Fragment: Wasteland

...I asked Jane, the lovely January Susan Hauser, to sit with me on the widow's walk so we could let the smoke-scented wind waft over our weary selves.

Jane knew what it was to enter someone's story mid-way through. Nothing of what then happened made any sense to her. There was no chance to ask questions… She wasn't in any shape for explanations anyway. She stopped. What was that she had just read? She went back and stared at it in disbelief.

My belated Valentine’s Day gift to her was an enamel pin featuring a field of Poppies. I had carried this token with me in my front pocket for years. Now, I knew who I had subconsciously intended it for. It had gone on a long march through time and space with me. I discovered it pinned to a telephone pole one lonely April Fools' Day.

Spring is cruel. Poppies are a beautiful flower. Winter makes them fertile only in the following Summer. They spend an entire year as juveniles, a lifetime for many other plants. It is not until after surviving their first frost, their first taste of death, and living into their second year that they can reproduce.

The world spins around the seasons, and halfway through again, the flowers of life emerge to bask in the sun.

After they have gone to seed, if you cut them down all the way to the ground, they will come back from the dead, grow new flowers, and bloom again.

You can cut them down again and again and again, and they still come back and reproduce again.

The burning of Seattle started on May Day. It was so long ago. June turned to July, and there was still no independence to celebrate. Summer had gone on far too long into what should be Fall. The autumn breeze fanned the fires in our August city. All through September, the thick smoke hung in the air until a blustery storm at the end of October.

We reminisced about the long Thanksgiving weekends, those Thursdays through Sundays of gluttony we had spent together in our childhood.

We spoke of one Christmas break when Hauser Sr. had let us sled down the hill and over the 12th Street bridge. It had been closed to traffic due to the ice storm.

We still had Winter here when I was a child, Winter with snow. It seems impossible now.

My memories are clear. Jane had been frightened. I told her to hang tight to me, and down we went.

Two weeks later, I made a New Year's resolution to stay faithful to her. I was a mere child then; I could still be ignorant of anything beyond freedom.

When I was a child, the grounds around this house were a beautiful garden of artfully arranged examples of native plants. Now, a few stunted sticks jut out from the brambles, the only indication something besides invasive Blackberry ever grew there.

My memory is a heap of broken glass pipes and used needles found scattered among the world's garbage. The parts that sparkle and shine are the parts with the sharpest edges. They are surrounded by grasping, thorny vines. Here and there, the gleam reflects where the sunlight brightens, proud and relentlessly. Elsewhere, they are obscured by dark shadows unless, of course, someone shines a flashlight into those dark places.

When you go looking in the dark, you will not like what you find. There is always something to fear hiding in the dust.

"You first gave me flowers that same year, in the Summer," said Jane. "I remember it fondly, Jo."

I remember it as well. The memory exists.

I can recall the flowers and her wet hair from our whole day of swimming in Lake Washington at Seward Park. Then, like now, I was living a lie, dead to emotion. I knew nothing about love. I knew nothing. Still, I am still determining.

Now, I was nervous around Jane. We had been close during our formative years, and as we got older, we grew apart. I was unaware, until I was near to her, of how much I had missed her.

Without any self-awareness until now, I had become infatuated with Jane in the years since I had last seen her. I subconsciously created an abstract, ideal woman I hoped Jane would be.

The image of her in my mind far outshone her in the flesh. She had aged more than I had imagined. She was shaking, and her skin was wrinkled, much more than mine, and we were only a year apart in age. It was as if she was at least a decade my senior, if not more. Still, I lusted after the imaginary her.

I chose to ignore the fact she had never existed.

One of Hauser's sketchy friends showed up. Winking into existence with an audible pop, above the midway point of the steps leading up from the street, he stumbled, fell, and quickly recovered. I thought he must have been here before. He waved at us and proceeded onto the porch, passing beneath us. A hoodie hid his face. He clutched a backpack tightly to his chest with a clenched fist and held a suitcase loosely with the other. He was so skinny that he looked dead.

All junkies look the same, even to a fellow junky.

We could hear him banging on the door. Then we heard Hauser shouting something.

We felt the vibrations travel up the beams and trusses of the house and into our metal folding chairs.

After this interruption, we silently appraised the scene before us. There was a wispy brown haze over the city, struck through with streaks of black, a fine piece of marble. There were crowds of people marching in the streets. They were clogging the familiar protest route from MLK to the Federal Building.

They might as well have been marching in place or circles. All the media would focus on were the violent protesters, false-flag anarchists, agent provocateurs, cops in ANTIFA drag, bombing police cars, and setting buildings on fire.

