chris bryz

This is capturing me with an intense sensation of delirium; meanwhile, I can still find the cognitive skills and the capability to drive this vehicle.

“Jesus man,” I said while pulling myself toward the wheel.“I have gone rogue in this cruiser and still, the cops have been dispatching my profile to every station out here.” The police transmitter was busy with chatter, throwing trucker talk in with the regulated police dispatch codes. “Where is their sense of professionalism?” I thought, “I mean I’m taking my job evading these bastards quite seriously, for me it’s a matter of life or death.”

Everything to me above the surface was mutually casual, but from within, I felt like a deranged animal that broke free from the zoo. All I wanted was solace, a place to be left alone, fully cured of this restriction. I don’t want to be incarcerated with guards feeding me at certain times a day and spectators gazing upon my habitual lifestyle through Plexiglas and barbed wire.

“No, no, no, no man” as I shook the thought away, “I will be alright, just a few more miles to the destination she wrote on this post-it. “I’m sure she will know what to do from there, just keep cool and keep driving . . . keep cool and keep driving.” I said, shaking at the wheel. The sirens felt like they were getting closer as the road was becoming longer. I jerked my arm forward with the gear shift in my grip, pushed the pedal to the metal with a stomp that caused my head to quark over my shoulders and my body to jolt with the momentum of the car.

It was only this morning when these bastards mistaken me for a criminal, I thought to myself, “I never shot anyone? I’m just borrowing this car.” I remember too well, if not better than this morning of what had happened last night. I was sitting in my lofty apartment when I had a sudden itch to catch the next bus into town for a drinking binge. “I can’t believe I fell off the wagon again, or is it considered hoping back on the wagon?” I didn’t care at this point while scolding myself striking the wheel with a fist. When I got to Pad’s that night, I began to drink until . . . until, until I ordered two kettle bombers, one for me and one for Deidra. “Deidra!” I said, “She was the one who invited me back to her apartment, and the culprit in all of this.” I peered off into the distance with an anguished breath, “But how did I get there?”

“Come on baby; take off those pants for me!” Deidra was dressed in tassels and barely anything else at the point when I was a few more drinks away from being kettle bombed. “Deidra,” I said in my drunken stutter, “I . . . I am wasted, like there are white spots in parts of my vision that prohibit my ability to function properly.” Deidra was on the bed frolicking her fragile body as if she was engaged in a photo shoot—trying to seduce me in some way, but unfortunately for me, the white spots denied me the pleasurable spectacle. I never once experienced side effects of that caliber from an excessive night at the bar. In that moment, I thought to myself, “This person may have poisoned me . . . oh shit.”

“I may have passed out by then?” I said in bewilderment. The police dispatcher was roaring with intensity as the gears of the car were shifting from third to fourth gear. The chatter brought me closer to the edge of deciphering what led me to driving this cop car. It was Deidra’s; I saw the badge and gun on the bed table when I got to her place. The road was rough with pot holes and bumps, propelling the axils to grind against the suspension as each crevasse in the road hit the revolving tires. “Come on man!” I said while trying to avoid the fractures in the road, “before the apartment—think!” I slipped back into a mild stasis while driving trying to remember, “We were both drunk at the bar, really shit-faced. We must have taken a cab.” I said to myself while nodding trying to stay focused.

The sensation intensified the pulsating in my head as flurries of a numbing pain were dispersed within my veins. It was getting harder, much harder to sustain my concentration on the road. “I need to get to her damn it! She probably has the cure.” I thought while glancing at the post-it.

Again, I retracted my memory to that night; the crash on the floor hurt, but my whole body was numbed-out by the exceeded ratio of the alcohol content that was coursing through my veins. The next thing I remember was waking up to a post-it note next to my head that read, “Meet me at the diner off route sixty, take the cruiser”. I stumbled with confusion toward the bathroom to relieve myself of a potential bladder explosion. “During the piss . . . !” I exclaimed gripping the wheel with excitement. “It was during that time in the bathroom that I felt utterly terrible! My body shook, I began to see spots again, and I spewed green vile all over the bathroom floor.” It was beginning to make sense now, “I was poisoned, but with what? What’s causing this disorientation?”

