white hole

wes by night, in his room with a black sharpie, drawing Xs all over his body. the chart of them: inside left forearm, inside right thigh, left anklebone, slightly off-center forehead, left eyelid, right earlobe, the soft underbelly of his chin, in the hollow of his throat, and now the marker hovered over the ridge of an iliac crest - he stood naked in front of the mirror, eyes focused on his own eyes. he knew how stoned he was, felt his brain soggy with it. he ran his free hand through his hair and idly thought about shaving it all off. he’d done it before, in a drunken fit, taken the clippers to his scalp and watched with great zeal the way the follicles fell. he’d let it grow out of boredom, enjoyed the way women would touch it, exclaiming at the tight curls.

he was born with violence inchoate, in diametric opposition to his immediate family, who were as calm and settled as lambs in a pasture. his mother had been a kind woman, soft like a marshmallow and slightly dumb, preferring mass-marketed paperbacks to the science-fiction her husband devoured. he figured the violence came from his paternal grandfather, who was a wicked drunk, who lived alone in a dilapidated and messy house after his wife’s cancer had made an antecedent of her. figured it skipped a generation. a recessive trait. he only remembered a few family visits, and they had always ended badly, with the old man slurring into his Canadian Club, smile pasted poorly to his mouth as he spoke nasty truths that he perverted to suit the moment. he had used his fists on his wife, that much wes knew - he’d never asked his father, but the way his face tautened, the way his arms hung ready at his sides, (instead of nested in pockets as they usually were) versed him of a threat from the old man. it took wes’ father a good half hour to calm down, usually just as they hit the bridge over a perpetually muddy river. the silence broke easily, as though sliding aside. he would light his pipe and begin casual conversation as though they were driving back from the mall. as though his father didn’t exist. only once did wes bring the subject up, just as they passed over the bridge, and his father’s speech became terse, as though the words had to squirm to get past his clenched teeth.

music was playing, something low, something urgent. wes wasn’t listening to it, but it informed his heartbeat. the cold from outdoors leaked in through the old window, set badly in its frame. he drew a pair of black, fingerless gloves over his hands and flexed his fingers. tilted his head. all at once he felt ridiculous and flung the gloves from him. they crumpled in a corner like dead rodents. he put clothes on, not even bothering to note what they were, opting for a loose brown sweater, a white t-shirt and jeans. the girl kept invading his thoughts like an unanswered phonecall. the girl from the bookstore. their brief words, swallowed up by the spines of the books. his conflicting desire to walk with her to her destination (back the way he’d come) and his desire to find a bar and drown himself in whiskey. he had another girl on his mind that day. she called herself Charlie, short for Charlene. nice girl. he met her a month ago at the movies. walking out the door. lighting her cigarette. the flash of gratitude - and something else - in her eyes. the casual conversation leading to a drink in a dark pub. that drink leading to another. leading to karaoke - she sang, he didn’t - leading to her apartment and a drunken fumble in the hallway, sloppy movements leading to her slapping him across the face. the lacuna of horror as she realized what she’d done. dissolving into giggles which veered to shrieking as he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into her apartment. collapsing like buildings detonated from the foundation onto her couch, grappling with one another’s twisted wreckage. over the month, it had gotten worse. she confessed her rape fantasy to him and he obliged her. the rope burns on his palms. her helpless, contorted snarl still rang in his ears.

“what’s your name?”

“saskiya,” she said, staring at him unrelentingly. flicking her hair over a shoulder. narrowing her eyes. shading her gaze from the sun.

“that russian or something?”

she shrugged. “yeah. what’s yours?“

“viktor,” he lied, unsure why.

“that russian?” her lips curved like a saber unsheathing.

“da.”

“well, thanks for the smoke,” she said, and started to walk. he followed alongside.

“you walking this way?”

“sure.”

they walked like that together, smoking, silent. her phone rang and she answered it, holding a conversation with the other end while completely ignoring wes. he found he didn’t mind. eventually, she ended the call. “where are you going?” she asked offhandedly, as though the answer didn’t matter to her overmuch.

“down the street. you?”

“same place,” she said without missing a beat. “but seriously, where are you going?”

“just walking.”