Most of the government was shut down anyway, and only a few hardcore cops remained.

It had been a while since there was a government-run Fire Department. The only firefighters were private contractors.

It would have been nice if someone had volunteered to help. Too many had been killed or succumbed to one of the new diseases, and no one wanted to die while putting out a bank or insurance company fire for no pay.

"You know, I have had a habit for a few years. I can see judgement in your eyes. I am sucked up, hideous to look at. It is not just the dope; my health has been bad," Jane said. "Very bad. I am going crazy about it. I will not have to be crazy for long, knowing I am not going to last much longer. I swear I would kill myself if I did not die from my illness. I will inevitably someday OD."

--Why don't you ever talk? My nerves are terrible. I am so tense. Stay here with me."

--Why won't you say anything? Speak." 

--What are you thinking about?"

--What? I can never tell if you are thinking about what I am saying. I can never tell if you are listening at all."

At last, I replied. "I am listening."

"Well, it doesn't feel like it. What do you think about what I am telling you?" she said. "See, that's what I am talking about, right there. Nothing. Do you care if I live or die? Is there nothing you have to say about this? It might be today or tomorrow or anytime soon. So, what should I do?"

"I don't know," I said. "I would probably just get high."

"I am serious, damn it," she said. "I don't know how to live anymore, I never did, and I might die."

"Well, hurry up; it's about time." I was tired of her bemoaning her fate. She should never have drawn me into the conversation if she wanted sympathy or courtesy.

"Fuck you," she did not surprise me with her curse. "Fuck your evil mouth. Jo, you are a real piece of shit. You know that?"

"Yes, I know," I said. "It takes one to know one."

I let my head fall into my upturned palms, pressing lidless eyes and waiting for another knock from one of the endless miscreants frequenting the house. I counted the heartbeats until Jane stood up and stormed back inside. Then came the anticipated knock on the door.

"Could you get the door, Jane?" I heard Hauser scream, reverberating up the staircase, down the hall, and out to where I still sat.

"Fuck you, have your piece of shit friend do it," Jane replied somewhere in the upstairs hall.

She could move so stealthily that keeping track of her when she wanted to elude, evade, or uncannily manage to be ignored entirely was hard.

"Who?" Hauser, as always, was unaware.

"Yeah, I'll get it." I lifted my head in time to see Jane, diaphanous and indistinct, a glowing angel, turn into one of the upstairs rooms.

I left the widow's-walk and headed downstairs.

I was a trained monkey in a bellhop costume. Like any couch surfer under the command of the master of a trap house -like someone who thought kindnesses and feigned obsequiousness might result in another free hit of dope -like a bitch. All of this, I thought, but I still made my way towards the front door, hoping whoever my eye would soon find through the peephole was holding and would share.

There was a knock on the door, loud and insistent…

There was another knock, a million years later, perhaps.

There was one more solitary knock, more of a fist pound or a kick that found an uninterrupted pathway through the space between my ears. As the stairs emptied themselves onto the ground floor, I stumbled past Hauser on the way to answer the door for his lazy ass.

I observed Hauser as I hurried along, "You, sir, are malignantly useless. Much more so than anyone else I know, you are of no value, spitefully so."

Hauser's cat jumped down from the daybed, raced past me, nearly causing me to fall, and continued toward the foyer with his tail in the air. Hauser set down the tablet on which he had apparently been dictating notes.

I could see from the screen that he was recording audio surreptitiously; furthermore, he may have been recording during the whole encounter upstairs. I had the distinct impression Hauser let me intentionally glean this tidbit of information.

"They're out in force tonight, I see," Hauser said.

Hauser's cat was now racing to and from the doorway, up and down the hall, in a state of ever-increasing excitation, and began moaning in a cry, an assault on ears, a human baby's death knell.

"Would you do me a favor, please? For the love of all that is unholy, get that cat out of here… Oh, never mind, I will just do it myself," Hauser was put out.

Interrupting his cat's wild orbit, Hauser snatched the scruff of the feline's neck. He peeled away one of the tarps to reveal a glassless window through which he unceremoniously tossed the creature.

The mangy thing howled as it flew backward and upside down.

I followed the trajectory with my weary, anxious eyes.

When the animal crossed an invisible barrier where a window should have been, I was surprised to see that the world outside was upside down.

The sky was somewhere down below the house, and the ground stretched out to the horizon from a point above the window. I could see the buildings of downtown Seattle hanging down from where the sky should be, off in the distance.

