The Anquish of an Instrument

No. I'm not allowing it. I'm not going to allow myself to become flattened. I'm not going to permit you from smearing me into the idle background of your painting.

Paint the world however you want, just don't use me as the brush.

Don't smudge my existence into a tiny blotch. Into a quiet bystander. Into the compliant little man.

You have Howitzers. I have grocery bags. I'm expected to continue walking. You're expected to continue bludgeoning. Through this process, we're both instruments. Cogs. Tools creating other tools. You and I, we're just part of an endless pedigree of toolmaking that will undoubtedly go on forever.

You're the hammer.

I'm the nail.

But not any more. I'm bent. I'm crooked. I'm fucking tarnished to shit and no matter how hard you hit, you'll never supplant me. Not so long as I take these breaths and stand this ground, I won't be a part of your ugly construction.

Yeah, I know, I'm done for.
I'm going to become an itch on your side that will barely even affect you. That will be quelled with one quick scratch of the skin.

But maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there in the sea of docile faces, there will be someone who'll see me. Who'll remember me. Who'll spread the irritation so that the next thing you know, you're covered in a vile rash of contempt.

Skyscape, Part 3, v1.0

The door opens to reveal a magnificent sight. The guard nudges me inside though there isn't much need for it given that the beautiful sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and even tastes laid before me all compel me forward.

Inside is a beautiful and elaborate garden. Ahead of me is a tranquil pond that reflects the gorgeous greenery surrounding it. I look behind me and see that the guard has closed the door, which is handless from the inside and is sealed against the rest of the wall.

I look at where the green, stone wall goes and see that it extends in to a gradual curve, completely circumnavigating the massive courtyard. Above me, there is no roof to speak of, but there is a shimmering canopy of vegetation that allows small beams of sunlight to gleam through the misty and peaceful atmosphere. Little birds hop back and forth in the trees, singing and playing with one another. An assortment of butterflies flutter and oscillate throughout the garden, making it seem as though it were fidgeting with inhibited anxiety.

Just like me.

I take a few steps forward and continue observing this place. Suddenly, I notice a strange shadowy figure looming beside the pool. I'm surprised I didn't notice it before. It is obscured by shrubbery so I press on to get a better look.

As I move forward and become immersed into the now foul smelling mist, I become somewhat lightheaded. The mixture of fluttering butterflies and flickering leaves seem to pulsate along with my heartbeat now. I have a hard time focusing and am fixated on the ghost figure who is drifting towards me.

Or am I drifting towards it?

Either way, it gets closer. I get a clear view of it, and cannot believe what I'm seeing. It is a hunch-backed phantom that is almost seven feet tall, clad in a dark-gray cloak, and looks too solid to be a ghost. Rather it looks like a shadowy, phantasmal wraith.

Despite everything I see, it is what I hear that haunts me the most. It breathes. A shallow, sickly concoction of inhalation and exhalation.

But the worse thing of all, it talks.

A "Hello, my angel." whispers out of its pitch-black void of a face.

I stay silent.

"My angel, you have finally crossed over to the other side. Allow me to show you your new abode." He puts forth a gray, skeletal hand and against what remains of my volition, my hand compulsively gravitates into his. His long fingers wrap around my relatively puny wrist. It's neither warm nor cold; instead, I feel as though I'm holding hands with air.

Where the hell am I?

"This is heaven." How did he know what I was thinking? Can he read minds? Or did I just say that out loud? I feel so disoriented, so numb and detached from my body.

"My angel, this is the Otherrealm. The one that the great Nihil created for the people in the Skyrealm to descend into."

No, it can't be. Malakai always told me this wasn't real.

"Oh, but it is. Your friend is a misguided soul. He has lost his faith. Luckily, you kept some of yours."
So, I'm dead?

"Yes, but you have been redeemed for most of your sins. After all, you did brave the Abyss and for most of your life, you led a pious path."

He glides, I glide; we both glide slowly through the botanical courtyard as he talks.

Skyscape, Part 2, v1.0

The top deck palpitated with footsteps and the blurry crowd prattled on and on into an intensely unsatisfying hum. The colossal airship seemed so jerry-rigged and crudely tied together in the twilight sun, that it almost seemed to fall apart and decay like the clouds surrounding it.