“Let’s see,” I said, still managing to stay between the yellow and white lines of the road, “I made my way to the cruiser, and left for the diner sometime before 12 this afternoon. It wasn’t until recently that these sirens began chasing me.” I peered into the rear-view mirror and caught a glimpse of a police cruiser that was catching up to me, I diverted my eyes toward the speedometer, “I’m pushing 150 on this puppy, and that’s about the extent of how fast she can go!” I said, quite worried. The cruiser seemed to thrust itself to exhaustion as smoke whipped up from underneath the hood, and wind-tunneled up in the air. “Shit!” I said banging the roof of inside the car, “How am I going to explain this, I feel like I’m trippin’ on shrooms, and dying at the same time!”

The car slowly came to a gradual halt. The pursuing police cruiser caught up within seconds and screeched to a full stop – just paces behind me. I poised my stature to greet the officer in the most casual way, but before I could see him eye to eye, he was at my window asking me for my license and registration; railing me with questions about how I have a registered police cruiser in my possession.

After minutes of his inquisition, I began to explain, “Officer, I am in a dire situation that calls for immediate action, I believe I have been poisoned and . . .”

The officer shifted his sun glasses to the lower bridge of his nose, “Poisoned?” he said, “Your situation just keeps getting better and better for you, doesn’t it?” he throws his head toward me as I was just sitting there, taking the beat down of his sharp words, “This is the way I see it, you were driving 150 mph,” he raises a stern finger, “85 miles above the speed limit in a police vehicle that has been reported stolen a few weeks ago!” He ended his short little tangent biting his jaw line, staring straight into my face with an angered look. “Pop the trunk bud.” He said.

“You don’t understand officer. . .” I started to argue with him, but somehow I felt he was the stubborn type that only cared about catching the bad guy.

“I don’t want to hear it, I notice that there is something dripping from your trunk, I suggest you open it before I whip my pistol out on you!” he began to reach for his gun while talking to me, looking at the trunk. I opened the door to investigate what he was talking about. “Hold it right there sir.” The cop started to walk toward me with a strict tone in his voice, “Put your hands on the roof of the car and don’t do anything stupid.” I began to defend myself in this state of delirium that started to overwhelm me.

“Officer, I have no idea what you are talking about, I met this girl . . . uh . . .” I threw my hands on my head trying to remember, “Deidra! Deidra, this car was parked in her drive way!” The Officer began to cuff me and then walked me to the rear seats of his cruiser. After he slammed the door on me, I noticed he was calling for back up from his radio harnessed at the shoulder. It wasn’t until he opened the back trunk of the cruiser where I was able to acquire a glimpse of what was in the trunk. “Holy shit, that’s a cop!” I muttered to myself as I pressed my head up against the glass. The officer was busy with his duties as far as I could tell, clearing the area of any suspicious details, preparing the scene for investigators to scour and pillage through to find any dirt that may lead them to the truth of such a murder. I knew I was innocent, but also very confused.

A few minutes of introspection passed until another officer of the law arrived. The officer that cuffed me spoke to him for a short while, and then departed for his cruiser, arriving at the driver’s seat. He said looking toward the wheel, “I’m going to take you down to the station and book you . . . hey are you listening?”

As he turned to face me, I was well beyond a conscious state, I was jerking my head all around the inside of the car, foaming at the mouth while fidgeting to speak, “I . . . I think I have . . . been poisoned!” I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it out of this predicament alive when I started to feel a sudden rush of numbing pain flourish through-out my body.

“Hey!” yelled the officer to the other, “This guy is foaming at the mouth and is most likely going to die if he doesn’t get medical attention soon!” the other cop rushed over peering through the passenger window, “He doesn’t look good at all. He probably took something before you caught up to him; call the ambulance.”

