Author: Nicholas Rubinoff
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Surfing the boardwalk, my thumbs slapped the shimmering reflection of my iPhone. Scrolling, searching for a song to captivate Ocean City, New Jersey on a sun-scattered, Sunday afternoon. Winds ricocheted against my black Nirvana t-shirt, hoodie around my waste, as I maneuvered through pockets of pedestrians embracing the unusually sunny, March day. The rays peered behind transparent clouds, illuminating a once barren boardwalk — elderly couples, families, dates, children, and surfers alike.
You may be familiar with this situation, scrolling through song after song, only to realize you’re stuck recycling the same playlists, the same artists, the same tracks: the most recently played. You’ll know when it happens, and if you’re like me, it’ll make you slightly uncomfortable.
“The world of music at my fingertips and I’m listening to the same Grateful Dead tape (Dick’s Pick 33: Oakland Coliseum October 9th -10th, 1976, highly recommend).”
The walk, an attempt to induce sleepiness and hunger, was grasping effect.
My stomach churned against the scent of boardwalk fries, oven baked pizza, melted mozzarella, and the brutal lines for ice cream.
“Maybe its time to head back?” I thought to myself, “I hardly have any cash to spend. Boardwalk’s expensive.”
True enough, I was dependent on my parents, something difficult to communicate or confess. Especially if you know my past, the lengths I exceeded to maintain financial independence from Mark and Betsy. Eventually landing in legal troubles, which unfortunately resorted in even more financial dependance.
I spent over three years grinding the restaurant industry during peak COVID: delivery driver, dishwasher, busser, runner, bartender, server, food prep.
During my time at Anthony’s, I was prepping ingredients, bartending, taking tables, running food, bussing, and cleaning the guest’s dishes, all in one shift. Essentially a one man show alongside a manager and general manager. Despite the hard work, I encountered a theme of narcissism and codependency that prevented any upward mobility, eventually being forced from job to job at high turnover restaurants. Does this have anything to do with my psychoanalytic education, anything to do with the fact I’m educated in why these managers and owners are burning down their restaurants in self-destruction?
Do they notice?
Am I perceived as a threat?
I asked my last manager during a heated argument and he never said no.
This is subject for an entire essay, so I’ll return shortly to discuss narcissism and codependency in the workplace.
Trouble with work and various life situations occurred, I was jumped on my birthday after an altercation, receiving a concussion and broken hand. A drunk driver totaled both cars while returning from Dead and Company, slamming my head multiple times against the roof and headrest, a confrontation between my prescription-pill-popping brother, his wife, and my parents where police and courts were summoned to clear the dust, and climaxing with a cockroach contaminated apartment.
I negotiate enough money to stay off the streets, feed myself, and continue working on my art — my chosen career field. I could’ve lived out of my car during the winter months, but actually found it more difficult and more worthwhile to negotiate support and avoid burning bridges.
A lesson I’ve been learning: How much are we able to accomplish with the help of our fellow man, how much easier would COVID have been if people and corporations actually assisted each other instead of accumulating profits?
However its a tense situation. I recently find myself in Ocean City due to lack of affordable housing near French Creek and the Poconos, my determined final resting place due to scenery and lack of people.
I have specific housing needs. My search for housing is a character arc itself extending from the age of five years old dealing with health issues, visiting countless primary care physicians, psychologist, psychiatrists, specialists, surgeries, inpatient, outpatient hospitalization. This is an incredibly personal journey, and I have to know what works best for me. I’ve already been forced to move from the last two locations in my life. So I’m sorry if I look like a rich kid on vacation right now, I have to know my self worth with the resources available. Like any businessman.
I will be returning to discuss abuse at the hands of the medical establishment, and resentment toward an upper-middle class upbringing. They are connected.
Walking for over an hour, my legs drudged over wooden planks, muscles tightening to my hips. Time to head back. I trudged along the boardwalk, allowing the salty breeze to clear my recently infected sinus’s — spying surfers in the distance.
They ambushed the pressing tides, whipping around storm drains and gulleys, washing up on sand-stained shores, crowds spectating in admiration.
In the corner of my eye, a bench protruded from the edge of the boardwalk, vacant, beckoning to melting thighs and aching feet. I placed myself against the wooden frame, enlisting the help of Alice In Chains to set the mood, MTV Live’s Unplugged. As Lane Staley’s hoarse, angst-embraced vocals soothed my ear drums, I heard a muffled vibration — a figure caught the corner of my eye.
“Whersav-Sdfaf—fd!”
“Huh?” I said, removing the earbud from submersion.
A bulky gentleman, five o’clock shadow, black sweatshirt over black sweatpants, worn tennis shoes, clutching a Dollar Tree plastic lunch-bag approached the boardwalk bench.
“You got the best seat in the house, I was here earlier. Bathroom.” he said hovering over the bench.
“Would you like me to move?”
“Nah man…It’s all good, best bench on the boardwalk. Five-O-One, Fifth Avenue, first bench — surfer’s bench,” he said taking a seat, “You know how to surf?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Usually we surf on the other side, but recently a lot of guys come here. I’m a big boy though, hardly fit into a wet suit anymore, gotta lose a couple pounds. Old man. Won’t catch me surfing near rocks and storm drains like these guys either. Young man’s game — didn’t mean to interrupt you. You can listen to your music.”
Half tempted to replace the ear bud, I sat frozen, aware of the possibility of conversation. A theme: encounters with strangers who shed light on specific ideas I’ve been ruminating in Modern Psychoanalysis. The crashing waves embraced a moment of silence, as the gentleman eyeballed Nirvana’s “In Utero” on my black t-shirt.
“I love the sixties, seventies, and eighties music man. The stuff that really rocks. The music they played at Woodstock; Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, The Who, Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young; guys like The Eagles, The Cars, ZZ Top, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Dire Straits…even Ravi Shankar… I saw his daughter play the sitar once — music where they actually care, ya know?”
Recently visiting Woodstock this summer, I jumped eagerly into the conversation.
“Favorite band?” I asked.
“Too many. Depends on the day, the mood. Anything with real intentions, where they care about the rock n roll. Something pure. I’ll go as far back as Earl Scruggs and some bluegrass, to Chuck Berry, early Rolling Stones — better than the newer stuff, maybe some Jethro Tull. Have you ever listened to their first album? Better.”
“Incredible, bluesy with the harmonica,” I said.
“Yeah man, and the flute— ‘My Sunday Feeling’. People don’t listen to that stuff, always the radio songs. What’s you name?”
“Nick, you?”
“Ronny…Ronny Longboard Shwartz.”
We shook hands.
“No ninety’s music?”
“Nirvana is too weird for me, but I like Alice in Chains.”
We discussed music for almost an hour. Favorite musicians, Woodstock, discographies, blues, bluegrass, the invention of the synthesizer, the history of Bruce Springsteen and Atlantic City surfer culture, racist banjo tunes of the twenties. After a lengthy conversation, my stomached roared. I was preparing to leave when Ronny divulged about growing up in Atlantic City, moving to Ocean City, promising never to return to casino stacked skies, escort muddled streets, cracked out corners.
“A small town with big city problems,” he said, “all thanks to those damn casinos. I remember when they first opened. We were there. At the ribbon cutting. How much good those did…” Ronny explained how casino culture killed his hometown, increased alcohol consumption, gambling addiction, drugs, crime. “I’ve lived a hard life. Everyone grew up with a skateboard, surfboard, and an instrument in their hands. First they traded it for a bottle of liquor, then a needle of heroin. Peer pressure, always. I never met my dad. Called a Vegas gambling missionary and found him there, never met him. I don’t need that in my life right now.”
“You sure know a hell of a lot about music, did you get into a music career?”
“Nahh…Not exactly. Just day by,” said Ronny.
“Certainly know quite a bit. Who got you into music?”
“Myself. I was the lead singer of a band too.”
“Play any gigs?”
“Ha! Hardly, garage band. Just some local guys having a good time.”
Ronny focused on the surfers floating against the tide as a bicyclist slammed his breaks, eyeing Ronny from the throne of his bicycle — Tour de France bike suit and all.
“Yo Ronny, what’s good my man?”
“Yo, buddy. How are we today?”
“Good man,” said the bicyclist, “Haven’t seen you at ACME in a bit. You still over there?”
“Nahhh, I got fired.”
“Anyway you can get your job back? I’m sure they’re looking for every dick they can find!”
“Yeah,” Ronny said, Yeah.”
The bicyclist departed after a brief intrusion, as Ronny sat perched against the wooden bench, accompanied by his Dollar Tree lunch bag. The seagulls chirped overhead, casting shadows that whipped the wooden planks. Ronny continued.
“I don’t believe in religion,” he began, “religion is nonsense, controlling.” Ronny shifted toward me, hesitating. “You wanna hear something crazy?” Peering over each shoulder, Ronny paused. “ I guess I’ll just say it…. Fuck it, Despite everything I know there’s something up here,” Ronny circled the left side of his head with a finger, pointing to the empty space joining his ear. “I don’t know what it is…I was walking beneath the spot where my friend’s brother died, killed by lightning, leader of the local Neo Nazi’s, electrician. I don’t go back there often, but when I do, sometimes I feel him.”
Ronny hesitated for a moment, discovered I was still listening and continued.
“My friends are dead. I survived and I owe it to whatever this is,” Ronny pointed toward the empty space next to his head, signaling towards the other. “A hand grabbing my neck, telling me to go over there, stay away from that, ignore that, no, over here, idiot…. Sometimes it feels like my dead friends, my mother who recently passed, sometimes it feels like this one woman…”
“What woman,” I asked confused.