A strange man stood at the edge of the deck, staring off into a billowy nothingness as he shifted his weight and leaned against the rusted side railing. He was puffing on a cigar, intentionally ostracizing himself from the throng of visitors. His aviator goggles gleamed fiercely against the pink and red sky. The man wore a brown leather vest that insulated a muscular torso which was crowned by a plumed collar that shimmered in the breeze like an aquiline creature ruffling its feathers.

Pilots from all corners of Skyscape were congregated into tiny groups, telling tall tales and sharing unheard news. All sorts of planes and aircraft of varying size, make, and model gathered at the end of the landing strip. It seemed as if they too were in their own little social structures, sharing amongst themselves the same silent conversations as their owners, bickering about their pilots' mechanical failures and miscalculations.

He was completely bald except for long sideburns that stormed down either cheek. Tattoos emblazoned across his arms in dark green ink, spiraling into symbolic swirls and shapes. Leather gloves were strapped around either palm as each of his fingers emerged from fingerless openings. He was harnessed in to a pair of baggy, denim pants as steel-toed boots crawled up either shin, buckle by buckle. He coolly lifted up his goggles to reveal a squat face. Wrinkles and sinewy tissue converged towards a sternly furrowed brow. He had beady eyes and a large nose that tapered into a pair of wide, flaring nostrils. Thin lips suckled the dirt-brown cigar and tightly hugged a set of grinning teeth. This phalanx of molars and canines defended a long lashing tongue that affectionately tasted the tobacco.

Skyscape, Part 1, v1.0

How sheep-like was I to have fallen for such crap? Who was Malakai to just suddenly whisk me away from my comfortable teddy bear and replace it with a dirty rifle? To tell me that everything I held so dearly was simply trivial; something to be forgotten.

He told me to not fall for what anyone had to say, no matter how convincing their answers may be. And yet, I went on, like the buffoon that I was, falling for those very words. Like some sort of naive little girl who was being seduced by the devil himself.

I feel like such a fool now.

I know Malakai didn't mean any wrong, but how can you preach against preaching? How can you just tell someone to abandon everything they ever loved or ever knew and not offer something to replace it with? It's pure rape, I tell you. Rape. Babies never ask to be born, but they are. So, why strip them of everything that would at least soften the harshness of this ugly world only to leave them to fend for themselves?

It's just evil.

For all I care, Malakai was the naive one--naive for having done that to me. He was too caught up in his own ideas, and went about preaching them like the messiah. Sure, he had wondrous, almost genius things to say, but he was still a slave to his own thoughts nonetheless.

That's what made him crack. He could no longer bear the weight of his own ideals; they were just too self-destructive. To adhere to them would also mean to reject them. I'm sure this wasn't at first apparent to him, but as he went on refining his answers, affirming his views--newer, more paradoxical questions began to arise. And you can't answer questions with questions.

It's hard to believe in much of anything while being aware of your surroundings. When you're aware of your surroundings, delusions aren't as vivid. And when you're not delusional, apathy ensues. Let me tell you, Malakai was the most lucid man I've ever known.

It was sanity, not insanity, that killed him.

He died in the name of something that he was barely starting to only half-believe in. Oh sure, in the beginning he was as vehement as the best of them. But as time went on, his apprehensions grew. His exhibitions became inhibitions.

He began to question himself.

But that was later on in his life. When I met him, he was just an over-opinionated bald guy. I was the bartender. He was the drunk going on philosophical tirade.

As I Sit Burning

The moment I was born is the moment I began dying. Dying to live; living to die. Everything, everyone. Even the skin particles that flake off and ultimately become dust. Even they'll die too. Some day.

Like a flash in the pan. Here one moment, gone the next. Don't blink because you'll probably miss it. So I just stapled my eyes open.

I'm in agony right now. But I'm not moving an inch. If trees can do it, so can I, right? They burn like all of us do. Except they don't run around, screaming at the top of their lungs. Don't bump into others and ignite them into a ball of flames. Don't destroy everything they touch.

Just fucking stop already.

Dropping and rolling are optional. Nothing can retard this process. So just let it take its course. There's no stopping it.