Now, I don’t know if it was the mentioning of the ambulance that made me want to accept this poisonous fate, or the fact that no one would believe me that I wasn’t the one who caused that mess in the trunk of that police cruiser. All I had was a vague memory and a post-it note with nothing more than a general direction of where I was going. The facts that are known to these cops are as follows; there is a dead body of a police officer in the trunk of a stolen registered police vehicle that I was driving, not to mention 85 miles above the speed limit, and a soon to be dead suspect in the back of this police car.

The barrel of the gun was pointed to his temple with a shaky finger resting upon the steel trigger. John was never one for abrupt endings, but the fumes dispersing into the desolate night air from the gaping mouth of the sewers dampened his will to persevere through his hard-ship. He was left with nothing after the steel mill laid him off; forced to scour the streets for the least bit of something to eat, and evicted from his shanty apartment to a pile of collected trash as a place for him to sleep. The fulguration of his memories kept his finger from slipping, he couldn’t muster the notion to silence his frustration; instead, he began to sob in contemplation.

“You ain’t never gonna amount to anything but these slums, and the chime of the change flung by the passing patrons who show the least bit of care.” he said to himself, staring into the abyssal night sky. The grit from the industrial pollution encoded nothing but disdain and malcontent to the expression in his face along with the skin-fractures of age. He felt beaten and maimed by his situation—what brought him to this point of the cold steel against his skull. John pinned himself against a wall in a dark alley that comprised of the cheap rent, the ceaseless spewing of smoke stacks, and the decrepit streets that plagued his dead-end existence; until a strange event occurred just beyond his tear-smothered view.
John was about to be confronted by a contingency beyond his capable grasp of understanding. He was about to feel alive again . . .

A man presented himself at the other end of the alley where John was positioned. The rapid steps that echoed from brick wall to brick wall coerced John’s attention out of his introspective state, and into the direction of the sound. As soon as he caught glimpse of the rapidly approaching gentleman, he stowed the pistol into his back pocket; he did not want to attract unwanted attention. As the man came closer, so did John’s curiosity toward the matter, for he felt that this man was part of something he was hoping for: an end, or a new beginning. The steps grew closer near until the man was peering down at John, out of breath. “What have you down in these slums, dear sir?”

John continued to stare downward out of anticipation that this finely-dressed man would be the death of him; although John was armed, he never killed a man. He responded in a lightly stressed tone, “I’m a broken man, just leave me alone.”

“Well,” began the mysterious man with a pompous voice, “I do say my good sir that you have the utmost potential to see where this may bring you.” He reached into his pocket while leaning on the wall of which John was sitting against, and placed a green round pill on the cap of his knee. “I assure you,” the man continued to speak; “there is no worry that should be considered.” John’s hand was still tightly wound around the grip of the pistol in his pocket.

He peered up to the face of the character that bestowed this substance onto him asking, “What is this?”

“It’s nothing that would drive your senses to use that rusty piece in the back of your pocket on me.” The man said as he poked a glace with an animated brow toward John’s concealed hand. “You are smarter than that now, aren’t you? As you can see, I’m only trying to help.”

This enigma of circumstances bewildered John’s logical thought process; he did not know what to make of this. “Are you,” John started to say, “Are you tryin’ to sell me somethin’? If so, I’m not interested.” The gentleman kicked his cane from one shoe to the other, still leaning toward John with a sense of amusement.

“ME? Trying to sell you something?!” the animated man laughed as he spoke, “I am here to rid you of the turmoil and doubt that befuddles your weary mind, my good sir!”

John looked perplexed, yet intrigued at the sole pill sitting on his knee. While still staring at the substance he muttered, “And how do you know about what’s in my pocket?” It was at this moment when there was the absence of a snide remark. John lifted his head up to nothing but the empty brick wall staring back at him. The man had disappeared with no trace of his existence to be found.

