It was ever-present even among all of the separate hells constantly holding court in his soul it was one that reared-up more often that the fear of violence, or pain, or unrelenting guilt.
All of those he dealt with and dealt with and dealt with and still managed to sleep.
Not well sometimes and not sober sometimes, but he still managed to sleep.
This was, in it's own foul, insidious way, worse than the fear of what might well await him walking down the street, or coming through the front door late at night.
Some things you can anesthetize yourself against.
Some things you can tough-out.
Somethings you can rightfully and righteously give only cursory acknowledgement to and go about your life without it destroying you.
But some things...?
Some things just haunt. Just lay in waiting. You can push them back down into your gut but they just keep pushing back. Like an infected wound you scratch at in your sleep. You just keep on winding-up bloodied.

He sat, as he often did, facing the window watching the fog outside and listening to the rain against the plate glass window.
The lights cast giant rivulet shadows over him and down the wall.
The lone light in the room-a blue cast coming from the stereo and fresh ice cubes hissed and popped in the tumbler full of rum on the table by his side.
The parkerized finish on the .45 just made a pistol-shaped black hole shadow next to his drink.
Listening to every creak and footstep in the hall outside his door.
The phone wasn't going to ring and he knew it.
It never did anymore.
In a way, it was pure mercy. Not knowing this was better than knowing for sure. Even though he knew.
It had always just been a matter of time.
What would have, in most cases, been the worst way to do it, was just sweet mercy.
She had just faded him out.
Not made a scene. Not insisting he could be saved-that he could walk away. Not judging, or being angry.
She didn't feel bad for being scared-off. To her way of thinking is was just the way it was.
Seriously, who wouldn't be scared?
A life spent trying to take the high road had built a mountain.
That's just the way it was.
And would be.
He hadn't tried. No use in insulting them both.
But as he started to ache from the neck down, as his guts spun into knots he just sat there and drank.
And wondered when it would end and how.
The phone wasn't going to ring.

Middle of Nowhere

He could feel it, just hanging out there in the Cosmos like a cloud of acrid gas waiting to burn him through closed eyelids. 

Again. It was happenneing again.
This time not because he he didn't act...or couldn't...just that it would have been worse than losing everything again.
He knew she was with someone else.
He knew.

He could also tell

that it was going to do no good to sit and think about it.

But he was going to anyway. And keep thinking about it.
Getting so smashed all he could do was sit on the back porch and nod out

Listening to the storm coming.

The rain.

The rattling aspen leaves showing their undersides

ahead of the storm.

                                                                His parents' back porch.
An empty house now, save him, living without turning on lights.

Stumble out to the car after the storm.

Recover.

Move from bar to bar through empty streets.

He woke up staring at fence and razor wire

and thought he was a prisoner again.

He was just in the back seat with an empty half
and a headache.
and a bad memory attached

to a foggy sunrise he could bare remember.

...and knowing

it was beyond repair. That he was dreaming.

Never come true. Never come true.
It could never come true.

A Wife, and a House, and a Dog.

   ...it had been all laid out for him. Simple. A perfect, easy, simple life. A life full of reward and virtue and giving back. A life of seeing and hearing everything. Work hard, play hard, save, invest, enjoy life-use your head, retire stupid-young and never rest on your laurels.
   The thing was, it was that simple. The times were ripe for the picking. He had seen it coming years in advance and maneuvered through insomnia and a shrink, and remembering things he didn't want to remember to so he could be functional enough to move past shitty minimum wage jobs into the realm of making enough to buy a house, then another, and another. All the while dreaming the sweet dreams of not re-living his past or carrying on someone else's future. Not waking in the middle of the night for unknown reasons wishing in an otherwise empty bed, that there was a warm someone in love with him to hold him during the nightmares and a big, intelligent, bright-eyed best-friend faithfully keeping an ear and a nose out in the darkness. Love and protection, protection and love.