Ronny paused before removing a black brick from his hoodie pocket, a relic from the past, a flip phone. “Don’t mind me. I’m high energy, low tech.” He searched through his phone, returning the screen with a black and white, Marilyn Monroe-esque, photograph of a woman posing, faded, circa 1960’s?
“I don’t even use streaming services for music, just YouTube on my broken laptop, but here she is… I saw her photograph one day and decided to call her, let her know how much I appreciated her early work… before it got smutty and risqué. Not a fan of the slutty pictures. She wasn’t really there when I called her… dementia… I mean the photograph was thirty-forty years prior but I let her know. I’d call her from time to time, found her number online. When she passed away, I could feel her along with the others.”
Ronny pointed to his ear once more.
When Ronny mentioned the smutty picture and his preference toward purity, he provided a perfect example for the Madonna Whore Complex — the inability to view a woman as BOTH a caring, compassionate wife and sexual partner. Did you know a great portion of men are unable to perform sexually after they marry their wives? This is known as the Madonna-Whore Complex, stemming from the infant’s attempt at preserving the innocence of the primary caregiver. Melanie Klein, prominent psychoanalyst discovered that during breast feeding, a child would bite, tear, and punish only one breast; while finding great comfort and admiration in the second breast.
A ‘good breast’ and a ‘bad breast’ resemble the infant’s attempt to split the identity of the caregiver into two polarizing identities, bad and good instead of a multidimensional human, somebody who isn’t perfect. This occurs when the child’s emotional and physical needs are unmet and the child becomes overwhelmed with negative emotion. Instead of blaming the caregiver, the child splits the caregiver into two separate identities to preserve the child’s identity of the caregiver.
This phenomena translates to incredible problems in society. For example, one of my major inspirations in life, Ken Kesey, suffered from a Madonna Whore Complex. How? Maybe it had something to do with Mountain Girl, the young teenager who slept with Kesey during the Electric Kool Aid Acid years, who conceived his child while Kesey had a wife and family at home. In Tom Wolfe’s book, Faye Kesey is continuously projected as this Mary Magdalen, do-no-wrong, woman duty-fulfilling, child rearing housewife. However, Kesey seems unsatisfied, searching for an emotional outlet in teenagers. Mountain Girl and Kesey eventually split, leaving Kesey’s child to be raised by Jerry Garcia. While Kesey is pushing consciousness, spirituality, and a higher plane of existence, he’s simultaneously caught inside a childhood repetition which endangers the family model. Behavior that encourages the repetition of the Oedipal Complex, as Kesey’s children are witness.
The Oedipal Complex foreshadows difficulties with gender identification, the feminization of men, infantilization of children, preference of narcissistic love objects, and overall is a nuisance to developing society.
If you’re like me, you accidentally made a whore a housewife — Women who constantly look for sexual escape, incapable of unconditional love, bouncing from love interest to love interest, narcissistic. Were these girlfriend’s capable of providing real, unconditional love and support? In one example, the cheating, ghosting, and abandonment of our six year relationships should be the indicator. However, unconsciously this is what I was looking for: unloving women to debase and dominate as a sexual object, an oedipal revenge against a mother figure from childhood. The act of physically controlling a woman for a moment and casting her aside to prevent any vulnerabilities. Many times after having sex with a girlfriend or any woman, I’d feel a compulsion to drive her home, tell her to leave, go to sleep, even break up with her.
I also had trouble masturbating while thinking about certain women, as if I were “degrading them” or making them “unworthy”. One woman for sex, another for the home.
However, most relationships, I’d find myself sleeping with a woman only to run away until it was time for sex. Tinder and dating apps were incredibly enabling. It’s not proud behavior, but its a defense mechanism against my sociopathic mother — a subconscious recognition that women are possibly dangerous and must be treated as such.
My grandfather, when acting out during his marriage with my sociopathic grandmother (history repeats), brought his affairs to the dinner table. Literally.
In an act of self-destruction, my grandfather would actually bring his mistresses home and introduce them to the family. This is a revenge act against women in general, using them as objects, but especially my sociopathic grandmother — along with a cry for help. I grew up hearing about how my grandfather was a narcissistic asshole, a piece of shit who cared more about sex and himself than anything else, but after psychoanalysis, I believe my grandfather had a Madonna-Whore Complex — married to somebody with absolutely no ability for love or compassion — trapped with a sadist, looking for a way out.
It’s important to identify how narcissists and codependents share similar behaviors when self-destructing. The analysis of the self, family history, individual personalities, and individual behaviors allows access to the full picture. Without a properly trained analyst, somebody skilled in understanding resistances and unconscious motives, history may be lost.
Ronny also mentioned his skinhead friend who died from lightning (what are the odds). This provides evidence for the root of scapegoating, tribalism, and prejudice within the “the good” and “the bad” breasts. An infant will exemplify the same splitting behavior, not just within women, but races, religions, anything. Even how Ronny kept explaining every artist’s first releases were “better than the rest”.
Ronny’s automatically classifying a specific release as better than “the other” releases, solely based on order of releases. While I won’t disagree, AC/DC’s ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ is a great album, is it better than Back in Black?
Jethro Tull’s ‘This Was’, more inspirational than ‘Aqualung’?
Suppose there’s no right answer, music is subjective, right?
Do you see the “This vs. That” mentality, at least?
How about the voices in his head?
It could’ve been easy to laugh at Ronny when discussing the orb of voices encircling his skull providing him with proper guidance, the deceased friends and family, the woman from the photograph, Raquel. However, Ronny didn’t explain the situation with a psychotic gibber jabber, he didn’t break from reality, he didn’t form word salad. You may be familiar with these phenomena if you’ve ever encountered a psychotic episode. Ronny carefully explained his perspective of intuition, listening to the inner voice, staying alive, and why he’s the sole survivor from his friend group, a burden he carried like the plastic Dollar Tree lunch bag.
It became more apparent when I tried to leave, and every time I said goodbye he rang me into the conversation. A man who’s lived a difficult life, few family, dead friends; freshly fired from his ACME day job, living vicariously through a group of young surfers in a body too big for a surf board. But a shimmer of light sparked from the corner of his eye, a relaxation when speaking, and a smile that hugged his prickly, oval face. A stranger, but no stranger to strangers.
“I’ve really gotta go.” I said, stomach twisting, eyelids cement.
“No worries, about time I hit the bathroom again. Been a couple hours. Just stay up, man. Don’t let anything or anybody get you down. You wanna learn how to surf, I’ll be here. Five-oh-one, baby.” He jumped from the bench, standing tall against the Atlantic City skyline lingering in the distance.
“One last thing,” I asked Ronny, “ Shwartz, what is that?”
“Hundred percent German baby!”
“Sounds like something out of Space Balls.”
Ronny sighed, “Never was a movie guy… more into music… Especially a movie where the yudin are tryna make a few bucks off a guy like me.”
A laugh struck me by surprise.
We shook hands under the flocking seagulls, amongst the first crowds of the beach season, basking in a beautiful spring afternoon.
“I’ll catch you later man!” I said, “thanks for the music suggestions!”
Amongst the crowds Ronny punched two fingers into the sea breeze, the sign of horns and bellowed,
“Keep rocking and rolling, Remember Ronny….Ronny Longboard Shwartz!”
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One final attempt. The paper plate fluttered against moist embers, casting dust and debris into brisk winter winds. I gasped and heaved for ignition – praying for the wet wood to spark. A source to cook my dinner. Nothing. Glancing around the campgrounds, there was no escaping the record rains and flooded waterways engulfing French Creek State Park. I was forced to comply with the flooded conditions and recently purchased, sponge-soaked firewood. Great. The sun crawled beneath the prickled tree-line, drowning in a moonlit sky.
Time was against me. Darkness and no flame. Hungry.
A collision sounded from the adjacent cabin, penetrating a thin wooden frame. An argument, shaking the serenity of the cabin campgrounds. Minding my own business, I tended to the miserable fire, embers fizzling and smoke ascending amongst the onslaught of recycled forest droplets.
Too wet, I thought, screams reverberating against towering trees, Just my luck.
Glaring into the blackened logs, defeated, I examined the medical marijuana container resting on the picnic table. Removing the cap from the glass enclosure, a boulder slammed the pit of my stomach. The concentrated cannabis, welcoming with its fruity essence and sparkling aura, was replaced by scentless, microscopic specks.
No weed, no fire, and a choir of shrieks from the neighboring cabin.
I should’ve planned more efficiently, I thought, wasted time bouncing from storage unit, to hotel, to campground, to storage unit, to Facebook Marketplace buyer, to post office. Christ. How could I fuck this up?
Spending my days bouncing across southeastern Pennsylvania, I was exhausted and overstimulated, exchanging hotels and state park reservations in attempts to cut costs from vacating my recent cockroach-ridden apartment. Selling items from my storage unit to fund the expedition, asking family for assistance. Hotels are expensive right now, and if you manage to find something cheap? Good luck, there seems to be a bed bug and cockroach infestation sweeping the hospitality industry, even found them during my stay at Nockamixon State Park. Walking into a hotel without reading Google reviews is a job best suited for the Men In Black.
Do I drive to Pottstown? I pondered, while examining the empty marijuana container. I’d rather not, I just spent the entire day driving. Maybe I’ll just make ramen noodles or a PB&J? I should have something laying around he—
“Hey, what’s going on over here?” Expecting my conflict-stricken neighbor from the adjacent cabin, I was surprised to see a stranger, smile emanating from his beard, one hand outstretched, another entombed in a winter coat.
“Over here?” I asked, eyeballing the dysfunctional cabin behind him.