Then, in the uncanny way cats can move, he altered his rotation as he endeavored to change his orientation.

The world outside began to spin around, the cat acting as the axis until it was right side up. Eventually, the world outside and the world inside resolved into the same attitude, level to the cat's perspective.

The universe had been bent in such a way that the cat would land directly on his feet.

While twisting in that feline way, the beast's wide eyes spoke volumes of revenge soon to come. Oddly, it was my own eyes locked onto, and not, as you would expect, the glassy eyes of Hauser. It was he who was the cat's only tormentor. I was innocent in the whole ordeal.

Having returned the outside universe to its 'natural' orientation, the cat's exit did nothing to relieve us of the pounding at the door. Hauser, more irritated now that whoever was outside had become the impetus of his feline-hurling angst, stormed out of the room.

A gust of foul scent wafted past me--something of a moldy nature from the fluttering packing blankets. I sat down, allowing Hauser to do his own damn dirty work, and lit a cigarette butt I retrieved from the overflowing ashtray not in an attempt to clear, but perhaps to simply obscure the tang in the air.

After a great deal of shouting, cursing, huffing, puffing, vocal-saber waving, and actual, physical key rattling, the opening of the many locks securing the main entrance could be heard echoing down the hall.

"What? Who are you? Are you from the Neighborhood Watch? A journalist? An undercover agent? Are you going to show me a badge and a warrant? Now, I have come here--penalizing my delicate body in an exhaustive effort--to open this door (incidentally, aiding and abetting the senile world-altering rage of my demonic house cat). I greatly wish to slam this door in your face. Before all that, I want to know... to whom do I address."

Hauser had a specific refulgent gift; the prose poems of ranting indignation he could spit out were of such an archaic and obtuse nature they momentarily left some people out of sorts. If they were not used to the disjointed (some would say, schizophrenic) character of Hauser's cut-up manner of speech and his montage tirades, they could be put at a disadvantage as they tried to reassemble thoughts out of the scrambled puzzle pieces created by the, often odd, syntax.

"Um, err…" I could tell right away that whoever it was at the door had no hope of impressing calm upon a fully enraged and engaged Hauser.

The Stranger regained some composure, "Uh, I have a delivery; I am a contracted delivery person. As you may recall, I have interacted with you at this door three or four times a week over the last five years. I am here for the same reason as always; I have a package for you."

The delivery person, now hoarse, continued, "The package is from Amazon; please sign here."

Although I could not see it, I could tell my host's face was rapidly changing color from down the hall and around those confusing corners. He began to scream without pausing for breath, "Liar, I have never seen you in my life! Amazon dot fucking con! It is not something 'I' ordered, you brown-shirt clown. I would never order something from Amazon!"

"I just deliver the packages, sir. There is no need for profanity." --I began to respect this delivery person. Their grace and command of the situation belied someone used to a hostile, rude, and unreasonable public.

"It is just my job to deliver the packages and get the signatures, sir. Whatever is in the package has been paid for. Just sign this form so I can prove I did my part. Otherwise, I will be back tomorrow to try to deliver it again. Just sign, so I don't have to walk up those Escher steps any more times than is necessary." I understood his reluctance.

Calmly, he pointed out what was evident to all. "I am sure you do not want me to interrupt your H use, limited or otherwise."

I was happy to see that my contribution to the signage had not gone unnoticed.

"I do not care what you do beyond that point; eat the package, throw it away unopened, take it in and enjoy it, or leave it on the porch. It makes no difference to me."

This rang true, at least to my ears.

Then came the threat. "I must let you know that if I were to become offended by you and quit this job, you would be cut off from the universe completely. I am the last contractor willing and able to deliver to you. No one, literally no one, will accept assignments related to this address. Amazon would never be able to get someone to make it up the stairs, find your front door, deliver you a package, and get you to accept and sign twice."

Pumping himself up a bit, he added. "Only I would ever return to this place a second time. They would lose a contractor on every job and soon ban this address, and then you, sir, would likely starve to death. I come here specifically as proof of my respect for the long-forgotten oath of my profession and because, as a glutton for punishment, I like to challenge myself."

"How you manage to get a H dealer to come here, I will never know. Please do not tell me; some mysteries are best left unsolved." Once again, the lad was on point.

"Right! Delivery-Person, I will sign your electronic clipboard only because your uppity retort inspires mercy. I will certainly take none of your suggestions about what to do with it. Hand it over, and I will stuff it up my ass until I can taste what it is in the back of my throat. By the way, the signage is inaccurate; my hypothetical H use is a lie meant to cast a shadow on my brilliant reputation. I fiercely maintain my absolute sobriety and obey all applicable laws." This was why no one ever believed Hauser.