“ah.”

again, silence intruded like a third wheel. a few daring birds had taken up perches in the still-bare trees. they made tremulous song. clouds passed over the sun and they both felt chilled. “well, viktor,” she said finally, “this is my stop. thanks again, for the smoke.”

“any time.”

and just like that, she turned. wes walked another block without thinking, then stopped in front of a run-down apartment complex, staring at a broken window. it had grown dark, and the sky was clotted with clouds like rhexic blisters. the thought passed him that he should follow her at a distance, but then Charlie’s gasping laughter came back to him and he crossed wires, imagining the rape of saskiya. he grew uncontrollable within himself, felt his muscles writhing over his skeleton. he lit another cigarette and headed home.


wes by night, staring into the mirror, suffused with smoke. the music had ended and he inhabited a limbo of action. felt like he was floating instead of standing stationary. closed his eyes and tried to feel himself further and further above his skull, lifting out of his body as though drawn out by a celestial hand. it only lasted a second, that vertiginous sensation, tipping over a precipice, before he was snatched back earthbound, rocking back on his heels. his eyes flew open like startled shutters. old, crusted hate shook itself loose from its cage and pissed acidly into his stomach. shook itself like a kenneled dog, ears flat, frothing at the corners of its mouth. wes turned away from the mirror, lowered himself to the hardwood, beginning a series of calisthenics to purge. he did this until sweat dripped from his brow and his abdomen quivered from the effort.

hours later, in the whirl of a padded booth in some bar. friends all around, crowding, jostling elbows, roaring with drink. enough alcohol on their breath to breathe fire if ignited. wes, jammed in the corner but fighting back, just as rowdy and boisterous if not more. he never knew what he was saying, but he knew it made the table shake with their laughter. had to remind himself of their names, sometimes, in foggy attempts to reinstate his hold on reality. lucas. norris. jake. the two girls from another table, coquettish in tone but garish in demeanor. jake’s hand on the blonde one’s thigh. running up her leg. her attempts to fend him off. her contradictory giggles. her burnished cheeks and darting eyes. drinking a cosmopolitan. the other, red-headed, gigantic breasts, amazonian. flirting dangerously with lucas. norris trying to horn in on the action, clueless to their intended targets. the bar tilted like a pinball machine, dislodging their coterie into the chilly grasp of the evening. it had rained. the sidewalks and streets were slick with it. just as always, they shouted and caterwauled the whole way back to wes’ apartment, where music played again. wes could see the faint marks of the sharpied Xs. he’d spent a good time rubbing the visible ones off, but if he looked hard enough, he could still see them.

three splayed out in the living room. someone turned on the television and there was a squealing fight, between the blonde and jake, over control of the remote. wes, in the kitchen, with norris, lines of coke on the table. norris had arranged them like a galaxy. they railed them at the same time, each taking an arm of the spiral. a small pile remained. “white hole,” said wes, randomly. they sat, spinning in their respective orbits, talking on topics neither of them knew shit about, expatiating like scholars on life and the universe. wes found himself talking about saskiya, said things he didn’t know he felt. found himself talking about Charlie. norris looked lost throughout the narrative, grayed-out by the alcohol and the cocaine, nodded his head irregularly. wes, angry, slammed his fist on the table, and norris’ eyes snapped open. they got up and went to the living room, norris falling once against the wall with a giant thud. books fell from a shelf, scattering across the floor; wes fell on his friend like a hungry mongrel, whaling on him even as he crumpled beneath the fury. the next thing: jake & lucas, tearing him from his prey. the next thing: alone, in the living room, the music still on, blasting. the next thing: the blonde girl, teetering out of the bathroom, eyes half-open, terror slathered on her face. she’d been crying: her cheeks ran ashy with mascara and her lips were smeared with shakily-applied paint. they stared at one another as two tourists gawking at respective disasters. “get out,” wes snarled, and she fled, one heel in her hand. the door slamming shut behind her. shaking the walls. the next thing: dark, and dream.