Did he mean the yelling?
“Trouble with the fire? Hey, my name’s John.” The outstretched hand maneuvered into my grip, as we shook hands underneath the moist canopy.
“Saw you over here, thought I’d say hello. I just moved down here a couple days ago. Scouted the area beforehand. Not bad.”
“Nick,” I said, shaking John’s hand.
“How long have you been out here? I asked a few other campers, varying answers. That guy over there, he told me he’s here on weekends. The couple next to me… they’ve been camping in a tent for months. Husband’s a manager at Turkey Hill. Looks cold in that tent.”
“Whenever there’s vacancy,” I said, pointing towards the rented cabin.
“How much?”
“The same as full hook up, minus the running water.”
“That’s not too bad. Yeah, my wife and I are splitting up,” the man interjected, “I’m out here with my camper. It’s not entirely winterized, but it’ll get the job done. Let me know if I’m being too much. People tell me I’m too much. Might be on the spectrum, a bit.”
“Sorry to hear,” I said, how long have you been together? The man shifted confidently in my direction, eyes shimmering behind a pair of glasses.
“Its okay, its my fault. It’s always my fault. I’m a bit difficult. Ten years…. I told you, if you’d prefer I leave, just say somethi — Hey, you need help with your fire?”
Smoke-stained logs peered from the fire ring, as the wind slapped our winter coats. Eyeballing the defeated logs, I asked,
“What do you have?”
“Yeah, one second, I’ll be right back. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I stood watching as the man bolted from the cabin site, descending into the darkness of night. When he returned, John placed a six pack of Lagunitas IPA’s, folded cardboard, and a handheld device shaped like a butane torch.
“Wanna see something cool?” John ignited a switch on the handheld device, delivering a roar, which suctioned the nearby air, and dispensed punishing winds onto the ember-soaked logs. Flames embraced the wood, snapping against damp tree bark, mounting the steel enclosure. Fire.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, glancing toward the pistol shaped device.
“Multi-purpose air gun, useful for air mattresses and campfires. Want a beer?”
John passed me the Lagunitas, which I accepted.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got campfire nachos.”
“Absolutely,” he said, “But if I’m being obnoxious or taking up your time, just let me know, okay?”
I agreed, spreading tortilla chips, dicing jalapeños, green peppers, olives, and onions; scattering nacho cheese, cheddar, salt, pepper, a layer of taco seasoning. To compensate for the lack of protein, I doubled the portion of vegetables, tossing the cast-iron tray over the flames.
We discussed state parks, national forests, backpacking the Appalachian trail.
John’s an outdoorsman, spent much of his childhood camping with his family, later investing in his own camper, his home currently.
“From outside Reading,” John said, “I’ve been all over the area, but surprisingly never to French Creek.” Words arrived easily, comfortably for John, who found no worries divulging personal information to a total stranger. “We had three miscarriages, my wife and I. Maybe it’s a sign from the universe, right?” John peered into the campfire nachos, cheese fusing and bubbling amongst the heat. “I mean, I’m not easy to be with.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I’m antsy, a bit intense. You know… you can tell. I’m difficult.”
It was true, John was a bit intense, extroverted, but was he menacing? Did his personality threaten me with the possibility of theft or violence? While I admit, I didn’t let him into my cabin… this was a rule of mine, no strangers in my bedroom —
I didn’t feel threatened. The man offered me beer and fire while essentially homeless during the impending winter months. In fact, he played a role I was all too familiar with: The self-attacking, low self-esteem, blame-taking codependent.
John was most likely confronted with a narcissist. How?
From his living situation, to the constant “I’m difficult”, the beers he explained he carries backpacking, the smile plastered to his cheeks, there appeared to be somebody in John’s life he had difficulty confronting, at the least.
“What do you do for work?” He asked.
“Restaurants, figuring it out ” I said, what about you?”
“Interesting,” he said, eyeballing my Honda Accord Hybrid parked in the cabin lot, “I’m a teacher.”
“Teacher? I come from a family of teachers. What do you teach?”
John took a swig from his amber beer bottle, eyes lingering against the flames.
“Pre-crime, a high school over in Reading.”
“Pre-crime, what the hell is that?” I inquired, picturing Tom Cruise from Minority Report, pre-cognitives floating in water, high tech surveillance gadgets.
“Reading’s gotten bad over the years. Real bad. Ghetto as shit. Where are you from? You said outside Philadelphia? So you know.”
Picturing the town of Media, Pennsylvania, A Christmas town, string lights illuminating State Street, the families in fifty thousand dollar SUVs, fastened designer bags, eight dollar beers. The homeless living in their cars behind Double Decker Pizza.
I shrugged, “Depends”.
“A lot of our kids are high risk for gangs, violence, jail and prison. Its a program designed for troublemakers.”
“Really, does it work?”
“Sort of, hard to say. Eh, Usually not. You have to know how to deal with troubled kids. They all have something to prove, they all want to look cool in front of their peers. You know how you handle them?”
“How?” I asked.
John emptied the beer bottle down his esophagus.
“You gotta give them a taste of their own medicine!” He chuckled, “they tell you to go fuck yourself, you send it straight back.”
“That works?”
“It works better than getting pushed around. It’s a balancing act.”
John didn’t know it, but he was channeling psychoanalytic insight.
Dr. Hyman Spotnitz, founder of Modern Psychoanalysis, developed a method for dealing with narcissists and patients called “eliciting the toxoid response”.
Spotnitz confronted patients while mirroring a caregiver or primary object within the patients past, beckoning an emotional response normally suppressed. The patient’s confrontation with their analyst bridges the unconscious material hindering their emotional progress. For example, an analyst may talk over the patient during session, tell them their ideas are silly and incompetent, show little interest in their session, or even mimic the patient.
The analyst attempts to embody a primary object or relationship from the patient’s life, or even the patient themselves.
What is the analyst looking for? A response.
Spotnitz believes repressed emotions, primarily negative emotions like anger, are trapped within the individual’s psyche. When the patient is confronted with the analysts behavior, they may eventually feel compelled to express themselves. The expression and identification of emotional triggers ultimately heals the patient over time by reverting them to the “pathological state”, the mirroring of situations and responses that molded the patient’s neurosis and illnesses. The patient exorcises unconscious, negative emotions, and directs them to the frontal lobe of awareness, and back onto the analyst. Energy may not be created or destroyed, only transferred and transformed. Law of thermodynamics.
Have you seen David Fincher’s Netflix show Mindhunters? The show resembles John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, FBI investigators from the emerging serial crime unit. While interviewing narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic serial killers, the investigators become strikingly aware their conventional methods of communication fail to achieve results. Finally, the investigator played by Jonathan Goff attempts a different approach. He asks the prison guards to remove the shackles of notorious serial killer Ed Kemper, building trust between the killer and the investigator. The investigator proceeds to engage in lively conversation, asking Kemper how good it felt to murder those women, to defile, and embarrass their corpses. Instead of treating Kemper like a specimen, he forms a relationship, prying into the killer’s mind, allowing him to talk, and going as far as ordering pizza for interviews with Kemper. Investigators discovered a tight-rope when confronting narcissists, a tug of war between asserting dominance and allowing the imprisoned killer to talk freely.
Confrontation is imperative in modern psychoanalytic thought. When the patient first arrives in treatment, they do not view the analyst as a separate human being. The analyst first allows the patient to speak uninterrupted, forming a closeness in identification to the patient, dissolving the ego boundaries between the two. After many sessions, the analyst will provoke the toxoid response in order to assist the patients emotional outlet, to exemplify and initiate confrontation, to identify the separation between analyst and patient — to gain awareness of the suppressed emotion and the origin. This process of confrontation mimics the identification of self in childhood, predominately because a child’s ego first identifies with the primary object, eventually developing an individual sense of self through healthy maturation, through the freedom to discover and explore their own personal interests.
Have you ever met a child in the midst of the terrible twos? This is the child exercising their new knowledge of separation. They are saying “No” because they can.
“No” is the beginning of the child’s understanding they exist outside the primary object, caregiver, typically mother. A “No” is an establishment of the self. Improper understanding of this troublesome developmental stage may further repress the child’s developing sense of self. A caregiver may misdiagnose the child’s actions as “bad behavior”, instead of allowing the child to negatively express themselves, rationally.
Issues with this developmental phase may fracture the child’s identity or even cause gender dysphoria, especially if the child exhibits closeness with the identification of a specific parent. This is one reason why two parent households are so important, the child, especially a male, breaks their identification from the primary object, and requires an exemplary member of the opposite sex to solve the Oedipus Complex — the lust for the primary object. More often, the child mistakenly assumes responsibility for their parents emotions, becoming parent (people) pleasers, neglecting their own emotional needs for the needs of the caregiver.
(Another blog post about transgenderism soon).
While FBI investigators fell under increased scrutiny for ‘conversing’, ’entertaining’, and confronting societies worst, they eventually discovered a useful modality for conjuring informative interviews, along with a theme of harsh, conditionally loving mothers amongst serial killers —Ed Kemper, who engaged in sexual intercourse with his mother’s severed head.
Removing the cast-iron tray from bursting flames, I placed the campfire nachos on the wooden picnic table. Nacho cheese popped and geysered steam into our nostrils. We sorted tortilla chips onto paper plates, cracked fresh cans of beer, and sat by the fire’s warmth.
“So you come from a family of teachers?” John asked.
“Father is a lawyer for Thomas Jefferson university, both grandpa’s were local law/political science professors, grandma was an English teacher and guidance counselor, other grandma is a pastor, Aunt is a math teacher, cousin is a professor of music at North Carolina – Greensboro, Uncle and Aunt were professors at University of Toronto.”
