By two o’clock, Cliff had been hauled away and everyone else involved had been questioned thoroughly. Dave’s head throbbed where he’d been hit. The three friends lingered in the parking lot, Billy embracing a sobbing Macey with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. They stood around sobering from the surrealism of the night.

“Billy?” asked Dave.

“Yeah?”

“Did I do the right thing when I cut him off?”

“He’s an alcoholic. You couldn’t help him. I’d say, yeah, you did the best you could.”

“That’s what I always thought. Why doesn’t it feel like I did the right thing?”

“I’m wondering that too,” said Billy, staring at a cloud of smoke.

“Did I do the right thing when I told him to fight me? To get it out of his system?”

“I think you could have tried to calm him down.”

“I didn’t think trying to control him worked.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Thanks for pulling him off of me.”

“Thanks for socking him in the face.”

“Yeah… I think that one actually was the wrong thing.”

“I bet it felt right though.”

“Only at the time.”

“That’s something at least. Something’s better than nothing.”

“I’ve got a wife to get home to. I’ll catch you two later. Macey?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really fuckin’ sorry.”

She came to him with open arms. They embraced. He hugged Billy, then turned to get in his car. Dave looked back the Manor. This place was gold at first. I spent so many hours here falling in love with Elizabeth. Now, it’s just shit. He looked at the exit sign above the back door and burned that image in his mind. What changed? I’m not coming back to this. I’ve moved beyond here, and I’m never coming back. Everything changed. Life is change; that’s for better or for worse. Que sera, sera. Something always happens, but the top of the mountain’s at the top of the mountain, and it takes a climb to get there.

He stood up within the audience. He walked down the aisle, straight for the stage, decked with Christmas spirit. Silver, green, and red strands of tinsel ran across the edge. Suds of fake snow flowed from the roof. Dave climbed up and walked past singers and dancers in 50’s Christmas costumes. They reciprocated his neglect, both treating the other like they were never a part of the same stage. He walked past Cliff sitting in an almost fetal position, hands ready to pull his hair out, rocking back and forth with madness. Another actor playing Cliff shotgunned cans of Lager Light and stacked them around his doppelganger, building four thin walls taller and taller, thicker and thicker.

The stage was much larger than it looked from the audience, and Dave could go anywhere across it. It stretched at least a hundred yards in every direction. He’d look one way and see dancers, he’d look another way and see activists ranting into microphones. For a moment, the whole of it was empty. Then, he kept walking forward. He walked up to a thin but tall plaster tombstone with his sister’s name on it. He stared at it for a second, then looked at his chest to see a dark stain dripping down his faded black shirt. Dave picked up a flower from next to the tombstone and put it in his shirt pocket. He looked back over his shoulder at the exit sign in the back of the theater, then brushed the fake snow off the top of the tombstone, patting it with his hand the way he wished he could pat his sister’s shoulder.

“Not yet, sis.”

Dave turned around, looking upstage again. He locked eyes with Elizabeth at the back of the stage. He started walking toward her through a confusion of dancers. Black morph-suited figures pawed at him, shuffling into his way in a strange, postmodern romp. Black hands reached for his face, tearing at his vision, scraping softly at his arms. A few fingers jabbed at the wound on his chest.

He struggled through the less than human dancers as they tugged gently at his black work shirt. They couldn’t stop him; they couldn’t hold him but only grope, trying to steal his attention, trying to coerce his focus. He kept his stride, he kept his pace; he kept his eyes on his wife’s looking back at him.

Dave and Elizabeth stood before each other. The shadows twirled away as the two wrapped arms around their spouse. Dave whispered in her ear, “Follow me. I need someone to go with me. I can’t go alone.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“No one should have to, but we all do.”

“I’m here for you.”

He grabbed her hand and walked off stage. They walked out of the light and into the darkness. Exit stage left.

“You’re home,” said Elizabeth.

“Yeah. Thanks for waiting up.”

“Of course. You look like a mess. What happened?”

“Well. Today’s been a long day. I started off late for work. I had a mental breakdown on the way there. I got into an argument with a coworker over something stupid. I found out Riley is leaving. I got in a fight with Cliff, and then… ”

Backstage was dark. Dave shuffled slowly.

“I watched the guy who was my best man get arrested under charges of battery on an officer.”