(it’s his house. it’s his parent’s bedroom. two bookshelves, facing each other like sentinels over the king-size bed. his father’s, crammed with paperbacks, seeming to lean. then fall. both fall, scattering their cargo over the bed and the floor, covering a body that lay on the sheets. the sound of a car backfiring, echoing. the acrid smell of smoke. a gray-white ghost of it in the air. the fan, turning, turning, faster, cracks in the ceiling spidering out from it. a graveyard with heaving headstones. the ground, undulating. cracks in the sky. trees planted upside-down in the mud, roots in the clouds. their weight is tearing out the sky.)


the bellicose growl of the bar behind him, wes standing outside. (wes is out cold on his couch) dazed by the temperature, feels afloat in the lukewarm air. the buildings around him seem unreal, permeable, like weird spongiforms grown up out of the asphalt. he has always prided himself on seeming less intoxicated than he actually is. a troupe of girls passes him, each of them engaged with their cellphones. he seems a blur of blued curves. feels himself swell up, primally, sizing them - but then they are gone & he watches them go, through the cloud of his cigarette smoke. wes plunges his hands into his back pockets and snarls silently at the stars.

as he lists slightly by the bar, dollar bills crammed into a fist, he overheads a woman talking. she is discussing her past with another man, who leans towards her on his stool as though about to fall on her with lust. she is confessing: she was a siamese twin, severed from a sister at birth. felt guilty every day that she lived. she paused, downed the rest of her pink, frothy drink. fixed her eyes on wes. "you know what i'm talkin about, don't you darlin? you know what its like - to lose somebody. someone close to you gets tore outta the world, you spend the rest of your goddamn life tryin to paste over the hole..."

"no," wes lied. "sorry."

she shrugs. gives him a nasty, irregular smile. "ever'body has. you, too - maybe you jus don't know it yet." with that, she turned back to her man, grabbing his thigh. wes ordered a double in her cloyingly perfumed wake. his chemistry boiling, he returned to the table feeling newly arrogant. swept his eyes over the tableaux of his friends and their girls. felt nothing for them.


wes had spent his time in college as a whirlwind passing through a small town. he enjoyed a sotto-voce notoriety among the women of their academic terrarium - that he was a violent fuck, an aggressor, despite his bland & limpid smiles. he was personable in society, yet, even to the ones who knew him best, seemed distant & aloof, as though constantly occupied with something burning intensely, in his brain. hed majored in business, though seemed largely unconcerned with his progress, enjoying a steadily average GPA. he knew none of his professors by name, and preferred it that way.

only once had he come afoul of campus law, when a high-strung girl - Christine - had shrilly invoked the police on him for attempted rape. it had come to a farce of a hearing, where the girl had broken down & admitted to having wanted it. he had walked into sunlight, arrogantly free & clear -


- how many times had he surfaced from blinding oblivion in the same place, pretzeled on his couch, head going nova? the familiar agony - no matter how frequent, never ceased to cause him new pain in a new place. this time, behind his eyeballs, under his fingernails. the mirror showed his face, messily bisected by a ruddy line of dried blood, from jawline, under the nose, to just below the eye. the same hue, flaky on the dull ridge of his knuckles -



saskiya had reached a modicum of homeostasis, arriving at wakefulness in her own bed. she felt at peace, lying inert as though paralyzed, eyes twitching to & fro in her skull. eventually, however, the exacting lassitude of sleep pooled in her muscles & she stretched, hearing joints pop & feeling herself extend like taffy on a pull. she yawned like a cat & turned her head to see Henry, still asleep, curled like a child around his pillow, tucked into a near-fetal ball.

kamera obscura

saskiya reads a lot of nabokov. she tells anyone who asks that she has read his entire oeuvre. proudly announces her favorite: 'laughter in the dark.' privately, she imagines herself to be a version of the villainness, margot. she is flagrantly intemperate, and often petulant. sometimes she feels as though she is still a child, feels small within her skin; sometimes it is the opposite, she feels older than her twenty-odd years, expired somewhere inside of herself. this is a recent development, this secondary feeling, the creep of age. she becomes vain quickly, checking the mirror every morning, arranging herself as best she can. other days passion and impatience win out and she skips the reflection of herself entirely. heedlessly into the world she flies, often harried, biting her lower lip during any conversation with an acquaintance. on one of these days, as winter turns to grayish puddle and the sun strives through the thick blots of cloud, she is scarved and ambivalent, coffee quickening her towards the bookstore. she takes the same route she always does, secretly hoping she won't see henry on his way to or from the butchery he works at during the week. sometimes she passes there, stealing a glance through the front window. she can see him, aproned in white, sleeves rolled, hair hanging over his forehead. he wields a gargantuan cleaver, up and down, up and down. thrills run through her at the sight, but she allows herself no more than a scant minute, departing before he recognizes her looking.