In truth, if you put something under enough pressure, combustion is bound to happen. All you need is a little oxygen. A little fuel. A little spark. That seems to be everything the Earth provides us. That seems to be our ingredients; our recipe. That seems to be our destiny.

Shhh. Just stay still. And burn.

The Tyranny of the Majority

In the Democracy in America, it can best be said that Alexis de Tocqueville's overall thesis was the moral dilemma that democracy, in all its self-righteous servitude to the majority, could bring. As a sort of cautionary tale, he promulgates the notions of soft despotism; that is, he entertains the idea that even though the values of egalitarianism, freedom, and democracy are so readily heralded by certain peoples and nations (particularly America), such ideals are not in themselves immune from the propagation of oppression. He felt America to be most threatened by this sociological phenomena, particularly due to its capricious culture and frontier-oriented mentality.

For Tocqueville, the (then) current trends in America were diluting the sort of elitist, landowning system of aristocracy that abutted European society. He observed that the vast availability of land, and thus money, power, and political presence, allowed for a middling mediocrity to take place. As such, the bell curve of the majority would rule with an iron fist, marginalizing minorities to an extent no too dissimilar from what was common in monarchies and dictatorships. Tocqueville saw such tyranny to be even worse than monarchies, however, because certain minorities suffering from oppression of the majority would have no one to appeal their grievances to; public opinion sways the majority, the majority sways legislation, execution, and jurisprudence, thus, caught up in its moral zeitgeist, the majority would inevitably dominate with less mercy than a king.

One example of how this applied to the United States is how the nation's legislature was organized in such a way so as to limit the terms of the representatives of both Houses of Congress. This satisfied the eager "daily passions of their constituents", further bolstering the authority of the many. Tocqueville also points out that the American electors "choose a delegate ... and impose upon him a number positive obligations which he is pledged to fulfil. ..." In this way, it seems as though "the majority of the [American] populace held its deliberations in the market place. ..." From this degree of political expedience, he thought the government to be the surrogate of the majority's agenda, allowing for near-immediate reactions to the agendas of others.

Another example of America's prodigious majority is how all parties therein fully submit to the rights and even whims of the majority. Therefore, the majority surmounts a somewhat luxurious seat of power, exercising its authority and moral influence to subvert any minority-based parties of which would otherwise prove to be a threat or an obstacle in the progression of the majority's status quo. As a result, all three branches of the United States, which in themselves are supposed to act as checks and balances of one another, are heavily outweighed by the majority's impact on society. The implications of what the majority can do to the culture, diplomatic disposition, executive ordinance, legislation, and judicial partiality in America is undeniable. Finally, from this discourse of majority-rule, Tocqueville pleadingly questioned, "When an individual or party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? ..." Being that all preexisting institutions and governmental agencies are but minions of the predominant populace, the afflictions and injustices bestowed upon a minority by such a predominant populace cannot be properly reproached--at least until the prevalent opinion of the majority is swayed in the minority's favor.

In his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville conveyed to the world that its ardent reverence for democratic forms of governance should not go without careful providence. To blindly invest faith into a single ideology, no matter how just or righteous it may seem at the time, invariably leads to the same oppression and resentment from which democracy was conceived. Instead, power should be methodically relegated to trustworthy entities and agencies, permitting no one, not even the majority, to ascend the throne.

The Dead and the Dying: Chapter 2, v1.0

Different books incinerate in different ways. For instance, due to the thin paper of the Bible, it burns at a fairly rapid pace. Large coffee table books, on the other hand, char at a much slower rate. Opening the books and fanning out the pages allows for more surface area, and thus more expedient cremation. I prefer watching them burn slowly; it soothes me.

Burn hundreds of history books and scientific theses and it's an act of oppression; burn a couple dozen self-help books and it's a spiritually liberating experience.

"There was a whole box we had forgotten," Cindy said, awkwardly carrying a heavy packaging crate filled with paperbacks and hardcovers. She eyed me, annoyed. She hoped that I would lend a gentlemanly hand. I just love the face of someone with unmet expectations.

Expectations make the world less surprising. Things become dull and trite. With enough expectations, everything begins to resemble a Bob Ross painting. Happy trees under happy clouds with happy fence posts. Landscapes of alleged beauty.