“Wow, that’s pretty cool. I mean, what are the chances? Me, a teacher, meeting a descendent of teachers, in the middle of the woods, like this?”
A chill ascended my spine, tickling behind my ears, radiating to the top of my head. A reminder, that despite the cockroaches, despite the conflicts with my family, despite the financial ruin, the near homelessness, I’m right where I’m supposed to be: Tucked beneath the stars of Appalachia, munching home cooked campfire nachos, sipping Lagunitas beer, and sharing the company of a stranger during hard times.
“Ahh shit,” I said, glancing at the time projecting from my iPhone.
“What’s that?”
“Any dispensaries open at this hour?”
John excavated the trenches of his coat pocket, removing a black USB-shaped device.
“Here you go,” he said, “puff it long and hard brother. Live resin… yeah, yeah.. high school teacher smoking pot. It should be legal. Better than drinking. Seriously.”
Removing the device from John’s grip, I noticed the cannabis insignia painted across the black battery, medical marijuana, and live resin at that!
“Do you like teaching?” I asked, pressing the marijuana cartridge to my lips.
John glared into the fire-pit, a smile wiped his beard and without hesitating he responded,
“I love it.”
My lungs exhaled the herbal vapors which protruded against the moonlit evening, against the glow of the roaring flames.
The night was quiet and still and I was full and stoned.
-
Slam. A steel door penetrated an uncanny moment of hotel silence, awakening anticipated sleep, and plunging me into the chaos of shared living. Fumbling in the darkness, eyes scanning, I realized nobody entered the room. A fear when living in public spaces. A real fear. One “housekeeping” away. Trust me.An ensemble of slamming steel doors thundered from the hallway, as truckers, vacationers, and passing strangers vacated their rooms. Holiday remnants.
Reaching for my iPhone, I peered at the clock unfazed. Ten o ‘clock in the morning. Early….erhhh no…late… difficult to say when forced captive by insomnia. Life becomes a game of addition, mounting individual hours of sleep in the holy attempt to gain a full night’s rest, usually unsuccessfully.
Glancing around the hotel room, a relaxation caught my breath, replaced by gnawing frustration. Why am I here, what am I doing, what the fuck?
At least I knew who to blame. For what? For moving into a cockroach-ridden apartment, which my landlord Julie Calboli knew before signing the lease. How did she know? It definitely wasn’t the cockroach gel left in the closet, or the clogged drains with battery-operated flood alarms, or the broken-decaying dishwasher with moldy vegetable specs, or the dilapidated oven, or neighbors claiming “the bugs are better than before”, or her refusal to ever meet face to face, stating “this has never happened before”… from afar.
Morgantown, eight minutes outside French Creek State Park, cordially became home after an exodus and months of location hopping – and it’s not perfect. Weekends are bombarded with sport teams, drifters, and the attached expo center magnetizes crowds across the state. The increased foot traffic means the increased slamming of doors. Typically begins around six-thirty in the morning and ends around four o’clock in the afternoon.
A recipe for disaster when dealing with insomnia.
Why don’t you just go home? Home. Sure, and simultaneously sacrifice any emotional well-being for the comfort of my sociopathic mother and codependent father. Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m sure nothing can go wrong. I’m sure my physical and emotional health won’t pay the toll. I’m sure they haven’t all ready.
Too many emotional and physical scars to return. A sentence to insanity at best.
The gaslighting, physical abuse to animals, invasion of privacy; the constant games of mental chess, unlimited lies, fear of retribution, and the wire-rope of conditional love. The pettiness of discovering your chargers unplugged from power strips.
I’m good.
Awoken for the fourth time, bloodshot eyes, fingernails digging trenches, I yanked my phone from the table and took to social media. An outlet for my anger – An immediate, short form response compared to the screwdriver forehead-fracturing tactics of blogging. I honestly do not enjoy writing. Lets make this clear. God, I’ve been avoiding it. With everything I have. Fuck. However, unfortunately for me, I believe I’ve encountered a few opportunities to communicate a story. Not entirely my story, but the stories of people I’ve encountered on the road. They individually mirror a theme or person(s) from my life, ideas and archetypes I’ve encountered during my process with modern psychoanalysis.
This healing process: modern psychoanalysis, simultaneously ignited the fiercest conflicts I’ve ever known alongside the liberation of my unconscious mind.
A natural reaction, the mind becomes aware of the programmings of the programmer. Does this always warrant a negative reaction, well how malignant and improper were the programmings? And how nearby are these people during this process of unravelling?
Unfortunately, in my case, the parental programming was malignant, improper, and the unraveling process took place within my parent’s household… primarily during COVID. Confronting my sociopathic mother and codependent father is the greatest life altering situation I’ve encountered, and I’ve fought a lengthy prison sentence for a nonviolent drug crime.
Punching the purple Instagram icon, my thumbs ambushed the internet. Drawing from my discussions about narcissism, I posted various public messages regarding the unconscious presence of narcissistic personality disorder, the absence of a biological cure, and the subsequent invasion of our families and institutions.
I pounded keys furiously, projecting my anger regarding forced living conditions into the heart of what I thought to be the problem. Narcissism. A biological surrender to the frustrations accumulated within a child typically two years and younger – when negative emotions have no escape, where do they go? Dr. Hyman Spotnitz believes negative emotions, primarily anger, are hopelessly redirected back onto the child’s ego. This tornado of anger and self-destruction formulates a spectrum of narcissism, ranging from healthy perceptions of the self, to the self-destructing codependent, or to the egregious desolate depths of the malignant narcissist, psychopath, and sociopath – A dense self-hatred projected against the world.
The structural basis of narcissism being what? Repression, mainly. An inability to discharge negative emotions. Trapped psychic energy. Instead of being met with love, compassion, understanding, nurturing, an opportunity for self-expression, the child is confronted with an apathetic energy, uncaring, short of patience, demanding, or even downright unreliable. Relationship and career conflicts may also intervene with proper attention and development, preventing the child from meeting their emotional or physical needs. When the frustration or anger is unable to be communicated, the energy becomes trapped within the psyche. This is a lesson in the law of thermodynamics, Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred and transformed.
With my psychoanalytic education and my own distaste toward my current state of affairs, I decided to declare my unconscious conscious. Posting images littered with my psychoanalytic insights and personal history, I rejoiced in the revenge for my lost sleep.
Concluding my doctoral thesis, I grabbed my bong and medical marijuana, heading for the designated smoking section adjacent to the hotel. Finding a spot on the curb, I finished my post before getting medicated for the day. Still attached, I know.
Cementing myself to the concrete, I punctuated my final phrases for a few instagram followers and prepared to smoke the cannabis leaves, watching as a family unpacked from their travels. My thumb hovered over the “SEND button” as the doors breached open to the parking lot. A woman jolted from behind reflecting glass doors, blonde hair hooding her eyes, an inside-out sweatshirt stitched to her frail figure. The woman lit a cigarette, and the family headed inside.
Pressing “SEND” on my iPhone, I observed as she inhaled and tip-toed to the curb, positioning herself next to me. Exhaling the cigarette smoke, she brushed dirty blonde hair from her face and asked,
“What are you running from?”
“Is that the vibe I give off?”
The woman inched closer, exhaling cigarette smoke, which surfed the breeze directly into my face.
“I’m running,” she said.
“From what…”
“From my abusive husband…”
A crimson crust protruded from her nostril, bloody, battered.
“Are you okay?” I pulled the medical marijuana closer, nervous, observing her slender fingers like twigs clutching the cigarette upright.
“No… I’m running. I’m not going to stop,” she said.
“And how far do you think you’ll get?”
She didn’t answer, instead she sat idle, glaring into winter’s leafless horizon.
A silence lingered.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
“Nick, you?”
“Audrey”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Silence.
“I’m getting a PFA, she said.
“Protection from abuse,” I said, “are you getting that done here, at the courthouse?”
(I only just recently learned about PFA’s, and I’ll have another blog directly related to my brother and his wife filing a false PFA and hospitalization against me).
She didn’t answer so we sat in silence.
“Do you have kids?” she asked.
“No…” I answered.
“Then how could you EVER know what I’m going through?”
“I guess I don’t….” I responded, as she turned away disgusted.
“Where are your kids,” I asked.
“With my husband.”
“Umm, are they safe?” I asked confused.
“Yes,” she said confidently, before a frown smeared her lips.
“How many kids do you have?”
“Three…”
“And you’re sure they’re safe?”
“Yes,” she repeated annoyed.
An alarm sounded in the caverns of my subconscious, a tiny alarm. If your husband was abusive, why would you leave your three children behind? Why would you leave on your own… to find help?
And why so secretive, sketchy, and annoyed about topics you’re bringing up. You approached me after-all.
The man, previously unpacking the car with his family and wearing a Kutztown Cannabis Festival t-shirt, exited the hotel doorway. He noticed my attempted disposal of the bong, but reassured me, “It’s all good brotha,” before igniting a one hitter in the passenger seat of his Dodge SUV.
“I’m going to start running again, maybe right now,” she said, dramatically dropping her cigarettes and lighter, stumbling into the parking lot, and vanishing behind a row of parked cars.
In her disappearance, the gentleman and I discussed medical marijuana and the Kutztown Cannabis Festival. The contrast in energy between the woman and the gentleman were palpable. The upbeat, fuzzy intoxication of marijuana versus the cold, dire, and ominous situation presented by the woman. Talking to the gentleman, I noticed the lighter and full pack of cigarettes. She’d be returning. Do I leave? I took a picture of the cigarettes and placed a follow up post on Instagram regarding my strange encounter. Where’s the connection, abuse? Slightly intrigued, I decided to smoke a bowl of marijuana.