the bookstore affords her a measure of relaxation. the man behind the counter resides in a haze of smoke, constantly perusing some paperback whose cover is hidden. he doesn't even look up when she enters, and this she's glad of. she slips quickly to the right and through the skinny passageways to the place she knows as Fiction, running her hands idly along the spines. she is immediate and ruthless with her judgement, which spines she plucks out - it's about the colors, which one looks riper, to her. like picking fruit or vegetable. sometimes the brighter the color, the more rotten the prose inside. she makes a face and returns it to its position, wriggling it back among all the others. such shifts of temperament come easily to her. after the judgemental phase passes, she feels maternal, holding such books as a tattered copy of Ibsen, or a Tolstoy, lovingly scarred with marginalia. these she wants to give a home on her shelf, already imagines where they'll fit in the ranks. she hardly ever buys hardcover. she has nothing in particular in mind today, no one book she seeks to acquire, and so lets her unconscious mind take control. she wanders back and forth in the aisle, roving over the selection. her eyes move slowly, then quickly, and fall on a title: HENRY, on a dusty, lined old spine the color of moss. the author's name is unreadable, smallish in print-size. her heart trips over itself and grabs for a hold on her breath. she grasps it and pulls it out. the front of it reads, in plain black font: "GHOST OF HAPPINESS" and the author, below, in italics; "JUNE HENRY." she smirks and replaces it, perhaps a bit more violently than she should have.

she leaves the bookstore a half-hour later, tucked under her arm a book of poetry by someone she has never heard of and The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares. her head is clear, filled with effervescence. she rides high on the feeling, savoring it, lighting a cigarette as she walks down the street. she lets her free arm swing to and from, allows the wind to rake its invisible fingers through her hair. she takes a different route home, having to hurry across a crosswalk just as the light changed. she smiled and waves at the driver who was about to lay on his horn - until he sees her face and then grumpily waves her on. she feels no guilt, could care less about traffic. her thoughts unravel to henry at his job, the gleam of the cleaver and the glint of sweat on his brow. the creases in his collared shirt, sleeves rolled up, just-so, to the elbow. he is focused, but doesn't appear at all angry or irritated as some people do - he seems in his element, at peace, a supreme machinist of his own body, as ungainly and lanky as it was. he was the kind of person who would fold his pants after having taken them off. would lay them neatly on a chair. fold his shirt the same way, lay it in a pile on top of the folded pants. watching him do it from her side of the bed, she ground her teeth & wished she could fold him like he folded his shirt, fold him and put him in a drawer. she imagines she can, imagines he's really just a piece of paper. she folds him into origami. his blinking, bemused eye, on the side of a swan. tugs his tailfeathers gently and sees his neck curve.

she blinks, shakes her head, realizes that she has lost herself in her reverie, quite literally, having walked all this way without realizing where she'd been walking. she was somehow by the water, at the foot of the hill, by the wharves. their stench is what shook her, that, and the bleat of the boats in the harbor. she stops suddenly, on the corner of the end of the street, and stares at the buildings. there are further roads, all leading down to the edge of the docks, crammed against one another, seeming to hold each other up with their respective collapse. someday there will come a giant freighter ship whose horn shakes them all down to dust and rubble, of this she is sure. she remembers a bar down here, something divey and of ill-repute. she took henry there. she observed him as they sat side by side at the bar, the radio crackling out the "top songs of the 80s, 90s and today" while the seagulls cartwheeled and shrieked gleefully outside. it had been a gloomy, wet day, and the damp floorboards seemed to heave as they walked to the bar. the bartender stared salaciously at saskiya, asking crude questions and lounging in front of them, pretending to polish the glasses with a filthy rag. a cigarette hung out of his mouth in defiance of every state law. saskiya asked if she could smoke. found herself flirting with him. henry fumbled to light her cigarette, but the bartender was faster, flicking a dented Zippo marked with an Ace of Spades. saskiya smiled and breathed out. his name had been Gerry, short for Gerald. henry heard the rumbling amusement of the fisher-folk around, clad in jaundiced slickers and squeaky boots. saskiya noted the discomfort clouding his eyes, and felt satisfied and guilty simultaneously. when they left, neither spoke. they walked, separated from each other. eventually, turning to cross the road, she violently seized his hand and walked intentionally faster, as if daring him to keep up. he did, but still didn't speak. it was this way the whole way up the hill and into her apartment, where they fell onto her bed and made savage love to each other, his clothes falling in a heap on the floor. she noted this. her hips pistoned even faster upon seeing him in such a state of disrepair, one sock barely clinging to his foot, the other in defeat next to the rumple of his pants. his shirt, half-on and half off. hearing a seam rip in the armpit, she moaned out of sheer bliss.