John’s eyes whipped from one end of the alley to the other in a frantic fury of confusion, unable to retain any kind of understanding of what just occurred. The only evidence of the man’s visit was that of the pill he left behind. John’s grip loosened from the gun lodged in his back pocket as he directed his sight toward the pill, wondering if he should ingest it. He raised the gun up to his hip and swapped glances with it, and the pill. Given his circumstance, and the enormous curiosity of what may happen if he decided to take the substance overwhelmed his decision. Without a second thought, he dropped the gun and picked up the pill, glanced at it once more, and threw it down his esophagus. It traversed downward to the pits of his stomach and saturated itself into the bloodstream. Not before long, John nodded away into a sound slumber. His body released all forms of animation as the pill began to take effect. He soon fell into a state that brought him from the desolate alley to an alternate reality.

The deer poked him when he was somberly sleeping; the notion entered his dream with discontent which forced his weary sleep to a close. As John arose from the dreariness of his mind, he found the deer’s beaded black eyes piercing into his.

“Hurry John, we must find the cause of that resonant bang off in the distance, I fear it may become the worst of us, or to our home!” The deer said with haste. In a rush, before John found the notion to speak, he looked up toward the sun to catch a glimpse of where he was. It seemed, according to the shadows of the trees and the surrounding plant-life; he found himself in a dense forest. He sighed as he dragged his head along the tree line, in a daze of delirium. Inflicted with a foreign pain in his temple, he tried to recollect the previous events that lead him here; but he could not muster the images. He only felt alive and one with the earth, as well as knowledgeable of the terrain—as if he lived in this forest his whole life.

As he ascended from the ground, he felt aches and pains that seemed to inflict only the interior walls of his intestines, causing the spleen to take action against his reality. He remembered only taking the pill, and nothing else. Before John could catch his breath from the discomfort, the deer nudged its nose into his shoulder cavity in order to get his attention toward the situation at hand. John showed it a smile of reassurance as he said, “It sounds too far off in the distance, farther north then I can see. I wouldn’t be too frightened deer.”

The deer lowered its head, granting him the right to say what may be true. “You may be right John; this land is shared by many only known to you, but that disturbance was of another origin. Not from these lands.” He dismissed its anxiety with a gentle rub to its brow, “Be not afraid, for I feel that I have the right of passage in this forest— what disturbs the silence is nothing more than a faint growl of a dying predator.” The deer shrugged its antlers at him in agreement for the time being.

John walked over to the ridge of the basin of which he was resting upon to see further into the horizon that settled above the land. The deer trotted close by as he stepped toward the edge to stare down through the trough in an attempt to see what lay ahead, as well as to clear his head. Upon staring into the diluted thoughts of his delirium, he heard a voice speak with a softened utterance. “The feeling of the rapture from the pill will contort your brain’s receptors to dispatch frequencies of resolve, to seek the foreign sound of this land, and only then will you feel the sensation to live again.” A few moments passed while he stood motionless and introspective, until the repeated noise shuttered his ear drums again and again and again. This time, the deer was disbanding from him in anxiousness to see what, or who was creating such a flurry of vibrations.

“If you must deer,” John shouted, “I will accompany you in this expenditure!” He quickly grabbed his coat, and vigorously scaled down the cliff after the doe, until he reached the mouth of the valley.

Upon arrival to the entrance of the gorge, a river was slowly revealed to John as he traversed around an intricacy of shrubs and vines. He approached the doe at the edge of the water as it paused, peering across the ravine towards a passage covered with dense flora. “It must be over there, passed this stream and beyond that path.” It said gesturing its head in that direction.

John’s perception of the woods flashed at the sight of the passage; he saw within the darkness, a faded isle of brick and moss, coated with vines and trash that reminded him of home. “I’m not going through there deer, that path is littered with regret, and besides, I am kind of enjoying it here.” The deer shook its head at his response and said, “John, this bang will not stop unless you seek it to be resolved.” As it said this, the blaring bang interrupted the serenity once more, sending John to his knees.