I’m in the middle of a scene, I thought filtering seeds and stems with my thumbs, and pounding diamond laced-gooey leaves into the glass slide. Ken Kesey would be proud.
The discovery of the film, the scene within our own lives, and the cannabis too.
I began to smoke but was viciously interrupted.
“You asshole!” The woman descended upon me, arms extended, fists flailing, tearing at my hoodie.
“What?”
The woman reemerged, striking me by surprise, hands clasping my wrists, tugging close…and closer.
“You asshole… just… hold me,” forcing my arms to the side, Audrey closed her eyes, maneuvering her lips closer to mine.
“Whoa, whoa… what’s going on here?”
“Please… just come closer. Hold me. Kiss me. Please…” Alcohol vaporized my nostrils as I carefully pushed the woman away.
“Hold on, what’s going on. Is this the best idea?”
Frustrated, the woman pulled herself away.
“Why won’t you kiss me? Is it because I’m ugly?”
“No it’s just – ”
“Then why won’t you kiss me? Please.”
“How about we sit here and smoke instead? I’ll keep you company.”
I positioned myself next to the lighter and pack of cigarettes.
“What?” She answered disgustedly, “COME HERE,” the woman said throwing herself into my lap, melting, burrowing her head into my chest, yanking me to the warmth of her limp body.
“Will you come up to my room with me?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I responded, gazing nervously into the parking lot.
“Please,” she said while clutching both of my legs.
“Its just — ”
“You don’t want to sleep with me because I’m ugly.”
“Trust me, its not that. I’d love to sleep with you, I just don’t think its a good idea. It’s early, why don’t you go back to bed?”
“I’m literally asking you to go to bed with me.”
“Yeah but… without me….”
The woman snuggled into my being, alcohol permeating the winter breeze. An overwhelming desire to comfort Audrey ignited my veins. A desire to hold her tightly, to reassure her, to place a kiss atop her forehead. The desire for a man to be with a woman, to provide and care for her, and yes, with the possibility for sex. It’s been years since I’ve really been with a woman, four, maybe five years? I discontinued relationships and dating to focus on myself and the analytical process, to eradicate myself of codependencies and the Madonna Whore Complex (blog coming soon).
Of course I miss sex, who doesn’t?
In the intensity of the moment, I snatched my bong and held it to my chest. A shield. An escape. The alcohol stung my nostrils and watered my eyes.
“Are you coming up with me?” Through frazzled blonde locks, the woman peered at me with puppy dog eyes, a whimpering scarred lip, and the crimson crusted nostril.
“I’m sorry….” I said.
Immediately she unfastened herself from my embrace, snatched the pack of cigarettes, the lighter, and stumbled for the glass doorway, departing as quickly as she arrived.
I stood, seemingly naked in the brisk winter breeze, bong clutched in my hand pants down.
The realization dawned on me, quite suddenly, that I’ve met this woman before. I’ve lived with her, and therefore I’ve all ready slept with her. The ghosty white flesh, slender frail figure, menthol cigarette sucking, succubus. An ex-girlfriend.
During my furious posts to Instagram I mentioned narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, but I failed to mention another Cluster B personality disorder, borderline personality, BPD. And here arrives the universe with a dangerous and callous reminder.
If you’re familiar with The Sopranos, you’re familiar with borderline personality disorder. Tony’s god awful, wreck of a mother who auditions herself as the star of every tragedy. Gloria: Tony’s short-term mistress with an erratic, drama dependent, conflict-causing, seemingly irrational personality. Gloria in particular, who literally stalks trouble, following Tony’s mob-boss wife, chucking roast beef at his skull, and the never ending supply of temper tantrums, the “why me?” After intentionally sparking conflicts.
Borderline personality is a “splitting disorder” where people are viewed as entirely “all good” or “all bad”. This is a defense mechanism developed during childhood against a difficult primary object. The child divides the primary object (typically mother) into two separate classifications which extends from the child’s perception of the mother during breast feeding. The “good” mother and the “bad” mother… the “good” breast and the “bad” breast. This theory was developed by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, who observed how the child preserves the image of the primary object through a process known as “splitting”. Important to note that one doesn’t require borderline personality disorder to exemplify “split thinking”.
“Jews run the world”, “All Muslims are terrorists”, “Trump supporters are racist Nazis, “Democrats are paedophiles,”. These are examples of mislabeling an entire group of people based on tribal classifications. His tribe…bad! My tribe… good! Tribalism.
When dating somebody with borderline personality, you fluctuate between being a savior, hero, and dream partner to dictator, tyrant, and abuser. One of the most prominent weapons utilized by somebody with borderline personality disorder is sex.
The amount of phone calls and sit-downs I received from friends regarding how my girlfriend was cheating, the spontaneous fights causing her to “disappear” for days on end, only to find she’s been shacked up with somebody new and temporary, the sexting on snapchat, the “don’t worry about him”, the refusal of sex for months even years, and especially intense fights before intense physical sex.
Many times this would be an act of self-destruction, especially right before a vacation, concert, or birthday. The borderline person has a “splitting” disorder, which means they have a problem connecting, just like somebody was unable to connect with them as a child. Borderline individuals mimic a childhood revulsion from connection and love by self-destructing and pushing people into the “bad” identity. This identification preserves the child from ill perceptions of the primary object or caregiver, and mirrors the the history of detachment.
For example, a mother brings her child to the park, where the child picks flowers and excitedly presents them to his mother. In response, the mother does not show appreciation, maybe she ignores the child, empties the child’s palm and washes his hands, behaves in a particular way that undermines the bond and boundary dissolution of a loving relationship. This splitting behavior symbolizes a deeply rooted fear within the borderline and narcissistic person, the fear of love and the fear of dissolving one’s ego and self. Another example of this phenomenon occurs during the psychedelic experience. Narcissistic and borderline individuals find themselves bait to “bad trips” caused primarily by the exposure of their trapped, anger-stricken subconscious, and find difficulty “letting go” into the ethereal realms of love, bliss, and the other.
“Audrey”, raised many red flags: The alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity, abandoned children, discombobulated story, the desperation yet annoyance I won’t partake in her scheme, Audrey leaving when the Cannabis shirt man appeared, the anger and departure upon refusal of sex, even her blowing cigarette smoke in my face. This was all telling.
“You asshole,” I’m in a time machine, watching a woman pound against my chest, slapping me across the face and accusing me of cheating, before she disappears with her friends, destroys our plans, and books the nightly dick-down from one of numerous disposable flings. A creation of conflict, where I’m suddenly the “bad boyfriend” and she’s suddenly pardoned, immunized by victimhood.
The problem arises when the borderline person discovers a malleable partner, a prey. Judging by the cuts and scars trailing the woman’s face she had discovered just the partner. The predator is searching for an emotionally weak, fragile individual whom they are able to control. This is why emotional intelligence is so important. If you are unable to recognize the mind games, you’ll actively find yourself on the losing side.
The costs of losing? You’ll find yourself slowly decaying, dying, or even imprisoned like a coworker friend of mine, with your bank accounts recently emptied, and your lover on the run with somebody new.
A narcissistic, borderline person requires a partner in their game of charades. How well do you think an emotionally weak individual will take to the news of infidelity, manipulation, or cunningness? The woman of your children is whoring herself and its entirely your fault! The narcissistic, borderline individual screams “abuse” after they’ve intentionally incited a terrible reaction. The borderline person is counting on this.
Here strolls Audrey, claiming she’s been abused, abandoning her children who she probably has no real attachment, drinking at eleven in the morning, and convincing a much younger stranger to sleep with her after inciting violence, most likely caused by a similar situation of infidelity. The excitement she twiddles, debriefing her husband about the twenty year old she fucked in a hotel room outside Morgantown, PA.
How did she know to find me, so quick for discussion, did she spot me from the window in her room? Predator and prey.
Within milliseconds of posting to Instagram, I encountered Audrey. A sign from the universe, or am I forcing my delusional, isolated perspective of narcissistic invasion down your throat? Did I misread the encounter?
Am I making this up for attention? I’ll leave that up to you.
When my friend asked, “How do you smoke with your medical card,”
I replied, “Smoking section near the parking lot. Honestly, I’m interested to see if I meet anybody over there.”
A joint lesson in manifestation and narcissism.
Palming through double glass doors, I emerged below mountaintops and a star threaded sky. A glass pipe dispelled from its holster, emerald trees packing the cylindrical slide. The parking lot still, asleep beneath the nightlight of McDonalds arches and a single stuttering lightbulb. Resting my bottom against the cement curbside, I drew the lighter and fastened the pipe. Alone, I thought, spotting the butt end of a Marlboro Menthol cigarette.
Or maybe not.
-
(This is a rough draft)
“We’re late,” shouted Eric, “late, late, late – What the fuck is going on back there?”The door breached wide-open, followed by Eric marching from the hotel room with two lunar eyes, distorted hazelnut locks, and a vintage Grateful Dead t-shirt, a black backpack strewn over his right shoulder; duffel bag in the adjacent hand.
“I thought you said checkout was twelve?” A voice echoed from the shadows.
“Fuck, it was twelve until you accidentally ingested that last dosage, placing our frequency on the galactic grid, now every grid-worker, reptilian, locust, and their astral mothers will be looking for us.”
“Christ!” The voice reverberated from darkness.
“Yeah him too,” Eric said, “Are you almost done, how long were we THERE?”
Eric peered into the hotel room, white bedsheets scattered across the floor, a ghostly figure pacing back and forth with a navy blue hoodie.