she stared at the wharves for a dismal moment, watching the trail of gray smoke escape upward from a stove somewhere, then turned on a heel, dismissively, hiking back up the way she'd come. the notion of home was far from her mind. she had nowhere to go and nowhere to be. she flirted with the idea of sitting in the park at the foot of her hill and sketching the easterly ocean. the islands in the bay. the white sails against the slate sky. the one-dimensional joggers and their one-dimensional dogs on the pathway around the park. she knew eventually she'd just start drawing him, starting with an eye, a black, hollowed-out circle with her pencil, vicious motions, as if flaying the paper with her instrument. it would become his face. he would look sad. he would look concerned, but for something beyond her, through her. as though something were falling down behind her and she lay in anguish, dying, before it. as though he were more afraid for the occupants of the falling tower, though she lay bleeding before him. knowing this, she altered direction yet again, and found a pub she'd never been to. entered, sat, and drank whisky for the next hour, let it mull her thoughts and numb her brain. one turned into two turned into three. before she left, the sun was setting. she had distilled herself into mumbling sadness, and staggered off home. she knew henry would ring her soon. she peeled off a layer, half of another, and fell face-first into the bed, the books she'd bought fallen messily on their pages on the floor.

saskiya & henry

saskiya needed something bad, but what she needed was bad for her. she wanted to unmake herself, undo herself. she stood out in the winter and let the wind blast her bared teeth. her stomach gurgled at her like a sewer clogged with storm. wine thrummed through her veins. across the park, she could see her lover climbing the hill. snow caught in her hair. she was unhappy with him. felt her muscles twisting & roiling like ropes of snakes, hissing at him silently. stared at his thin black form as he followed the cracked sidewalk. he wore his greatcoat, as always, head bare and chin burrowed into his scarf, hands thrust deep into pockets. she scowled at him, menacingly. pretended she was a feral predator high atop her hill, staring at the gazelle which loped amiably below. with one swipe of her claw. she lit a cigarette in the pale blue cave of her fingers, finding more than one attempt necessary in the face of the wind. once lit, she took an insane pleasure at inhaling just as it roared into her mouth, sucking the smoke down into her lungs so violently that she nearly choked on it. she contemplated going inside and locking the door. turning off her cell phone. later, pretend to have fallen asleep. he's waving. henry's waving. the idea turns to ash, and blows away. he's seen her. she grits her teeth & waves back, less friendlily. she could always run. just take off and leave the city behind. she's heard stories about people who do that. just start walking and end up somewhere else. when she thinks about those people, she imagines the instant of their departure. she imagines a girl with dark hair like hers, walking down the street. she imagines the girl tilting her head to one side, as though hearing some music she can't pinpoint the origin of. she can see a sudden dawning, an awakening, in the girl's eyes. she sees her stride change from an awkward, side-stepping gait to a stride of purpose, one foot in front of the other for as long as her body can go. until hunger devours her and she topples in the middle of some street far west of there. saskiya imagines a rural road, the faded lines of yellow on the asphalt. the way it winds through autumnal trees. the soft pelt of rain on the leaves. she sees the girl falter, take one step out of rhythm, and stop in the middle of everything, realizing that she is lost.

henry is closer now, and she sighs, taking another long, hard drag on the cigarette. she eyes the ember on the end of it. considers engaging an old habit, the old savagery of college days, exacting vengeance on her flesh. dismisses it. she is too old for such dramatics. she has a craving for vodka, the cold sharp flash of it in her mouth. her cigarette is damp, and in one of her irritable flicks, it breaks mushily in half. she swears under her breath and drops it in the snow. henry is warm. she likes that about him, even though he is all angles and bones, he is warm like a furnace. she hates how he talks. if he never opened his mouth, she figures she could be with him forever, but when he speaks, his tones are soft and rounded. he is amused by everything. nothing angers him, everything rolls off him like water. his armor is impenetrable. she has tried. she has been wicked with him, tossed him around, taunted him, drunkenly assaulted him with metaphor and with spite. still, he stays. he is warm. she likes that. she spits to one side.