“It won’t cease until I find the cause of it?” He asked facing the deer as he got up. “What could it be that would make me cross this river to find out? I may slip and fall!” The deer paid little heed to his concerns and insisted for him to proceed across. John failed to comply with the antics of the deer and decided to retreat back toward the face of the ridge when the deer’s composure began to shift and turn before John could muster a step forward. He jumped back from the phenomenon in fear that it may warp him too, and sought refuge behind a near-by boulder no bigger than twice his size. As the deer’s composition fluctuated, a familiar voice began to flutter the air that caused John to retract from his hidden position.

“Oh, Dear John what am I to do with you? You know as well as I, that banging won’t stop until you do something about it!” John cautiously rose from the ground to peer across the top of the boulder, revealing only his eyes and above. To his astonishment, he found himself looking at the mysterious over-enthused gentleman that granted him the pill from the alley.

“You!” John shouted as he trampled over the boulder to confront the man. “Is all this from the pill you have had me take?!” The man stood with posture of pride that complimented his suit. The cane, still frolicking in his hands tapped the tempo of his impending judgment on the matter. “John, do you wish to stay here, among this lavish landscape of greenery?” John stuck his face into the man’s breathing range, squinting a perplexed stare that brought him to respond, “ I most very well want to stay here, but not with you.”

“Then take this tether,” just then a rope and hook appeared in the man’s hand, “and ring it to that tree over there,” John turned slightly to the tree the gentleman was pointing at with a raised index finger, “You know, so you can get across?” He said as he placed one end of the rope into John’s hand. “Is this the only way?” John asked with disdain in his voice. “Of course. . .” the gentleman replied.

John took a few steps toward the trunk of the tree when he began to feel the pain again in his gut. It shot straight through his intestines, causing him to keel over in slight agony. “Do hurry dear sir,” the man said to John, “If you wish to stay here, you must deal with that banging before the pill deals with you.” John paused until the pain subsided, then asked “What are you talking about, before the pill deals with me?”

“You only have a few hours until the pill loses its effect on you, and when that happens before you can stop this banging,” The flamboyant mannered man let out a chuckle, “Well, let’s just say we will have all the time in the world to get to know each other.” John finished tethering the rope to the tree trunk when he stopped at the sound of the bang, this time it was louder with more effect on the ear drums.

“Ahhh . . . Are you saying that if I don’t find out what’s causing this deafening noise before the effects of this pill run out, I will be stuck with you . . . here?!” The man clicked his cane to the brim of his top hat, “Precisely so my good man.”

John was at the point of no return when he heard these two only options. After a quick analysis of the situation, He was sure to pursue the origin of the noise; for it was beginning to cause his eardrums to bleed and the pain in his temple to exponentially grow with every succession of the bang. “Ok,” he said, “Ill cross the river and take that desolate path to seek the end of this reoccurring noise.”

“Good,” the man said, “I wouldn’t want to live the rest of my days with you lad. You are rather boring.” The rope was thrown by John to the other side, lassoing the end to a rooted branch. The gentleman watched his effort, pretending to show concern through playful banter. “Be careful John, if you fall into the fury of the water, I won’t be able to get you out; I just had these shoes polished!”

John latched his grip with strength to the tautness of the rope while ignoring the antagonizing remarks from the gentleman. He soon began to make his way across until he reached half way, “I’ll be sure to make it across with no regard to your . . .” Just before John could finish, he slipped on a wet rock protruding from the rigorous flow of the stream, and smacked his head on the proceeding rocks that blanketed the floor of the river. There was a bang that accompanied his fall, that of a gun which he knew in an instant before he made contact with the gravel.

The gentleman reappeared over John’s body in the alley, staring into the bullet hole that plagued his complexion as a dead man. “Poor fellow,” he said to the corpse, “I helped you pull the trigger without a lift of my finger, but by the fabrication of this here drug.” The gentleman reached into his pocket to reveal a green rounded pill that he flicked up into the air, “A life for a trip, don’t you feel better about yourself John? You wished to cross the river the moment you loaded that gun.” He said as he caught the pill with his hand, in search for another desperate fellow to ensue the same fate of the dead man John.