“Yeah, I feel like we’re missing someth- …. Did we leave anything on Zeta Reticuli?”
The ghostly figure, stepped into the fluorescent hallway – his pale face blanketed by greasy blonde hair, eyes consumed with black shimmering pearls.
“I hope not, John. My god, I hope not.”
In the next room over, Matilda fastened pristine white bedsheets over the hotel mattresses – her slender cocoa figure removing dirty laundry and placing it within her carry-cart. The weekend was complete, which meant the building required a deep clean.
A good day to make money, she thought, Mucho dinero.
An opportunity to visit her mother in Chicago, who never forgave Matilda for relocating outside Philadelphia. The holidays were approaching after all.
Or maybe, she thought guilt-fully, I’ll finally see the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, somewhere warm, tropical; rum-runners on the beach, somebody to clean my roo-
Peering around the hotel room, Matilda noticed an absence of dollar bills, federal reserve notes, dead presidents – tiny green men. Her heart; pounding, while strumming through tea packets, coffee filters, and hotel room amenities. She desperately rummaged underneath bed frames, underneath tv stands and coffee machines, she scoured the refrigerator and eventually the trash can.
The fifth room without compensation, no tip, nada.
A voice barked from the radio standing upright on the carry-cart.
“Matilda, Room 222 and 231 are ready for checkout. Prepare them in the next hour, quickly! Over.”
There would be no vacation, she thought, only semen-stained satin sheets, mildew shaded shower tiles, and the radio static with infinite demands.
Hail Zeta!
Two synchronic, male voices penetrated the wall.
* * *
“Housekeeping,” Matilda called, knuckles striking the steel frame of Room 222.
Investigating the silence, she determined the bedroom was safe for entry and slid the maintenance key alongside the card reader.
Bleeeeeeep. Click.
The room absorbed the intruding hallway glare, illuminating bed frames, nightstands, a flatscreen television, and an office chair stacked meticulously against the far side window, fortressing the hotel bedroom from sunlight. Studying the furniture, Matilda scratched her forehead meticulously, sweat trickling across her fractured, bleach stained fingernails. Who would do such a thing and why?
Matilda sighed, resting her bottom against the naked mattress, sheets strewn across the stained spiraled carpet and atop the furniture bastion.
Her radio buzzed and hissed.
“Fresh linens and soaps to Room 402. Mop the lobby when you’re done!”
The words occupied the empty hotel bedroom.
Ignoring the voice, Matilda rose to her feet surveying the once occupied space, furniture mounted by the window, sheets strewn across the floor, but otherwise in decent shape. Did she dare search for the tip?
Glancing toward the tv stand hopelessly, Matilda would not find the green bills.
Instead, a crystalline powder resurrected itself against the opaque furniture, twinkling from the reflection in her eye.
Cocaína, she thought, observing waves of sparkles splashing the overcast bedroom.
Matilda was no stranger to cocaine, remembering the stone face of her Uncle Morales who viciously collected cartel debts in Mexico, her Uncle Val – who’s decapitated head provided supper for the village dogs, her sister’s ex-boyfriend who wore kevlar while stacking kilograms next to AK-47s, extended magazines, hand grenades, and loose Xbox 360 discs.
I left Mexico, she thought, to escape this?
Room 304 needs vacuum, ASAP.
Matilda eyeballed the white crystals while nervously peering over each shoulder.
She had tried cocaine before, many times in fact, and if this was her only compensation for the day: Who is to stop her now?
Just a taste, she thought, pointing her index finger toward the vibrating crystals, pressing the granulated shards against her moist skin. A warmth cascaded her arm, fastening to the center of her chest, as the substance clung to her finger.
Matilda rubbed the crystals on her gums and presumed working. Her eyebrows rose as her mouth adjusted to the chemical invasion. The expected taste of gasoline and bleach was replaced by something lighter, almost tasteless, unrecognizable.
Must be cut. I don’t feel a thing…
Matilda; uninterrupted, began placing bedsheets into the dirty laundry hamper attached to the carry-cart, dismantling the furniture against the window.
A vacation, she scoffed, could you imagine?
Matilda removed the final blanket, casting specks of sand which twinkled against the soft white, hotel bedroom.
I just haven’t worked hard enough, she thought, If I worked more I could afford a vacation. I mean Hell, can’t even get good cocaine here.
A salty breeze whipped Matilda’s nostrils, her hotel uniform fluttering against delicate cocoa flesh. Streaks of tangerine sunlight enveloped the far corners of the bedroom, erupting into a mural of kaleidoscopic clouds and a rising sun.
Matilda, Room 402, why haven’t you been to Roo—
Radio chatter disintegrated into the seagulls overhead, who stalked Matilda as she trudged through sand dunes.
Which way was the Ocean?
* * *
Eric and John sprinted down the hotel hallway, long hair pounding against shoulder blades, sweat absorbing into six-day-old outfits, their eyes – radiant marbles casting astral convulsions against the physical world. The hallways morphed, plunging the duo into the creative breast of H.R. Giger – distorted realms of ancient alien civilizations, peculiar and psychic organisms with coarse undyed exteriors; hierarchal networks of servitude, and a malignant destiny amongst the stars.
Approaching Room 222, they noticed the door was propped open with the deadbolt lock. Radio chatter whispered through the cracked door, alerting Eric that somebody occupied the bedroom.
“Damn. Really had to leave it behind, huh?”
“Two of us, my guy,” said John, “besides I was being interrogated by those things.”
“Well now look where we are, absolutely FUCKED… and LATE.”
“Can you imagine, I mean seriously imagine coming back to the scene of the crime. We’ve lost it. Absolutely lost it. This place is swarming with Federal Border Patrols, Zetas… those fucking google-eyed, red-caped shits, you didn’t give them any information, did you?
John who stood transparent, a ghost amongst the dense world, pushed through the hotel bedroom door, observing as the knob turned to ectoplasm. Wiping the slime on his cargo pants, he entered – retinas scanning. The room was picturesque minus the night stand, television, and desk stacked against the hotel window; and the bed which clutched a woman in her early thirties, cocoa complexion, short and delicate, with trimmed locks and a heart-shaped tattoo on her inner, left arm.
John gasped, observing the Mexican woman with glowing eyes that pierced the ceiling and beyond. Eric bolted into the room, pushing the carry-cart aside, darting for the furniture monstrosity. Reaching underneath the desk, he retrieved a clunky digital device, clutching it like a newborn.
“Oh man, seriously, how could John leave you with… with…with those things.”
The device clicked on, digital LEDs flickering, before rendering an elongated list of zeros: The scale. Analytical Scale, to be exact.
“Eric -”
“I mean fuck, I even built this anti-gravitational force-field to prevent any saucer landings. You think… you think this was easy… you think what we do is eas-?”
“Eric! Who is she?”
Attention drifting from the furniture malfunction, Eric spun toward the bed, locating the woman, delirious, vacant – PLUNGED into the abyss.
Eric motioned his hand over her buoyant eyes – unfazed and distant.
Cocking his head around the room, he noticed the white crystals perched on the television stand. His eyes widened and his smile escaped.
“Fuck, what the hell is this right here?” Eric pointed to the crystals.
John removed his attention from the woman lying on the bed, focusing on the glistening dust. His eyes – following the sparks of astral beams which projected from the crystals, illuminated the anxiety which now struck his stomach.
“We fucked up,” said John, sweaty palms swimming through greasy blonde hair.
“We?” Eric shouted, “How many fucking doses did she eat, John.”
“Left a gram on the table before leaving, peace offering to the Zetas and all… Your instructions…remember?”
“A gram… a gram of ninety-nine POINT ninety-nine percent, needlepoint LSD…”
* * *
Matilda trudged through sandy dunes, following the seagulls who chirped and beckoned underneath the sapphire sky – Palm trees erupting beneath her cocoa feet with each advancing step, blanketing the trail with luscious forests, wild boars, and buzzing insects. The ocean must be close, she thought, disregarding the circular metallic object hovering above the seagulls, ominously tracking her movements.
The sand spewed from her feet in geometric swirls, conjuring mathematical recipes and the faces of deceased family members, converging into a tree trunk, and erecting into the forest canopy. Following the seagulls, Matilda observed the salty air dissipating, the ocean breeze – drowsy. Behind she observed lush forests occupying the once barren dunes, and the hotel roof poking above the tree line.
She paused, waiting for the seagulls to evaporate into the cobalt horizon, except they paused simultaneously; insisting Matilda to follow – Hovering below the metallic disk. Matilda broke herself from the flock, walking in the opposite direction and planting astral seeds with each footstep.
Close, she thought.
* * *
“Maybe we weren’t cut out for this, man… laying all this acid?”
“Don’t you know what’s at risk? Nonsense, next time we’ll be more careful…. Gloves….Next time, I wont look into that fuckers eyes… Hear me… Telepathic little shits!”
“Did they get anything on you?” Asked John.
“Just some embarrassing childhood memories… I showed the neighbor-girl my weiner and she ran away – nothing important.”
402, 401, 303, 302, *static*, WHERE THE FUCK are you, MATIL-?
The radio interrupted Eric and John, who hovered above the incoherent maid.
Eric’s eyes widened as he dashed toward the carry-cart parked in the corner of the hotel bedroom.
“Z3-EtuI work-ship with hypothermal blast shields, anti-gravity core-processors, and access to Zeta satellites. This is our ticket, John.”
John studied the hotel carry cart which smelled of bleach and body odor.
“And what about her?” John pointed to the woman.
Eric eyeballed the carry-cart, menacingly clasping for answers.