"saskiya!" he is calling, gloved hands cupped around his mouth.

"henry," she replies, her call sinking like lead before it reaches halfway to him. she considers the hesitation in her voice. she wonders if it's because she didn't want him to hear her, afraid of the malice that could be present in her tone, or if it's something else. could be anything. millions of things. she puts the thought away. he is striding up the hill, red-faced but not out of breath, in fact, energized by the climb. she is jealous - can never make it up the incline without ending at the top breathing heavily and heart pounding like a frenzied tom-tom.

"saskiya," he says, arms open. "i'm so happy to see you." the wind almost bowls him over, and he stumbles towards her. she is stationary, but her eyes flicker to his sudden movement.

"you're always happy to see me," she remarks, crossing her arms over her chest.

"and you're not? happy to see me?"

"of course i am," she lies, and it's a smooth, honeyed lie, and she knows it will hit its mark. it always does.

"it's freezing out here. shall we go inside?" her lips tighten at his use of the word 'shall.'

"it's not that bad. bracing, really."

he turns, faces the ocean, inhales deeply. "the wind is pretty brutal. but you're right. it is kind of nice. besides, i should probably enjoy it before spring comes - and you know that'll be soon."

she grimaces. she hated spring, the mushy brown nonsense which made lakes of every lawn and every dip in the sidewalk. she hated the nascence of the season, how everything was puling and new, weak and golden. glazed with dish-detergent yellow. "soon. yes."

henry falls quiet and she sees him allow his eyes to ease closed. he seems meditative, as if allowing the world to pass through him. at the first sign of a creeping smile over his lips, she interrupts - "let's go in. i'm cold."

his eyes snap open and he lets the smile form fully, a nearly lascivious-looking thing in the lower third of his face. like a worm full of blood inching across his jawline. pulsing. "all right."

she turns and sets off inside. she does not hold the door for him - not at first - then immediately feels guilty and rushes back a step to grab it, causing an awkward bumble of their arms and torsos. "sorry," she mumbles. "it slipped."

"no worries," henry says, gallantly doffing an invisible hat. "after you."

he follows her up the stairs. she feels him at her back like a dog that you can't shake. a banally loyal dog. a dog whose tongue lolls out and whose bark is lazy. she wants to take henry by the collar and toss him out the front door. she feels she would get great satisfaction out of hearing his confused, betrayed whine.

two voices

"lately i've been seeing myself in the city. just a glimpse, sometimes just enough to recognize my particular stride, my hunched back. i realize, after a dozen or so of these encounters, that i'm insane. that i'm projecting. i see myself, up ahead, turning the corner. not always walking. sometimes in the passenger seat of a familiar car. i am haunting myself."

"have you ever tried talking to them? i mean, you - one of you?"

"no - that's anoher thing. i freeze up, i become ... strangely inert."

"when do you - when does this happen?"

"all the time. at random. i could be anywhere. i see myself walk by the windows at work."

"do you ever see your face? are you sure it is you?"

"no, i'm not sure. but i know. i know it's me."

"maybe you're trying to tell yourself something."

"or i'm dreaming. or i'm losing my mind."

"i don't think you're dreaming."

"so i'm losing my mind. might as well be dreaming."

"well - what's so bad about it? why does seeing yourself cause you such panic?"

"wouldn't you?"

"panic? no... well,"

"you don't know how you'd feel. i swear, it's like i'm being haunted."

"some hauntings have been described as friendly. the ... hauntees, become acclimated to the presence."

"this is different. i feel ... threatened."

"by yourself?"

"yes - no, I - "

"it seems like you're saying that when you see these - apparitions, you feel as though you could be harmed."

"it's not like i'm afraid they're going to shoot me, or stab me, or... you know. there's just this horrible, nameless..."

"go on - "

"i - don't know how."

"you're shaking. should we... move on?"

"...no."

Pause.

"how many times has this happened to you?"