"Here." She plopped the box of literary fuel next to me. She expected me to feed the fire like I was some sort of zookeeper feeding a lion. The chip on her shoulder made her somewhat cockeyed as she sat in the lawn chair next to my sister. She wore facial expressions like masks and put on a concerned furrow, showing a degree of pity that other psychiatrists might deem unprofessional. Because of the botulin that swirled beneath her skin, it gleamed like it were made of plastic.

"Hurry up with those things, I want to get the hell out of here," she said half to me and half to the fire. Her spindly legs crossed one another as her spindly fingers scrabbled for a cigarette. A fifty-year-old spoiled brat.

You become a very dizzy person when it seems as though the world is revolving around you.

People with expectations hope to build a society that is reverential of peace and order. They actually expect to have the right to live, as if that were even their decision to make. They draft a constitution, pay taxes, vote, work, buy shit, cram that shit down their children's throats, and eat heart-fucking-healthy Cheerios in hopes of fulfilling their expectations of perfection.

At least when your kid is a fat-ass, you know he won't slip through the cracks.

"Cindy, don't start. I hate it when you two fight."

"Honey, it's because of the likes of him that you haven't been able to properly adapt to the world. That's why after tonight, communication with him stops. We talked about this, remember?" I must've been invisible because she made little to no effort to whisper her statement or divert her eyes from me. I said nothing. I had said enough already.

"That's just temporary, right?"

It was then that I saw the most strained and contrived nod in my life.

White Fang, The Mantras of Me, A History of France by G. W. Kitchin, Mommy and Daddy's Special Hug: How to Talk to Your Child About Sex by Helen Back, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, The Satanic Bible, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, My Teacher is an Alien by Barb Dwyer, and stacks of hardcover books about drawing the female figure were slow to cook, probably from their weightiness. They cringed and curled, as if trying to recede away from the orange fire.

An entire scaffolding of starlight hung over the Arizona desert with no one to cast a spotlight on to. The crackling inferno and chirping crickets both seemed to taunt my sister. She simply simply sat there, staring somewhere beyond the flames like she always did. Breathing in the smell of her burning children.

Because of the glossy pages of some of the coffee table books and the ink-laden pages of the various photography books, a nauseating scent can permeate the air. Some of the thicker paperbacks that are bound heavily by glue also exude a distinct smell. Coupled with the ink, it can cause a strange taste to formulate in the back of your throat.

"Tell me, sweetie, how do you feel right now?" She always called her sweetie. I hated that.

Retinas burn from gazing at the white Sun, moths fry from their attraction to light bulbs, men lust for a few precious seconds of vaginal penetration. Truthfully, we all yearn to go back to the nothingness we came from.

"Like something crawled up inside me and died."

The Joy of Sex, Sun Tzu's the Art of War, a compilation of Garfield comics, Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, The Better Gender: A Book on Female Supremacy by Samantha Holland, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Sword of Shannara, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his lesser known Fantastic Mr. Fox, What Curls My Toes: the Autobiography of the Woman Who Orgasms 125 Times a Day, and a coverless chapter book were quick to burn. While wimpy and thin, they were also sophisticated, civilized books. Castaways frightened by an onslaught of inflamed primitives.

"'Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, my pile of books is a mile high. How I love them. How I need them. I'll have a long beard by the time I read them,'" my sister sorrowfully recited. She was quivering underneath her crochet coat. Whether it was from the cold breeze or from her crying, I couldn't tell. Poor Velouria.

I smacked my lips and cleared my throat to try to rid myself of the taste. But the back of my tongue just continued to writhe in a sauna of tartness. It felt almost as if I were attempting to swallow the words of Jack Kerouac himself. As if Kurt Vonnegut were force feeding me sour and spoiled words of an unpublished piece.

Cindy consoled my sister with a somewhat patronizing arm around the shoulders. The only thing to console my shivers was the fire. It never patronized me. It was never reluctant to show affection. If anything, its whipping tongues reached for me to come closer. I guess books didn't seem to fully quench its appetite.

"I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"You remember what to do when you feel anxiety, right? Just take a deep breath, close your eyes, count backwards from ten, and exhale." Velouria obeyed Cindy's instructions. The witch was fattening up her meal.

