Day: October 27, 2017

A Death

It was the city’s twenty-fifth gun homicide in forty days, the eighth in five days, statistics that Lasko detested. If the street’s intelligence was correct, the street wars were heating up. Not surprising; it was a good time to own gun stocks.

Traffic whizzed past him, barely heard. He was in the safety corridor. Invisible but effect, electronic cloaks prevented people from walking into the street except at safe places and times, and the cloaks turned cars back. Even if a person were to walk into the street, the cars’ systems would brake and steer the vehicles around people. It always worked.

But Lasko was a police officer. His systems permitted him to go through the cloak wherever and whenever needed. Impatient and preoccupied, he cut through it to reach the murder scene. He expected the oncoming traffic to stop. Most did.

One car didn’t.

Hitting Lasko, he was dead within a few minutes of impact. It was the first traffic death that year, and the first pedestrian death in thirteen months. Citizens were instantly distraught and leery of using their cars. The systems had failed. If one failed, others could as well. They didn’t want to die. Debates opened up about what to do. Commissions were formed, and investigations were launched.

As that transpired, two more people were gunned down in the city’s growing street war. All sighed.

That was the price of freedom.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Out of the morass of the morning’s thinking and feelings streams Bob Dylan and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” The lyrics always said to me, somebody will be unhappy, no matter what you do. Someone will find fault and throw stones at you and your efforts. So what the hell, chill, and get stoned. You’re going to be stoned anyway.

Besides those words, I like the original recording’s rowdy, rambunctious tone. I couldn’t find that anywhere, and offer this live version instead.

So come on, “Everybody must get stoned.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46lKvk08L1s

 

2

The Bike

He remembered his bike, and his best friend. His best friend’s name was Mike. The bike was a red three-speed English racer. It was a Christmas present from his mother.

Man, he loved that bike. It was an upgrade from the used, heavy bike he’d previously ridden. He rode it everywhere he could, but often pedaled back to see his best friend. He’d moved away from Wilkinsburg to Penn Hills two years before, but still visited. The two remained close, doing the silly things that twelve year old boys did in America in the sixties. Six miles away, he loved those rides and the visits, looking forward to both.

During one visit, his bike turned up with a flat tire. Unable to fix it, he called his mother and requested a pick-up. She complied, but was angry. It interfered with her plans. Still, he was her son. She came to get him. She couldn’t take the bike, though, declaring it too big for the trunk and herself incapable of helping him. Forced to leave the bike, he locked it with its chain. His friend promised to look after it.

Getting back to get fix it proved problematic. The weather had turned. His mother didn’t want him walking back there, or hitch-hiking, but she wouldn’t give him a ride, either. He finally made it, to discover the bike had been stolen.

“I was going to call you,” his best friend said. “They left a note. They said they were the Blue Globe.”

None of that made any sense. Shit, it sounded like a lie. He made the accusation. An argument ensued. His best friend’s older brother, Donnie, came in.

“I took your fucking bike, and sold it. I needed the fucking money.”

He was speechless. “You had no right,” he finally said.

“Fuck you. It was just sitting there. You should have come and got it. It’s your own fault.”

“My fault. I trusted you guys,” he finally said.

Donnie laughed. “Serves you fucking right, then, doesn’t it?”

“I want my bike,” he said.

“Too fucking bad.”

“I want my bike.”

“Too fucking bad, it’s not here. What are you going to do about it?”

Balling his fists, he attacked.

They crashed across the small kitchen, knocking over the tables and chairs, and moving the refrigerator with the force of their fight. Donnie was older, taller, and weighed more, but he hammered Donnie’s skinny body. Finally throwing him back, Donnie fumbled in his pockets and drew out a switch-blade.

Click. “You better fucking go,” Donnie said, “or I’m going to fucking cut you.”

Ready to be cut, his best friend stepped in, stopping him and yelling at his brother. “Came on, man,” Mike said. “You’re bleeding. You’re all bloody.”

He didn’t want to go anywhere with his best friend. He didn’t want to see or hear him, but he went into the bathroom and washed up his bloody face. Cleaned up, done, he gave Mike a final look and began the walk home. The incident had changed him. He’d lost his bike, but worse, he’d lost his best friend and his sense of trust.

Yes, it changed him. He withdrew. People could no longer be trusted.

Not even if they were your best friend.

 

2

Killing Michael

I thought, at first, it was an episodic dream. Those are the ones that feel like I’m in a television show. They’re usually police procedurals or adventure stories.

This one felt like that at first, but then shifted. It became an intense dream and included zombies, a macabre “Groundhog Day,” and the ever-unseen, half-remembered advisers. It began with me killing me in a bleak, yellow and gray landscape under a bleached out sky.

I, the adult, was the victim. The killer was a young version of me. I lacked clues about who he was and what he was doing at the start. Then, after he killed me, and it began again, I realized, that’s me. He’s trying to kill me. Again.

He did kill me again, and again. I couldn’t count how many times he killed me. I grew tired of it. So I killed my younger self.

That didn’t stop it. Other young versions of me came after me. If they killed me, the dream began again. If I killed them, more came to kill me. They were all named Michael, but it wasn’t just the English – Hebrew spelling used. I saw Polish and other languages on pieces of paper. The names were handwritten on line notebook paper. An short, elderly white woman, her hair in a bun, wearing wire-rim glasses, gave me the papers, one at at time. The names on the paper confused me. I asked her, “What’s going on?” She answered in a foreign language.

The advisers finally spoke up. I took them at first as F.B.I. agents or scientists, but now I think of them as advisers, someone there who is supposed to be helpful but not fully remembered. They prefer to be anonymous and in the background. This dream exposed them to the light, and they were uncomfortable.

They explained what was going on, that, yes, all these versions of me existed, and were out to kill me. That’s what they were driven to do, because, like in “Highlander,” there could be only one. Many of them came after me like they were zombies. I had to cut off their heads – my heads – to stop them. And I did, again, again, again, again.

I grew weary of killing them. The advisers told me, and I knew, I was winning, but I was tired of killing my other selves. As less of them existed, they became purified, and more in tune with me. They started knowing how I would think and act. They set up ambushes based on their knowledge and began working together. Meanwhile, as I killed them, I became stained, and less pure. I was enduring more than living.

Until it came down, at last, according to the advisers, only one other remained. He was almost the same age as me. I didn’t want to kill him. He was trying to refrain from killing me, but he was driven. Overwhelmed by his urges, he would attack me. I would take him to the point of death and stop. I didn’t want to kill him. I asked the advisers if there was anything else I could do instead of killing him.

No; they were sad. They understood. No; he must be killed.

He understood as well. He wanted me to kill him so we could end the day. Eventually, I did. The advisers confirmed, the other Michaels were dead. Only one remained, me, weary of death and killing to the point that I was tired of being alive.

I never knew the point of all of this. I was the only Michael remaining, on this bleak landscape. The advisers departed without telling me, and I awoke.

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