It was 7:30 a.m. and the morning sun was radiantly shining. Charles awoke with a head pain beyond a tolerable sensation. He lifted the apex that contained the former night’s memories with a wonder of contingent variables that left him perplexed.

“Charlie?” Amie woke up startled by her husband’s sudden ascension from sleep, “What’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I . . . I’m fine.”

Charles left the bed hastily flinging the night-terror-soaked sheets away. In doing so he knocked over his phone from his nightstand and onto the floor. He started to pace striking his hand through his sweat-drenched hair while contemplating his nightmare. His wife looked down for a moment, and then with a concern that flourished her face to a pigment of satin-pink-plush, she said, “Was it another one of those nightmares? I told you, again and again . . . you, you need to see the doctor more often about this . . . it’s getting to the point where I can see the pain it’s causing you. You’re losing sleep.”

Charles seemed tense, suspended in thought that delivered a resentful gaze that pierced through the window as the sun licked his face. “I’m handling it in the best interest of us.” He stuttered in his speech for the briefest moment after noticing the lock of the bedroom window unlatched. His mind raced to an array of inferences that would explain this peculiarity. It stimulated a keen interest. He glanced down and grabbed his phone off the floor, checked it and placed it on the dresser next to his gun and badge.

“I’m telling you, you don’t look well!” Amie said.

Charles turned toward her and approached in a manner that soothed her concern. “It’s OK, there is little to be worried about dear, I’m just going through some stress with work.” He swayed toward her in a beguiling fashion with both shoulders. “I’m working on a case right now that requires my full attention, and to see the doctor only takes me away from it.”

Amie smiled but with contempt, “I only wish what’s good for you, I don’t want to see you losing sleep.” Charles pecked his wife’s cheek bone with the assurance that all would be well. After, he retracted from her to proceed with his morning routine.

“I want you to be happy too.” Amie said as she softly touched his kiss’s point of contact; ever so softly.

“Yes my lady, I am, thank you.” Charles said while taking a bow to show a gesture of genuine gentlemanly conduct and sincerity. “I’ll pay a visit to the doctor if that warrants your contentment.”

“You know that’s all that I want.” said Amie with her hand still reaping the residual love left by her husband’s lips.

Charles didn’t seem to notice her reaction, but of the faint cuts on the bottom of her night gown, his attention was captured. “My dear,” he said, “I will see you this evening.”

She nodded and told Charles to continue his routine. Until his progress of this routine took him to the point of a potential brash behavior. A foreboding tendency in the form of fabricated thoughts bewitched his brain; “was his martial bond equivocal?” he thought. The fulguration vociferously brought him to dwell on images of flipping furnishings to asunder and ingloriously insulting his wife. It seemed, to his imagination, that she didn’t take it that well; but, for a moment she reposed to a position of stimulating proportions where her face tucked under her collar bone and her lips pursed to an angle above her cheekbone. Charles abruptly stopped his introspection of the furniture’s violent dismantle. He found himself staring blankly into her eyes, and only for a moment he felt intensified, a sentiment soon flourished his stipulated character.

“Honey, darling . . . why, or more so, how do you put up with me in such a manner where I find myself in a disposition; the current of which I ride only corrodes my benevolence toward you?”

“What on earth do you mean?!” shot back Amie.

“I can’t help but wonder about what you do during the time I am at my job, stranding myself from my love only to cater her every desired wish in order to have a happy, stable, and fulfilling life!” Charles recanted a few more times until his breath gave way to a retracting motion. He threw a fist through the gracious air that rested between his argument and his wife, in disrupting that air, all peaceful accords were vanquished. His mind danced among the various thoughts that stimulated his false perception of the current reality; of course, in this moment he could not tell for sure, but (as time progresses as it sure does), he felt the need to further his inquiry of trust with his woman until the fabrications were just that. . . not real.