Curious George Goes to the Circus, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the entire catalog of Penthouse circa 1989, Short Stories by Short Authors, Raw: a Vegan's Guide to Cooking by Seth Poole, Self Analysis by L. Ron Hubbard, and a survival pamphlet on how to start campfires were fastest to twist and turn black. Hellfire and brimstone smote the pornography and children's books, leaving a sort of flyleaf excrement. The survival pamphlet was opened to a page about what to feed the campfire with.

After a while, I became somewhat lightheaded from the glue and ink. In a way, I felt like there was a second bonfire going on in my head. Just as I chucked fuel into the flames, book-by-book, I felt as though I were fueling some other monster in my brain, neuron-by-neuron.

Velouria began to weep. Seeing the last of her books die must've been shocking. She nestled against Cindy's chest as Cindy patted and shushed her, never letting go of her cigarette. At various times, her red hair would seemingly blend into the fire. She was certainly camouflaged for an eternal afterlife in Hell.

Sick of huffing the last sentences of Benjamin Franklin, I went to the truck to load up the remaining empty crates and cardboard boxes. The desert grounds seemed to slither with life. Coyotes could be heard in the distance. Countless bushes and cacti dotted the surrounding hills, sheltering an unimaginable number of snakes, scorpions, and lizards.

It was in this setting that I felt calm.

Animals take comfort in bleak darkness; only humans scramble for torchlights and matchsticks. We spend precious calories, hours, and gems on refueling them. Stacking firewood, drilling for oil, splitting atoms, all to perpetuate the safety and security of the fire. To keep alive something that will inevitably die.

I sat in the cab of the truck, in the stillness, in the darkness, almost reveling in it like any other wild animal would. Like any other self-respecting human wouldn't. I waited. Growing impatient, I tried to see why Cindy and my sister hadn't yet extinguished the flames.

Cavemen who obsessed over the campfire's maintenance became evolutionary successes. Cavemen who lingered in the darkness became meals. While basking in the campfire's luminescence, with bellies filled and content, these early humans would spend their evenings devising new forms of entertainment. Dancing, music, language, art, cooking, all originated by the fireside.

Sometimes one must befriend one destructive force in order to escape another.

Now, if I were like any other person, fearful of having shattered expectations and crushed preconceived notions, I would have been horrified by what I saw. I will even admit, certain deeprooted instincts were somewhat irritated by the sight. The two pairs of lips, one tear-moistened, enclosing, interlocking from behind the orgy of licking fire. I swear I even saw the whites of Cindy's eyes glare at me for an instant.

Prometheus gave man fire so I could bear witness to this shit?

Flash.

Earlier that day, I was taking photos of and cataloging every book in Velouria's collection. She was obsessive-compulsive from the day we came out of mom. Even when we were being born, she was clinging on to mom's uterus in utter fear. Needless to say, I was the first to pop out of that hell-hole. I sometimes wonder if I smelled like cigarettes and cheap liquor when the doctor pulled me out.

Flash.

I'm not totally sure why I became a photographer. Then again, no one really knows why anyone does anything. I suppose I had some urge, a drive, when I was younger, to capture images as they are as opposed to painting them as they ought to be. No interpretation involved. No idealization. Just reality.

Cindy monitored every moment of that day. She was like some sort of matriarchal midwife. At times, it seemed like her role as a watchful psychiatrist changed into that of a control freak. It was rather ironic that she was so obsessed with treating my sister's own obsessions. Of course, that was before I knew of their little affair.

Flash.

Sometimes I fancied myself as some sort of forensic documenter. Photographing the deceased remains of the world as if it were going to be used as evidence in court someday. As if the decaying remnants of this Universe could somehow be justified. I hoped to prove to some unknown, cosmic jury that a crime had taken place. Existence.

The whole room was empty besides the bookshelves that lined the piss-yellow walls. Even they were growing empty as Velouria and I gutted them of their treasured literature. We constructed tiny mountains of the books we had already taken pictures of, while a small train of the ones we had just picked off the shelves waited for their closeups on the hard wood floor.

Flash. New roll of film.