An over-dramatic repeated slamming of the door punctuated the closing of his rant three times… "Good Day! --{slam}-- Good bye! --{slam}-- Go die! --{slam}--”

I could hear Hauser careening off the walls of the twisted halls as he made his way back. The package he carried was about the size of a hardcover book of 600 or 700 pages. Hauser bore it across the room as if it were made of lead. A loud crash and a mushroom cloud of filth, cigarette ash, take-out containers, and rat droppings erupted from the coffee table when it collapsed under the weight of the dropped package.

"Glad I didn't pay for the shipping on whatever this is," mused Hauser.

He tore away the packaging to reveal it was, in fact, a book—one with a tin-foil dust cover.

My contribution to this conversation was equally asinine: "Shiny, pretty, shiny book. It reminds me of the reasons I came up here today. You know the Norwegian, right? He gave me this case, which has some kind of medical mercury or something. Anyway, it's some reflective drug. And your name came up as a possible source or somehow related to it. The whole thing had him uncharacteristically spooked. I wanted to know if you knew anything about it."

Hauser gave no indication either way.

Ignoring his failure to elaborate, I implored. "First… I cannot take the suspense. Open the book already. I am dying to find out what's written inside a mirrored book with yourself, whoever you might be, on the cover, staring back into your eyes with no other information. Come on, what is it?"

Hauser handed me the object, which was heavier than I anticipated, and once it was entirely under my control, I nearly dropped it. The book in question was unlike anything I had seen before. There were apparent bits of barely altered classics, excerpts from stories, poems, random groupings of words, what appeared to be journal entries, bits of obscure scientific articles, technical specifications, and political manifestos; all of these were bound together in no particular order. There was no reason or logic I could discern until I found the instructions concerning the use of QROAM. Diagrams showed the use and care of the device the Norwegian had given me.

It was a setup.

"Hauser, you freak-fucker, what is this bullshit?" I asked.

Hauser tried to convince me, "No idea. I swear. I never saw any of this before." He claimed total ignorance. He had nothing to do with the whole series of events; that was his story. I did not believe him. For a moment, he seemed so sincere that he almost fooled me. The moment passed.

The instruction manual portion of the book showed that the device was designed for ocular injections.

"No way," I told Hauser, turning the book around and showing him the illustrations. "I am not doing it. Not in the eye. You are a sick man. I could wind up blinding myself. Did you think this was going to work, this practical joke bullshit? We are not children anymore. My eyes! I thought we were friends. I thought I was, well, not a mark in your eyes. Eyes. Fuck."

Hauser took the book from me and began a cursory examination while taking an oath of innocence, "I swear on my family, I have no idea what any of this is. You are my friend."

Hauser saw that I would not let it go. "Tell you what, I will show you. This is so weird. Look, help me set it up, and I'll do it."

"That is just stupid. No, you don't have to prove anything to me. You don't know what this is. If it is true, it would be unbelievable to do it."

"Hey, if somebody knew to send it to me, they would probably be someone I am cool with. Look, it's a gift to me. The book came in a package with my name on the tracking sticker. The dope and the injector only went to you, so you would bring it to me. It is not as if I, or for that matter, the Norwegian, ever leave our spots. He knew you would bring it here in your search for H and drove you, a delivery truck, into my lair. He knows my drone port is out of service, so you were unwittingly enlisted to become a courier."

"Whatever, Hauser, I am not fighting for the privilege of being the first to use it. I honestly don't think anyone should. I don't want to claim it or hoard it. Why don't we throw it all away?"

Hauser was flipping through the book, pausing occasionally and pointing at the words on the pages, "Hey, see this, and this? This is my dad's type of nonsense. This book has a lot of words he used to feature in rants and raves. Quantum this, nano that, observers, and particles. There is my favorite, 'Spukhafte Fernwirkung,' spooky action at a distance. If this is somehow related to what my dad came up with, and it's a drug, it should be a real trip."

"It is probably mercury from a rectal thermometer; someone you pissed off or ripped off thinks it would be funny for you to blind yourself with."

"You are so pessimistic. Where is your sense of adventure? Come on, help me set this up so I don't mess it up."

"Your funeral. Do it yourself, without my help. I am not taking the rap for blinding, poisoning, crippling you, or whatever."