"i stopped keeping track."

"...at last count?"

"7. or 8."

"for how long?"

"i kept a tally on the back of my hand. in sharpie. then someone asked, and i stopped. it's been a few months since then."

"all summer. when did you first ... see one?"

"right at the end of spring. first really warm day, but still night pretty early. i was - well, i was drunk coming home from work and i walked past myself. i know what you'll say - i know, i was drunk - but you asked. for the first one. that was it. i felt it, turned around to look, but just - saw myself, the back of me, head down & hood up, walking the way i'd just come. only when it had turned the corner, only then, i turned & went home. ran home. said to myself i was just drunk & stupid. thought i saw something, drunk enough to have convinced myself it was real ... i forgot about it for a few weeks until i saw myself again, walking by the front of my house. even ran out after it, but stopped at the last step, staring after my own image, again, vanishing around the corner."

"that's twice you mentioned seeing it outside of your apartment. have you ever seen yourself indoors?"

"once, maybe twice. at the bar. once, returning home, i thought i was already there, asleep in my own bed, but i'd only left the lamp on. the window was open, though, and i didn't remember leaving it open. maybe i left before i came in. maybe someone's playing a joke on me. how can you tell when you're hallucinating?"

"you don't... it's the nature of it."

Pause.

"have you heard the story of the appointment in Samarra?"

"no."

"it's the story of ... well, this guy sends his slave to the market for something, and when the slave comes back, he's trembling and white with fear. the man asks his slave why he's so terrified, and the slave replies that he saw Death in the marketplace, and Death made a threatening gesture at him, looked at him weird or something. the man gives his slave his best horse, and the slave tears off to Samarra, which is far, far away. then the man goes to the market, finds Death, and asks about the threatening gesture. Death replies: 'it wasn't a threat, i was surprised to see him - you see, i have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.'"

Pause.

"seems to speak of ... inevitability. of powerlessness to Death. are you afraid to die?"

"who isn't?"

Pause.

"why did you tell me that story?"

"i don't know. i remembered it. that ... feeling you get. hearing it. that's how i feel when i see myself. dread."

"... implies a premonition of sorts, doesn't it? an omen?"

"i read all about Doppelgangers. i don't know. it's something ... else. almost doesn't feel real. like i'm the only one meant to see it. no one else does - well, they - how do you ask someone if they can see you walking down the street without coming off insane? you can't - that's how! do you know how i feel even telling you all of this? insane! that's how!"

"you're not insane. ... maybe we should move on."

"to what?"

"you're clearly experiencing a great deal of what seems to be stress - "

"... can we not use that word?"

"what word would you feel more comfortable using?"

"i just don't want to give the impression that i'm under some sort of ... pressure, that i'm ... imagining this."

"can you say for sure that you aren't?"

"well - not, not ... for sure."

"then don't discount it as a possibility so off-handedly. i'm not saying you're losing your mind, just - trying to cope with some as-yet undisclosed distress that your psyche can't handle."

"sure sounds like insanity to me."

"it isn't."

Pause.

"have you ever heard of something like this before?"

"specifically? personally - no, but that doesn't make it worse than anything i've ever seen anyone deal with before."

"maybe i need a priest. an exorcism."

"you don't think that's being ... a little dramatic?"

"i was joking."

"i see."

Pause.

"so... what else would you like to talk about?"

"i don't know."

"do you have any friends you've been able to talk to? about this?"

"no. well - i have friends, sure - but no, i haven't talked to them about this."

"what do you talk about?"

"um... books. music. movies. i don't know - stuff."

"do you like yourself?"

"which?"

"... sorry?"

"which myself?"

"well..."

"sorry. joking. again."

"oh. ...why do you think you - "

"defense mechanism."

"... let's try this again - "

"sorry."

"no need to apologize."

"i know. do it anyway."

"do you like who you are?"

"would if i knew who that was."

"are you sure?"

"that i'd like me if i knew who i was? no. guess not."

"how do you feel when you look in the mirror?"

"try not to."

"must be a hard thing to avoid. there's mirrors everywhere in our society."

"try to avoid that, too."

"...joking, again?"

"not really."

"so you tend to be a bit of a homebody, i take it. spend a lot of time by yourself?"

"yeah."

"and it sounds like you drink - how often?"

"don't know. enough."