“I have nothing but the vastest care for you, I adore you Charlie!” Amie projected as she blasted her body into the rustled sheets.

As Charles grabbed his phone, gun and badge from the dresser, he looked at her with eyes piercing, and said, “Coyness is adorable only when the sentimental statement conveys truthful proceeding actions,” he raised his unoccupied hand to his head, “and those actions have yet to take place; for this I am at a stalemate with my illusive assumptions.” His disgruntled conveyance ceased to exist as he exited the bedroom. “I love you!” He shouted as he left.

Charles stepped outside of the house with a stupor of renounced cognition, stimulating his mind to another perception outside of himself. His thoughts, for just a moment, felt residual, a false sense of reality seemed to interrupt his receptor arrays to a docile state of contemplation. This contemplation fused his previous mental standpoint, now fallible, toward the core nature of his being. He began to think to himself.

“I feel it, it’s like a metamorphosis into a more crystallized structure; and I can see it clearly. . . It’s just the pain that’s involved with such a transition. Oh the maelstrom in my head; vortexes of consistent misconstrued inquiry. How it shimmies deceit in the forming crevasses in my foundation of conceptual intake! The insanity of it all gives me the intuition to convene the stagnant stipulation of perplex curiosity; it is an intrusion of never knowing where it may lead. It also befits an appeasing appeal for previous deceit; my heart feels boundless against the channel of its passive acceptance.”

During this inner monologue, he anticipated the call from the doctor. The unlatched window had him thinking. His thoughts were inclined to seek for an approval of what coerced his brain to conjure such damnation of his effort in love.
Charles heels clicked from the impact of the pavement, shortening the distance from his position to the car, while flurrying the Chevy’s keys around his left index finger. The circulating motion created the noise of which attributed the rhythmic change of his stammering step to a swaying style. . .

“Nice swag Charlie,” shouted his neighbor Martha. . . Martha was cloaked in a robe, a bath robe that covered her legs down to the region of the knees, and as she lightly waved her hand while grabbing for the newspaper, the ‘quilt of the thing’ moved along with her giddy hand; and the accompanied smile, her smile reposed with a pompous kinda weight. Every time, Charles would resent such a clamoring curve of her teeth and lips.

“Thanks Martha; hey uh, are we still down for poker night next Tuesday?” He said with a slightly raised eyebrow.

“You know it,” Martha’s laughter followed briefly until she decided to speak again, “And I’ll tell Richie to hold the cream next time; you know, how you like it?!”

“Nah,” Charles looked down at the cobble as he made it to the car door in the standoff with the decision to how he should deliver his answer, if he should yield or confront. . . “I don’t mind cream in my coffee, I just prefer it black.” He responded, at the point of reaching for his keys to penetrate the hole on the Chevy’s door for entry. “Plus,” he said while looking back at her swinging the door open and placing his right foot on the floor next to the accelerator. He had his body poised to fully harness the throttle and wheel; a pending engagement. “I would like to see any recent additions to your china.” He finished as he studied the area where his lawn met hers. In the moment of silence between his remark and her response, he perceived a parting of the rose bush that sat right on the dividing line of both their properties.

“Well, I have been thinking about purchasing a platter with a complimentary fondue. . .” Her voice was muffled as Charles concluded the motion of entering the vehicle and closing the door, immediately after, he rolled down the window to not have been appeared as cutting the woman off from her unrequited effort to express the undying fascination of her hobby. “With small plates and everything . . . did you hear me?” Martha said.

“Oh yeah, Martha, I would love to have some fondue sometime,” Charles lit a cigarette, and puffed it with a countenance of disdain from the taste. “Hey, have you seen Richie this morning?” Martha’s smile dissipated into the mist spraying off from the water as it hit the rustled roses.

“No, he left for the office before I got a chance to wake up and say bye.”