"After tonight, you're going to feel like a new woman." Cindy leaned against the door's threshold, crossed arms, white turtle-neck, that unusually wide mouth that always made her seem like she was grinning, even when she wasn't.

"I just don't understand why we have to burn them," my sister murmured with a transfixed shake of her head. The tears hadn't arrived yet.

Flash.

My sister would become a zombie when she felt anxious. She'd freeze. Her eyes would simply glare at something a million miles away and she'd stop listening to what you were saying. It was her defense mechanism; if a threatening gesture passed her by, she'd immediately clam up. I guess the logic behind it was if you're going to become dead, you might as well become the living dead.

I sometimes wondered what far away place she was staring at.

"In many cultures, cremation symbolizes the overall consummation of one's life. These were once objects of your worship; they deserve a proper sending-off." Cindy knelt next to us, never once lifting one of her well-manicured fingers to help us sift through the heaps of text. Never once looking at me. "Or maybe you'd prefer a burial?"

Flash.

"She'd probably just dig them up," I said as if my sister was deaf. In a way, in her state of mind, she was.

Cindy stood back up. As if her nostrils were cross hairs; like the bridge of her nose were sights on a gun, she glared down at me. My sister continued to stack books like an autistic simpleton.

"You know, Melvin, as Velouria's psychiatrist, it is my job to pinpoint all the factors in her life that are responsible for her behavior. It's like cancer; sometimes it's spurred on by a tumor, but after a certain point, not even removing that tumor will do away with the disease; sometimes you have to cut off an arm or leg." She rummaged through her pockets, lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke and resumed.

"There is really no one culprit here, you see; it's just a mixture of many things that eat away at her mind. But I have to say, from what I've observed, from what I've heard, I consider you to be the most fucking cancerous, malignant tumor in her life." With squinted eyes, she pointed at me, accused me with the tip of her cigarette as she said this.

"That's why, as a part of her treatment, she will no longer have contact with you. From this day forward. We've discussed it and we both agree that it's for the better." Velouria awoke from her deep gaze and looked up at her with worry.

"It's temporary, of course. Until she gets better," Cindy said as a reluctant promise.

Flash.

I looked up at her gaping nostrils and smirked. She moved to the fireplace and rested her elbow on the mantle to breathe more fire. Returning to her happy place, like some robot librarian, Velouria just continued foraging for more books from the starving bookshelves that surrounded us. I treated my sister like she was deaf because she so often acted like she was deaf.

She hummed that same stupid fucking song she always hummed. I remember it pretty well. When dad was kicking mom's ass she would just stand there and hum. When dad was on top of her, she'd just lay there and hum. Even when I pulled the trigger with my thirteen-year-old fingers and blew his fucking head off, she just sat there and hummed.

I suppose if you hum loud enough, you can ignore anything.

Cindy, you're a cunt. You know it, I know it. The problem is, I'm afraid my little sister here doesn't know it. I'm afraid that, once again, she is going to cling on to a stronger person than herself and call it love or friendship. I'm afraid that you're going to manipulate her and twist her until you get what you want out of her, whatever it may be. And yet, people have called me a heartless brother because I treat her with a little dignity and respect, because I don't pity her. In the end, I'll be the only one that hasn't hurt her. At least, that's what I wanted to say. But I didn't. I just kept silent, continued smiling and shook my head.

"You actually think what you did didn't hurt her?" She must've read my mind. My grin had melted away. That's when I kept silent for the rest of the night.

Velouria would eventually snap out of it. She always did. With a little bit of time she'd return. She'd hug me and cry and thank me and cry some more. Dad's brains clinging to the wall. She'd even tell me on occasions that the only reason why she'd return, why she'd come back, is because of me. Otherwise, she said, she'd just stay in that humming abyss forever.

Flash. I don't know why, I'm not sure what compelled me to do this, but I took a picture of Cindy; of her slouched, bony form, resting against the brick fire-pit. Of Satan's queen. I suppose, I wanted that photo for some future date. I knew it would come in handy, it had to. Somehow, someway, when something is framed differently, when an image is captured in just the right light, the true beast within everyone comes out. Maybe Velouria would see this picture and realize. A crime had taken place and it was Cindy.

But poor Velouria just kept on with her business. Ignoring us. Humming.

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