"enough for what?"

"to knock a horse out." Pause. "sorry. kidding."

"were you?"

"well... how much would it take?"

"too much."

"hey - judge not, lest ye be..."

"why do you think it is that you drink?"

"to dispel ghosts. look - can we just ... i don't know, talk? i feel like i'm kinda being interrogated here."

"you're uncomfortable with being asked questions."

"- that was a question. you just said it like a statement."

"going to answer?"

"no."

"that's fine."

"of course it is. i'm paying. customer's always right."

"if that's how you want it."

"it is."

"we can sit in silence if you want. as you said - you're paying."

Long pause.

"we seem to have hit a wall."

"i thought i was paying for silence."

Pause.

"something tells me you're not."

"hour's almost up."

"does this feel like a good place to wrap up?"

"no."

"well, what else would you like to talk about?"

"have you ever been haunted?"

"no, i haven't."

"then we have no common ground."

"i don't think that's true."

"i'd like to request to talk to someone else."

"...it's certainly within your rights to do that."

"who here has been haunted?"

"... that's not something we keep on file."

"then trial & error. who do you think - "

"i really think this has gone far enough."

"...yes. you're right. i'm sorry."

"and i think our time's up."

"yes."

discoveries

#1 - kimmy at the bar while i'm working. she seems stoned, or slightly dazed with drink. talks effusively of this new thing she's discovered - well, it isn't new, she admits, and then confesses to being a 'fucking hippie' before swiftly describing the dichotomy between 'fucking hippie' and 'fucking punk hippie' - it's that the energy you give to the world comes back to you, that if you put out nothing but good energy then the universe is somehow, inexplicably bound to reflect and reciprocate nothing but good energy back to you.

without calling bullshit, i agreed with her, because i do in a way, and only in certain moments. this leads me to believe that there are different values of this mysterious quanta called 'energy' ... not, simply, as believed prior, an absolute binary state.

#2 - same goes for happiness. i have been spending the same amount of time at the bar as i always have, yet now and lately i am more cogent of when i don't need another. perhaps this will change. despite the nascent alcoholism and the curtailing of such (unless i'm a total hypochondriac and this is normal behavior) i am content around the edges. this, as always, leads to a sort of spike in my heartrate - i at once begin to question the fabric of my daily life. the apartment i have lived in comfortably begins its second year, and almost directly at the outset of it i am driven by this odd impulse to make it live-able. before this anniversary, i had done small things - in fits, and spurts. i constantly add books to my collection. i acquired a desk. then i painted a chalkboard on the wall. most recently, i added a full-length mirror & a rug. my seemingly noble goal of becoming 'upwardly mobile' and 'forward-thinking' has disintegrated, i've left it behind, mingling with the desperate dust. so now i'm here, aren't i? i'm here at this place of happiness. i have a stable, respectable job. i am far from poverty. i have steady social contact. hell, i'm even proximally linked with most of that in social media! so it seems i should be content.

perhaps this is human. perhaps the reason i am dissatisfied with contentment is that i secretly am not. perhaps the reason all of us feel this vague dissatisfaction with our lives is because this isn't how we were meant to live. i can't shake the feeling that this, all of this that has grown up around us, all of these walls and cities around us and these roads paved through it all ... i can't help the feeling that it isn't how it should be. that i'm a stranger to this type of life. i feel protean. people i say hello to freely on the street one day become people that i avoid the next -- and not out of fear, or dislike, but rather a kind of laziness which causes me not to want to have to interact - at all! yet it is impossible to avoid that when you are out of your house. hell, it's even impossible in your house. always running into ghosts. i find myself often wishing i were invisible.

#3 - i've been writing a lot more, yet it's all nothing. natalie goldberg says "keep the hand moving." i do that. but it is always the same story. boy is lonely, neurotic, and possessed of some very bizarre idiosyncrasies. meets a crazy girl while drinking in a bar. then i never finish it. the other story i'm always writing is crazy boy walks down the street towards his home, drunk. i feel like i'm just jerking off with this shit, lately. putting what i wish would happen on the page, and then putting what always does. not a day goes by i don't think about calling the counselling center and signing up again for a new counsellor. which of course means paying them the debt i owe. again. i don't know why i just don't do it.

hesitation is my curse.

#4 - no, that's it.