“There’s enough room. We’ll take her with us.”
“Huh…?”
Eric frantically bolted to the side of the bed, clutching the incapacitated woman’s hands, instructing John to grab her ankles.
“On three, we lift and place her inside the escape pod” Eric said, nodding his head toward the dirty laundry basket, “If anyone deserves a chance to survive, I guess it might as well be her.”
One. Two. Three.
Eric and John seized Matilda from the embrace of the hotel bedroom, gently motioning her feet towards the carry-cart, gliding her soundly to the bottom of the dirty laundry hamper.
A smile painted Eric’s face who clutched the radio between white knuckles.
“This is C-E 4577754, Permission to enter Federal space-ways – Over”.
* * *
The ocean bass reverberated against Matilda’s cocoa figure, as the hotel uniform oozed beneath luminescent rays and alchemized into a violet swimsuit. The forest emanating beneath tender feet, ceased into a hurried sprint, as Matilda ascended the final sand dune. The ocean peaked over pebbles, rebounding sparks of vibrant sunlight, waving to Matilda who desperately trudged closer.
Almost there, She thought, just a little bit more. Muy pequeno.
Reaching the top of the sand dune, Matilda lost her footing.
Millions of sand particles transmuted into a steel slide anchored against the horizon – a metallic tube descending thousands of feet into the ocean. Landing on her bottom, Matilda grasped at the steel contraption – hands disintegrating to astral dust. She plunged feet forward, arms gripped against her chest, soaring across the slick metallic slide, and descending toward vibrant waters.
The violet bathing suit splintered to cosmic debris, exposing Matilda’s cocoa complexion to the shivery steel slide. The acceleration snapped her eyelids shut, propelling her to incendiary speeds.
The water – nearer, nearer…nearer… as gravity seized Matilda, unapologetically plunging her to the purifying pool, shattering the surface, – sinking.
Arms flailing, mouth inhaling, legs twisting, Matilda convulsed beneath the surface. Waves invaded her nostrils – corking her throat, plowing her lungs, and stuffing her stomach.
Was this it? Death. Muerte.
Matilda tore the suffocating waves – clawing with busted bleach fingernails – cursing, squealing, drowning as bubbles flickered and dispersed from wriggling lips. No, she thought, I can’t give up…must keep goi— Useless.
Body tremors ceased, convulsions dissipating amongst the ocean wobbles.
Still – perfectly still. Statuesque. Dea—
A radiant fluorescence captivated the opaque waters, as the metallic hover-craft swooped overhead, casting particle beams toward Matilda – elevating her figure from crowding tides. Droplets disintegrated beneath a golden gloss, toasting her cocoa complexion. Matilda’s eye’s stapled-wide, her naked figure ascending to the bowels of the metallic hover-craft.
* * *
Dismantling the furniture contraption and wiping tabletops, Eric and John prepared to leave the hotel; they prepared for lift off… again. Pushing the loaded carry-cart, John paused as Eric reached for the doorknob.
“Hold on, we almost forgot something,” said John, shuffling between pockets, summoning a tattered velcro wallet, and placing a twenty-dollar bill on the tv-stand.
“Good thinking,” said Eric, twisting the doorknob and emerging into the hallway- light casting geometric shadows and mathematical formulas, sputtering into the static outline of SpongeBob Squarepants, and rupturing into a piñata of extravagant rainbow fireworks.
After tucking the bill beneath a television remote, which slithered upon his touch, John delivered the carry-cart from the hotel bedroom, meeting Eric who stood wide-eyed, stroking the untrimmed facial hair perched from his chin.
WHERE ARE YOU! YOU MIGHT AS WELL KEEP HIDING!
The words barked from the black radio towering atop the carry-cart, mailing intergalactic distortions to the pits of their stomachs, observing as hallway walls morphed into rows of alien obelisks.
“This way… to the space station.” Eric seized the carry-cart, John pushing from behind, both maneuvering martian landscapes invading their vision.
I swear to God, If I find you. Do not… let me find you.
“These Zeta’s are no joke,” said Eric, “Remember. Whatever you do, don’t look these fucker’s in the—
Ding.
The elevator door swung open.
Eric and John gasped, eyes charged – hands clutching the housekeeping carry-cart.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” The figure towered over Eric and John, who both peered directly into floor tiles.
A density struck John’s neck, head dipping – nerve-endings, fracturing.
He gripped the carry-cart with moist palms.
“This…?” John began, struggling to ignore the colorless, red-caped, inter-dimensional Zeta Reticulin standing before them: three black galactic eyes, unflinching lips – The pronounced feeling of fear.
“What does it look like we’re doing,” Eric interrupted with unstirred eyes, “We’re on our way out of here. Overstayed our welcome, very aware. Now please…”
“Two-two-two,” the creature began, “you should’ve been gone two hours ago, what the hell is going on here, where is my maid?”
Eric studied the smudge-stained floor tile growing legs, tongue sprouting – licking the end of his Birkenstocks.
“Maid…? Look we know you Zetas have profound proudness for your servant population… intergalactic prison planets, Andromeda Slave Trade and all, not easy work, we know….” Eric started… “But as ambassadors to your —“
“Know what she said back there…She said she’d rather DIE than work for a three-eyed FUCK!” John interrupted, seizing words from Eric.
The gray-scaled creature narrowed its brow, transmitting tortuous waves to both John and Eric, who had forgotten about their grip on the carry-cart.
“She’s gone.” Eric rebounded, calluses birthing from his palms on the carry-cart, “liberated one might even say…. A speck of….”
“She said, WHAT?!” The towering creature, slender, slipped past the carry-cart, charging the obelisk hallway. John lifted his gaze from the floor tiles, accidentally shifting a glance down the alien architected hallway, investigating as the gray alien mask receded, spawning a bronze fleshed man, with neatly combed hair and a crimson bindi in the center of his forehead.
“Nice work” Eric chuckled, sweeping sweat with his vintage Grateful Dead t-shirt, “Who knew the Zeta’s were so self-conscious?”
John vomited onto the carry-cart, stomach acid rinsing the surface and trickling into the dirty laundry hamper.
* * *
John and Eric descended through hyperspace, through the transparent glass-windowed elevator, waltzing through a vacant, un-mopped hotel lobby, and directing the loaded carry-cart into the parking lot. Locating Eric’s 2012 Honda Civic, idle beneath a cloudless sky, they removed Matilda from the vomit, bleach, semen-stained-satin-sheets, placing her comfortably against the blanketed backseat. Eric pried the driver door open, lunging himself behind the steering wheel.
“We lost a day of the music festival, so what… when they hear about our experiences on Zeta Reticuli, our harrowing escape, the mind control, the torture…. When we arrive with the doses we laid….we’ll be welcomed back as…. As heroes!”
John eyeballed Eric arms flailing – lost in translation. “Seriously, if we leave now —“
“Is this a good idea?” John pointed toward Eric behind the steering-wheel, who gazed attentively with marbled eyes absorbing the autumn sunlight. “What I mean to ask… is it a good idea, ya know,” Eric studied John cautiously, “operating your hover-craft after Zetas uploaded a STECH-79, NeuroTracker into your spinal cord.
How do I know they aren’t going to activate your spinal cord separator while we’re in hyperspace?”
John picked at his facial hair, eyes looming into the fractal concrete.
“I suppose you’re right, can’t afford another crash landing on a prison planet.”
Eric hopped over the center console, placing himself into the passenger seat – marbled eyes never blinking, while John positioned himself into the driver seat, moist hands clutching his iPhone transmuting Momentum by Cloud_D over distorted subwoofers.
“We should be able to unload these dosages at Submersion Festival, Dead and Co, maybe even Phish…cap it off with the local scene —.”
In the backseat, Matilda’s mystical eyeballs painted the automobile with levers, gizmos, and gadgets; her gaze ascended upon two gray-scaled, marble eyed Zeta Reticulins who operated their hover-craft amongst a star studded sky. The red-caped alien sitting passenger presented a black radio and spoke without moving a muscle.
“This is ZR – 1110222 from Prison Planet #467921, we have regained control of the ship and are inbound. Over.”
-
“My back.”
Her hands churned through unflinching flesh, exploring the reaction from the man sewn to her leather massage table.
“My back.”
Hair pronounced from his nude body like a series of explanation points, static – reaching for the sunlight cast through a single, rectangular basement window.
“MY BACK!”
Muscles tightened, breathing intensified, as she visualized the naked man’s tension dissipating amongst vibrant-amethyst waterfalls, absorbing through her palms with magnetic strength, and breathing compassion into the stranger, lightening his etheric body.
The man laid motionless.
Instantly removing herself from the massage room, she clasped a nearby towel, and darted for the restroom.
“Dead,” she thought, “just what I needed.”
Dousing her hands with soap and scrubbing furiously, she overheard the naked man projecting phlegm into his mouth before swallowing.
Alive.
“Sarah,” the man bellowed, “you’re the best, wherever you are!”
Sarah hastily returned to the room, anxiously drying her hands on the side of her leggings. The man, fully dressed, reached for the faux leather wallet in his back pocket.
“Will I see you next Saturday, Mr. Calboli?”
“Next week,” he thought, parting the twenty dollar bills crammed into his wallet,
“No, my son’s having his sixth birthday party, in-laws and everything. How about Friday, wouldn’t mind taking the edge off beforehand?”
“Sure,” she said uneasily, observing the overweight Mr. Calboli protract a single twenty dollar bill – tossing it to the damp table.
Short, Mother-fucker owes me forty dollars!
A serrated pain ascended her spine.