   On May 8th, 1962 the first Atlas Centaur rocket exploded shortly after liftoff. He thought, in retrospect, that the slow-motion footage of the explosion and tumbling descent of the last bits of flaming wreckage as he had seen it set to music in Koyaanisqatsi was apropos, not just of the his current situation, but of the whole fucking shitpile that his life had become long before..
   Drink a river of whiskey, eat a mountain of pills. Ain't nothin' gonna put things back the way they were.

   Hindsight being that of a fucking fighter pilot, he should have known the second the city started promoting the downtown as tourist mecca, a showcase for the 'cultural diversity' of the area.....read: Cash in on the local color. Who cares if they are treated like zoo animals?
   Greed is always the writing on the wall.
   But he came back, even though his town as he loved it was dying. The U-Haul not making much more than halfway between Palm Springs and Blythe before  it broke down. Then the 48 hours in that ghost town waiting for the repairs with nothing on TV but a Twilight Zone marathon..apparently those weren't big enough signs from the Universe to stay out of Dodge.
Sunnydale.
Nightmare Town.
   But, as always, there is a fine line between dogged persistence and foolish, pig-headed, suicidal tendencies.
..or at least there is for some men.
   Mostly pig-headed fools. Though he preferred-and would tell you so-to say he had "balls that clank."
Which, while true, is also another trait of pig-headed fools. As well as fools who insist on falling in love with the wrong woman.
   That. That last one? He wasn't sure if it made his heart sink, or his breakfast rise. Either way it was like taking another tumble. End over end. Flaming debris in his mind's eye.
  He could see it-and taste the rocket fuel.
  His finger twitched as, in his mind's eye, he brushed back her in the middle of the night. Just like he never got to do. So many times.
  Somewhere in his head-or at least he thought it was in his head- it could have been a radio blaring from a distance, or playing softly from one of the neighboring houses-Tom Petty singing 'I Won't Back Down'.
He coughed a tiny sardonic chuckle at the absurdity of it all.

   At least they dumped him behind the dumpster instead of in it.The scorched-talc smell of the dirt and the tang of the blood were better than rusty compost water. Flies were starting buzz around the blood pooling and coagulating under where his face lay ground into the gravel. The twitching of his fingers was all the movement he could muster and he was starting to not give a shit about anything-not even the pain at the base of his skull or the rapidly intensifying heat of the mid morning sun.
   He sighed-or maybe heaved a little-who could tell and he could taste the blood.
   Somewhere he heard a security door thunk shut as some smarter, luckier man's wife left to do her errands, or take out the trash. Or walk the dog that he now heard yelping excitedly, like good, happy dog does before being taken on a walk.

   

Noir

/nwar/

French-adj. [ Short for film noir + Sense 2, short for French Roman noir, black novel.]

1. Of or relating to a genre of crime literature with with cynical characters and bleak settings.
2. Suggestive of danger or violence.
3. Black
What is it? What do we think we are doing?

We know.

Don't we?

Really, truly, deep down in the deepest, darkest, most private part of our twisted, black little hearts?

Of course we do.

The twisted flip-side of Walter Mitty that hides in the shadows cast by what we are always told we are supposed to be. The dimly-lit corners of the the cathedral of righteousness that we all are forced to inhabit by our mediocre neighbors and alcoholic grade school teachers. Teachers who drink to drown the fact that they are afraid to write that book, or come out of the closet, or whatever it is that weak, mediocre people fear. And despite all of the goodness that surrounds us and permeates us we still, regularly, walk to the edge, look down, and hang one foot over...grinning to ourselves...

Sit on the edge of the bed, in the dead of night, reveling in the feel of pistol in hand, the weight, the ruthless beauty.

The power.

Not a fantasy.

Not trying to feel cool.

Just knowing the outcome if the shit hits the fan.

You'll be the last one standing.

Halfway between a grin and a grimace, you make sure a round is chambered, safety on, and you put her back in her holster, back under the pillow.

Do you have cash on hand? A bag packed? A plan, and a backup plan, and a backup plan?