"No, no. Come on, help me strap this thing on my head. It isn't straightforward. Look, don't call an ambulance if it starts to go bad. I don't want you or my sister getting popped. If I die, tell Jane to leave and drag me downstairs. Throw me in a barrel and bounce. Those chemicals down there will eat through anything. There won't be a trace of you ever having been here. It is not like the cops would investigate a dead junky anyway. It would be months before anyone noticed I was gone."

"This is stupid," I said. "Why did I let you talk me into this? I swear I will never know. There must be something wrong with me, as there is with you. Because, now, my curiosity is going to kill you. Yeah. Fuck it. Let me see that manual."

#

I usually break in the telling of this story right here. The way I paced it, a pause was inevitable. This is suspenseful enough for many readers to keep their interest afloat while I take the high road. I do not glamorize the procedure and wax poetically on the mechanics of drug use.

I could undoubtedly fetishize the process of clamping straps and armature to the head, prying open an eyelid with rubberized tips of spring-steel fingers. The anticipation begins as you draw the substance into the needle, the penetration, pushing down the plunger. --Wait for it. --Wait for it… Suspense, and, finally, euphoric release. In a case such as this, I suppose some of that territory is necessary for the tale's climax.

I can see you are not so easily led. You may take offense. I want you to know I do not intend any insult. This is why I have included this confession concerning my methods. 

You can see I am honest; an unprecedented level of trust between the reader and author has been established, right?

I would never advocate the use of drugs.

If you already use them, you already know what I am talking about. If you don't, the explanation would not- in any writer's hands- inform you what it is to experience. It would be best if you did it.

I am not saying you should pick up a habit, feel what it is like, and have a frame of reference wherein you could comprehend this story. I am not saying that. 

"Drugs are bad, m'kay."

Having understood the pop culture reference, I can see you are a literary connoisseur -and are, I am sure, already familiar with the workings of narratives common in this modern age of meta-this and post-that: memoirs, confessionals, fictionalized accounts of the vicious, viscous cycle of substance abuse and prurient vice.

Drug fictions, in general, are dry, unfunny, and not drug-like.

#

When I opened the book randomly, I was confronted with an enigma wrapped in tin foil. I was looking at a chapter with a familiar title. A familiar phrase often used in my internal discussions with myself, I had not, at least as far as I could recall, uttered aloud to anyone. Further, confounding the plot, the main character in the story was clearly me. 

These were my memories and thoughts, printed out in this mystery book; how was this possible? It wasn't.

Am I hallucinating? It doesn't appear so to me.

Is this some kind of cognitive hiccup? Maybe.

Was this some form of attribution error? Perhaps.

Could it be that it should be labeled plagiarism? My guess is yes.

Did it mean I had internalized some story, merging it with my memories, making someone's fiction a part of who I am? Maybe.

Was my life, as I remember it, clippings from the things I have read? I should know the answer, I am not sure.

Was it Déjà-lu? Sort of, in a way, not exactly, near enough to not matter much, either way, I guess.

Was it ****-vu? No.

Was it a bit of déjà-**? I don't see how it could be.

Or, perhaps, ****-**? If I were forced to say one way or the other, I would have to, begrudgingly, answer yes.

This next bit, taken directly from the pages of QROAM, where I (or someone near enough to my description to confuse me) was sober, feels like a story, not my actual life.

When I consider my time 'on the wagon,' it feels like I am reading about someone's life, with details of my specific circumstances pasted over a pre-existing narrative framework. The oddest part is that I don't remember these personalized facts until I re-read what I must have once written.

It feels like someone's story, once I have plagiarized it, becomes my past I've forgotten. One problem with this is that the main character here, myself, is an anti-hero.

I wish I could be a protagonist with whom I identify positively. I dislike the individual represented here immensely. You could say I hate them.

This isn't self-loathing. It is that person's life as an assault on me, these erstwhile troubles are being inflicted upon me by some outside actor, or I am a victimized character in a fucked-up author's imagination.

So much of what has happened was hacked from other sources; tired old cliches bore and suffocate me and make me wish for, at the least, one original breath of fresh air.

The degradation of the disaffected is certainly nothing new.

Why would I become my nemesis and admit to these things I feel about my newly remembered past?

I am defeating myself--{not now, later} -- when I re-read this bit here, I will not be sober again; I will be subjugated again; I will discover anew what formerly was.

--{Now}-- I am pissed off and want a hit.

The fourth wall disposed of momentarily; let us build it back up and return to a time before I had taken the 13th step.

"I was transported elsewhere, else-when…."