“Here you go sweetheart,” he said before turning his back and waddling from the room. Staring at the twenty dollar bill, Sarah opened her lips, but was slapped with silence. She stood watching Mr. Calboli’s bald spot fade further and further until the door shut behind him. Sarah returned to washing her hands, but was suddenly interrupted.
“SARAH!”
A thin Chinese woman plowed through the wooden door, fists like cannons.
“Sarah, your last client went thirty minutes over appointment time, did you charge him? Where the fuck are you, washing your hands again?”
Sarah yanked herself from the bathroom, anxiously drying her hands on the sides of her black leggings.
“I’m sorry, Auntie Lee, I lost track of time. I can make it up to you!”
The elderly woman’s face shrunk in spite, “this business is nothing but TIME, Sarah. Three months you work here, three months you waste time! No wonder you fail college. Your mother is right, no brains up there! Lucky white man think you pretty!”
Sarah’s chestnut locks draped over her defeated eyes.
A compliment, she thought.
“You better not be fucking my customers, Sarah.”
Density grasped Sarah’s spine like an anaconda snuffing its prey.
During her lunch break, Sarah puffed from her cannabis vaporizer, embracing the warm distraction, and watching butterflies pick pollen from lavender bushes.
A vibration from her phone jostled her mind – reaching for the device, she noticed a text from Alex, the boy she hopelessly admired.
“Can we reschedule tonight? I’m hanging with the boys!”
Betraying her gut, she obliged, although tracing past texts revealed countless reschedules, countless excuses, and countless warnings and rumors that Alex was raw-dogging Taylor Switzle in the backseat of his 2014 Nissan Altima.
Sarah’s back ached and she had to wash her hands.
Tangerine rays permeated from the single, rectangular basement window, enlightening the massage table in the center of the room. Her last client of the day was completing the paperwork at the front desk with Auntie Lee. The man was awkwardly stiff with lumbering glasses cloaking somber eyes, a tucked in cobalt polo, and carrying a distorted paperback.
He walked into the room nervously, index finger picking at his polo collar.
“H…hell..llo,” he smiled, voice trembling.
Sarah returned the gesture, beckoning him toward the massage table.
“If you’d like to get undressed to your level of comfortability, we can get started.”
She washed her hands, removing the germs, the debris, the constant grit that suffocated her sanity, and returned to the man facedown on the table.
“Are we ready?” Sarah asked, squeezing oils and ointments into her hands.
The man obliged.
Sarah descended fingers upon the nervous man, who relaxed upon increased intimacy, her hands casting spells against the strained myofibrils, liberating him from their cumbersome captivity. Scaling his shoulders, and puncturing deep between blades, Sarah began losing track of time. She enjoyed making her clients feel good.
She enjoyed tracing the muscles with the indents of her palms, moving the gelatin flesh like tsunami waves. However, her time was drawing to a closure.
Five more minutes, she thou-
“H-hey, uh…”
The nervous man’s skin dampened, and he began stuttering. Interrupting the session, he pulled himself from the table, reaching for the paperback book. He flipped through the pages and discovered sixty dollars, offering the cash to Sarah with quaking hands.
“I.. I… I he..heard you d..d..do Mmm-MORE?”
Sarah eyeballed the cash, hesitantly picking the folded bills between his fingertips.
“Will you please turnover?” Sarah asked politely, before extracting another round of oils and ointments.
He obliged once more.
Sarah hovered above the man’s towel, before carefully removing the white canvas, revealing his flaccid penis. She glanced at the clock towering over the door, twenty minutes from close. Quickly, she thought, maneuvering the soft genitalia into her glowing embrace, well not like he’s doing you any favors.
The man groaned, squirmed uncomfortably, eyes shut, while Sarah summoned the stress from his body, caressing the man’s inner thigh with one hand, and plucking his shaft with the other.
“Are you going to finish?” she whispered.
“Y… y.. yes,” he stuttered .
Her pace quickened, “please, whatever you do, just don’t be loud about it.”
The man glared back in confusion.
“When you’re coming…. Be quiet about it. If you need to make noise, just say it’s… your back or something. I don’t need them suspicious outside.”
The man nodded, beads of sweat littering the massage table.
She didn’t mind, she thought, making her clients feel good.
The man’s feet twisted, quivering against the leather massage table, before extending into the open air.
“My b…. b-b.. ack,” he whispered, eyes opened, glaring into the opaque basement ceiling, body tightening like a sponge releasing water – releasing.
“M..mm…my b…b..a…ack.”
She didn’t mind the handjobs, she thought, she minded the co-
“I’M… FUCKING COMING!”
The man erupted, face swollen, eyes drifting to the confines of his skull, body flailing like an Alaskan Sea Bass – mind departing the ethereal realm, the cosmos, the fractal universe, desires vanquished. The Buddha.
A spasm struck the center of her spine, severing the discs placing her upright. With one hand stroking the man’s erupting penis, she folded ninety degrees, teeth splitting, spinal cord clenching, and descended toward Mt. Vesuvius. Sarah ricocheted with unpleasant images: obese Mr. Calboli, unsupportive family, college failures, unfaithful Alex, and now the stiff, nerdy man, as his semen ambushed her chestnut hair, glazing her polished skin, casting constellations across her ebony work shirt.
Now Auntie Lee marched through the door, cannonballs engaged, before freezing in the doorframe, mouth open, and eyes vigilant. Sarah’s face glistened, reflecting the pale moonlight penetrating the single, rectangular basement window. She brushed the nectar from her eyes, wiping her hands alongside her leggings, before glaring back at Auntie Lee with a pollen stained face.
“Either you’re helping or you can shut the DAMN door!”
-
Horse hooves reverberated along dilapidated roads, singing to the hover-cars dotting the constellated sky. Abraham, buggy reigns in hand, trotted down the Old Roads in a shrouded carriage – gazing upon the empty Lincoln Highway while igniting a fresh tobacco pipe. When he exhaled, the smoke littered from the buggy window, sputtering into the moist, summer breeze.
The Old Roads were abandoned since the advent of InCellect’s PROTON-Chip, which allowed artificial intelligence to maneuver hover-crafts through Federally designated skies – with proper identification, of course. Rendering roads useless, the technological advancement provided both benefits and complications for the Pennsylvania Amish, who traveled by horse and wagon and Christ.
The black stallion trotted by Federal farmlands harvested by InCellect Sentinels: humanoid bots with an unrivaled passion for industrial farming, obeying orders, and occupying meager repair costs. Abraham turned his gaze and clenched his fists. The sentinels never acknowledged his presence.
“A barn needed building,” he thought, “and what a better man for the job!”
It was true, Abraham’s father built barns, and his father before him, father before him, and father before him, father before him, and… father before him. After Abraham’s wife milked the cows, walked the dogs, cooked family breakfast, and prepared his clothes for a difficult day’s work, he kissed the foreheads of his nine children, before boarding the buggy, and leaving for the barn, leaving for the Lancaster Highway – the Old Roads.
However this time he was not alone.
An emerald laser protruded from the Old Roads, zipping country corners, whipping over hilltops, before relaxing into a speed of one hundred and thirty miles per hour. 2120 Ford Mustang. With the InCellect’s AI-powered, “Jerry Driver”, autonomous operating-system removed, the muscle car disregarded speed restraints, and the emergency steering was deployed and accessible.
The driver removed the cap from a glass bottle sitting parallel in the passenger seat – Jim Beam, ancient spirit, trusted companion, he thought. One hand on the wheel, the driver lifted the bottle to his lips, opened his throat, and drained the amber river.
No DUI checkpoints on the Old Roads, no Federal cruisers, no CCTV drones, no thermal traffic monitoring beams. Instead, Lynyrd Skynyrd, a bottle of Jim Beam, and the open road.
The Lincoln Highway vomited gravel and asphalt underneath rubber tires, as the driver tossed the bottle onto the empty passenger seat, fishing for the hand-rolled cigarette tucked into his shirt pocket.
The driver spent two decades fixing the family heirloom, emerald 2120 Ford Mustang, like his father before him, and father before him, and father before him, and… father before him, Jim Beam and all. He shook his fist violently at the hover-cars, searching for the cigarette with his right hand.
“I’d like to see you pull me over now!”
The driver chuckled, whiskey evaporating from his breath.
He failed to see Abraham or his buggy.
The Ford Mustang hopped over disfigured concrete, skipping cracks and crevices, soaring above the horizon, until the driver caught a shadow in the corner of his eye. Too Late.
“YEAAAAAAAaaaagghhhh,” the driver torpedoed the black stallion, an implosion on impact. The horse legs twisted and catapulted underneath the moving vehicle, torso rupturing, and ribcage spearing the windshield before disintegrating into raven hair and plasmic dust.
A sanguine mist, horse bowels, and the steel buggy frame infiltrated the Ford Mustang, ferociously penetrating the driver and propelling the automobile from the Lancaster Highway and into an Oak tree, spewing steel shards and broken glass, before erupting into flames.
Abraham yanked himself from the bloodied asphalt, incisions tracing his palms.
He leaped just in time, leaving his stallion for a lesser fate – a carcass painting the Old Roads like an Amish Cherry pie.
In the distance, Abraham noticed the Ford Mustang, emerald paint crackling underneath the hovering Oak tree, flames marching towards a Federal farm.
InCellect Sentinels ceased their work, producing water cannons from their palms, extinguishing the emerging fire. However they did not drown the engulfed Mustang or the Oak tree, as these coordinates fell outside Federal property.
Emergency services no longer operated the Old Roads. Now he was alone.
Abraham would not build a barn that day, like his father before him, and father before him, and father before him, and… father before him.
THE BADBOOB 