Of course you do. Maybe it's not written down, but it's always in your head.

Can't get the drop on me Daddy-O.

Not me, because I've got hell in my heart. You push the right buttons and you'll see snakes' eyes, baby.

And you let the girl at the ice cream counter know you noticed her sweet little tits because she "forgot" to snap the top button on that cheap uniform she wears. Got you free ice cream too.

She doesn't flirt with the guys her own age.

Her eyes give that telltale twinkle, the one that lets you know that she wouldn't mind the sensation of the roughness of the bricks in the back-alley against her naked, grinding ass as you bury yourself inside her. Her soft and delicate features slick with sweat and plastered hair breathing hard into your neck, and then, hands on your face kissing you like the end of the world...

You smile at her just long enough for her to read your thoughts, then you part ways, walking in opposite directions, smiling to yourselves, while your mutual red tails twitch beneath your clothing, and the squares go obliviously about their business, never knowing the barely-legal sexual apocalypse that just occurred in the ether all around them.

And somewhere in a leafless, grey skied, brown-lawned, snowless winter suburb, a seemingly average guy sees his wife and kids off and goes back to bed with a "cold".

The sick day.

By 10:45 he's half a bottle of Nyquil, a vicadin, and a joint into an online gambling session with a credit card obtained under an alias.

Boys will be boys, and his frat brother he just found on Facebook after 12 years knows the tricks.

One more guy with a hidden duffle bag containing a big-ass wad of cash, a new name or two and an American made .40cal Berretta with enough loaded magazines to cause serious problems for anyone thinking a suburban shmo is an easy target.

He has five escape plans committed to memory.

He's the one they never catch up to. Then the case goes cold and no one really gives a crap, 'cause, why should the cops care if some bored suburban white guy ditches his wife and kid? I mean, one fake credit card, or stolen identity, while being a crime, doesn't warrant the resources that could be put to better use on violence and burglary. You don't think this guy is dumb enough to settle down somewhere where he is going to be the worst criminal in town do you?

If they only knew what he was thinking about doing to the UPS lady.

He never did it though, he just knew he could.

The librarian who cuts herself because she likes the smell of blood and has needle marks between her toes...

She's not a junkie. Never will be. She just likes to get stoned sometimes at work on rainy days and listen to the water, and imagine all of the misdeeds she is going to do on her vacation to Spain in June.

Naked sun bathing -not because she in uninhibited, but because she is secretly an extremely perverted girl, and a voyeur. And it gets her so wound up that it makes her legs quiver, lying there in the hot sand, sweating, watching the undressed men and women. Letting her mind wander. Then she jumps in the ocean and calms herself down and goes back and does it again. Over and over and over again.

And the only one who sees through her is the thug watching through binoculars, and he smiles to himself, knowing the sorts of nastiness girls like that carry in their purses. They buy them from vendors, and at street fairs, from men and women who understand a girl traveling alone can always be forgiven by the authorities if they happen to use a switchblade stiletto on a would be attacker...just as long as the wounds aren't too precise...or numerous.

He smiles again, knowing they are stored, like trophies. Probably in a box, on a shelf, in the same closet with many mens' undershirts-of varying makes and sizes-like their original owners. Shirts sealed tightly in bags for weeks to permanently imprint the mingled scents on the fibers. To be withdrawn at will on random lonely nights, to jog the memory, and sate, among other things, her ego...

He turns his attention closer up the beach to the two English girls he met last night at the cafe. "Poor little things," he thinks to himself, "they suspect nothing", which would be really funny to anyone who had seen them in bed with the librarian last night, or overheard their conversation about him, and how he was just an ignorant thug-and what the librarian's experiences with anatomy, knives, and the police were.

No, you ain't gettin' the drop on me Daddy-O.

That's why when you caught me in the corner of your eye at the bar last night you stayed away. Cause you can spot it in an instant can't you? And you just weren't in the mood for a trainwreck just then were you...?