“Oh my God! Cliff was arrested?”

“Yeah. He broke an officer’s nose. I’m lucky he didn’t break my nose.”

“I’m glad you’re okay. Why don’t you go take a shower, and we’ll go to bed.”

“I think that’s a good idea, but I don’t know if I can sleep. I’m exhausted, but my mind is on fire. I just can’t believe it. We were going to take him to rehab. He was going to get better. He was going to recover with Billy. He threw it all the fuck away.”

They both sat quietly on the couch, staring at nothing. The fog and haze that seeps into your bones and brain at the end of a long day came upon Dave, cooling that blaze in his mind.

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“I gotta go take that shower before I fall asleep here,” he said after he realized he’d lost track of how long he’d been sitting there. “Thanks for being here. Thanks for keeping me alive.”

“You’re welcome,” she said with no idea how much he meant it.

Dave got out of the shower. He walked into the bedroom and put some shorts on. Elizabeth laid in bed already, her phone illuminating her face as her eyes darted about to read the screen. The rest of the room was dark.

“What’d you have a mental breakdown about?” asked Elizabeth, putting her phone away.

“Huh?”

“You said you had a mental breakdown; what’d you have one about?”

Dave took his time finding the words to answer her. He rolled the thought around in his head.

“My sister,” he said, finally. It didn’t break the silence; the two words hit it at once like a tennis ball hitting a wall, then the ball rolled across the ground like an old man meandering and looking for a place to sit until it found where it should stop, until it became dead and still. Elizabeth stared at ball, the dead man, not sure what to make of it. Dave stared up at the dark ceiling.

She’s thinking, ‘it’s been over two years; you should be over this by now.’ I’m not. I don’t know if wounds like this ever heal. Anyone that says they do has to be a liar.

“I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do for you,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. Keep doing what you’re doing.” She won’t say those words; it wouldn’t be polite. No one would say those words, but we’ll all wonder in silence. It’s fair to wonder; it’s a part of understanding. It’s a step.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Dave smirked. “I always wanna talk about anything.”

“Okay blabbermouth, will you talk about it with me?”

“You know, that depends on if I can; sometimes, the things I need to say the most are the hardest to find words for.”

“Well, start looking,” said Elizabeth, prodding him with her finger.

Dave chuckled: she’s so cute. It’s good to have this kind of person in my life. She’s a frame on the smoke. Dave laid still while he dug through his mind; the world was quiet while his head was abuzz. What can I say? What else is there to say? There’s gotta be something deep or wonderful or profound or--

“I just miss her,” he said. The tennis ball lay inert again, after hitting the wall, after a long roll. Dave picked it up and bounced it under his racket. “She’s not coming back, just like the scars of grief aren’t going away. I don’t think I want them to go away; it’s kind of all I’ve got left of her. I’m looking back right now with a certain peace I haven’t had in a long time.

“I’m humbled; I don’t want to change things. I don’t know what’s better, or what’s worse. I can’t pretend I know what the world is all about anymore; I’m just here, living a life, praying to God. I don’t know what I’m praying about. I guess it’s peace I’m praying for. I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m not a hero; I’m just another player on the stage. I can’t tell if that’s any better or worse either.

“You know, sometimes it’s hard to recall the good memories. Right now, I remember stomping through dead leaves in the woods with her, picking our way through brambles. We were looking for fairies, trying to hide from pookas. We were playing in the woods. Just kids. Just having fun. That’s something else I’ve got, I guess. I hope I never lose it.”

He looked over to Elizabeth’s peaceful face slowly dancing with sleep. I may as well be productive. I’ll sleep when I sleep.

Dave tapped away:

Innocence’ Requiem: Elegy and Lamentation in the Shaman’s Howl ~ The Wolf

Knight comes swift: takes Pawn.

How in the City did we

Move from white to black?

We all go in the same box;

how do we fall from the board?

A mother who lost her child:

Boy went crazy, sick and wild.

Carcass at his feet; he smiled.

Dog watch the world; inhale the City’s air.

Expresses his concern, the only man who dare.

Finds the carcass in the street, rotting there.

God knows of how she sits and cries,

How she bustle with dead insides.

It’s ’cuz they walk with lonely eyes.

Jabbing his blue vein with their psychic pain,

Killer knows how easy it is to make eyes rain.

