’t get it up in bed because thoughts of the departed good boy wouldn’t let go of his mind
“I’m sorry,” he told her, hands covering his face in shame. “I just can’t. I... I feel we should dedicate this day to mourning, you know?”
“What?”
“Babe, you know how much I love dogs. The death of one... It, it just kills me, you know?”
She looked around for her panties. “Well, babe, I start to think you love ‘em dogs more than you love me, really.”
“Wah? How can you...?”
“Well, I mean, if you didn’t you’d want to comfort me in this time of need. It’s what I want, what I need to cope with the loss. But you’re not thinking about that, are you? No, all you’re thinking about is the dog. It wasn’t even your dog. You didn’t grow up with it, damn you!”
They hugged each other and cried on each other’s shoulder. Cried for the rest of the night
A few days later she came into the bedroom wearing a furry dog-themed outfit with ears and all Same color as the one who had been put down
under the bent lamppost he stands and watches as the local grocery store closes down for the day
The clerks come out with big trash bags and close the doors and lock them and abandon the trash bags by the trash cans without bothering to throw them inside and just leave
Daydreaming as a profession 