Lamenting floods the City, running down the drain.

Momma watches while her children’s red flows.

No folks see just where her boy goes.

Only the Shaman knows.

People move in a wild, sick satire to the Dancer.

Queen of souls and purpose they think might have the answer.

Royal subjects ask the question but no one heeds her.

Still they all bleed and suffer from the Killer’s cancer.

Time will see to that the world is defiled

Under the regimes of the sick and vile

Violence riddles the fakely reconciled.

They don’t get the joke.

They say they do, but they don’t,

Laughing awkwardly.

The jest goes on without them,

All while others sit and cry.

Here’s “A Second Introduction”

You know, but have you

been introduced?

It started in faraway

times and places.

Turn the page to get away. We were safe in here.

We saw the City crumble;

We

watched it happen from outside a book.

Our noses were in deep.

We

Got no closer.

Thought we were safe in the land of plenty.

All rivers run dry when the Earth burns.

We charged ahead. Full steam.

Charged toward death like

Hefty animals garbed in nooses,

diving over cliffs.

No way back up

with a broken neck.

Those not diving

busy screaming.

Hoarse cries give way to the choke of blood.

No one hears the words above the gargle. *Haaaghx!

Raw, chapped, torn chords:

we don’t know what they’re saying.

Personally.

I don’t believe in Democracy.

Too much demagoguery.

Totally.

The Oligarchy is a python

Let the snake cults worship;

they’ll be the end of us. We’re all less than humane now;

It’s part of being human.

Flesh is power

to the cult. B-B-Barbarians.

The worshippers hiss live 24/7,

Broadcasted for the nation.

If it’s not a hiss it’s hate.

Vile breeds violence; in the pit

They writhe. The *tsss! echoes

up the side of the signal tower

where birds tweet for hours.

That’s the sound of

the static

shushing to our brains.

It was a sword which cut the

Gordian Knot. We’ve

lost the sword called Thought.

The venom runs through the veins of America.

They say to suck the poison out;

Learned that on the Western Channel.

The venom makes the throat tight

lips numb,

eyes go blind,

ears hear only *hiss and slither.

We drink the toxins like wine from our own skin.

Hospital says they cannot heal

Hands bound, mouth gagged tight by fear.

Stare at me from the Caduceus.

“Let’s beat up our countrymen!”

they shout in the hall. Resounding.

Echoes in the chamber where

they wait like bullets.

They hate us. We hate them.

Let’s all just kill each other.

Brother.

Can’t say I’ve never been born yesterday

I’ve heard the hiss scream,

the rattle roll.

Don’t think I ever thought to wear a mask, though.

Already have one round my eyes.

You have to wear the serpents’ colors

’fore one strikes your hands.

That’s what the City

really is. An ambiguous writhe

to the outsider.

It welcomes the weak;

easier to coerce. Champion

of the clinically opressed;

It’s a profession now. Losers

try to change the game:

don’t race, just writhe

in place. Let the dirt swallow you whole.

Skin raw from the scrape of stone.

I forgive all my enemies; my friends

are just like them. Don’t

understand

benefit of the doubt.

Always idiots killed in the wars

between man

and Leviathan. Hobbes hops from the grave.

Don’t you believe it.

Opposition only means “onerous moron”

The wild moron can’t speak;

You have to talk down to him.

Make him shut up

listen up

straighten up.

He don’t go for that;

they shackle him to their machine,

their conjecture,

their pristine and perfect view

of a place he call Hell. I don’t like their America,

Land of the Victim Vassal.

“Live and let die,”

’cause that’s the way

the serpent writhes.

When they look back upon our century

they will name it

The Time of the Google Regime

or the World Wide Worship of

the Grand Machine.

Bow your words or be banned,

vassal.

Strike me down

I come back stronger.

Bite my hands

and I’ll work harder.

Bind my mouth

and I’ll shout louder.

I don’t plan to die over the edge of a cliff.

I wait in want of peace.

Bury me in street they kill me.

Only Fluorouracil

will free the vassal.

The thoughts had to come out. They had to hit the page. Dave captured in earnest what he’d been given, what he’d found lying around in his head, and then racked his mind giving it form. I don’t understand it, but I am impelled to speak. It makes feel better. I just have to put to words what happened when I rolled the boulder up the hill, and boy was it a helluva hill today.