Charles looked down at his phone then up at Martha. “Time to run,” he said, “have a good morning Martha.” With the exhibition of the sound from the key’s turn in the ignition, and the weight on the pedal from his foot, he throttled the reverse with a certain charisma that emulated from his face to the mean brashness of the eight cylinders under the hood. Dust proliferated behind his departure’s exuberance, flooding the image of Martha’s plastic existence out of his rear view mirror.

The commute to work was quaint, something Charles always looked forward to. It was the only time he could commit his thoughts with the indignation of malcontent and have nothing more to do about it than to drive with the windows down and the music up. He would embrace the morning sun on his face as if he was enduring nuclear fallout, and the development around him was nothing but ash. This conjured a pantomime in his head in tandem with the radio that became a resolute gesture of composure for him. The aviators he wore reflected all that was good from the sun, only filtering in the grudge of retaliation. The music penetrated his ear drums, drowning out any sense of reality. What silenced his galloping neurosis was the phone. It rang.

“Yeah,” Charles immediately answered, with certainty, as if he was expecting the call. “Have you now?” The muffled response from the phone emitted a convincing tone, as if Charles was adherent to a prime directive, “I’ll be right there.” He said.
His countenance expressed content, a gradual degradation of repose flourished until the itch, the urge to pursue the newly received news burgeoned to its entirety. Over-zealously strung up, he hung up, and deviated from the course to work.

He arrived at the entrance of where his contact told him to be, the gapping mouth to the hiking trail of the woods off route 70. He parked his car right on the shoulder – mile marker 3 – and began to walk nonchalantly. Through the brush and past the welcoming trees, he swayed off the beaten path right before breaking a sweat from venturing. A stagnant lake rested right before him after following directions he had committed to memory.

Charles traversed the terrain a bit farther until he stumbled upon a pile of bones near the edge of the lake. He stopped over them and stared into a skull of what seemed to be of a deer. He smiled and felt highly attuned with himself. His mind didn’t wander, nor did it coerce him to engage in any irrational behavior. Caught in this moment of bliss, he was soon taken away from it by sudden snapping noises that he heard in the distance. Out of the woods came rushing Richie with his garments ripped to shreds and his blood that added to its decorum. Charles was flabbergasted, but not in the way of seeing something so horrifying. He was excited.
“Hey-hey-hey” He said trying to calm Richie down. He was hysterical until the point of contact with Charles’s arms. When he crashed, his body went that of rigor mortis; petrified and paralyzed.

In this moment, Richie looked up. “Charlie?” His voice was of a gurgling mess, where blood got in the way of his words due to a stabbing wound in his chest. “I-I-I don’t know . . . wh-wh-what happened, I was on my way . . . to work. . .”

“Rest your eyes now Richie.” said Charles as he lifted his fingers to close them. He leaned deep into his ear where the heat of his breath stimulated Richie’s fear, “You think I haven’t noticed the little things.” Richie’s eyes grew tense. They dilated and began to shake as if the truth of the matter shot anxiety throughout his entire nervous system.

“I saw a rose outside my window this morning.” Charles began to project spit from his whisper that expressed a tense angry tone in his voice. “It assured my certainty.” Richie tried to gasp for his final breath of life when Charles shoved his fist in his mouth to deny him the pleasure.

The sudden hoot of the owl perched upon the moss covered drift wood beyond the lake’s ridges reverberated past the hollowed out trees that bordered the glassed vastness of open water. The echo startled Charles after staring down at the lifeless body. Warm blood dripped off Richie’s collar and onto his bare hands when the phone rang. He looked beyond into the lake where his own reflection was.

It dissipated as leaves fell onto the silhouette, contorting his reflection. The ambiance perpetuated how he felt; the fast clash of his pride with his dismay, along with a stunted growth of his charisma. He was torpid and transfixed. Where those daunting premonitions fluttered his cranium – the portion where his delusions intertwined with reality – the space was now empty. He was too reposed to find a sensible perspective in the matter. The only thought that he had was if Amie would be the same. He spoke into the receiver of the phone.

“I guess that ends this premonition of deceit . . . everything made sense, which perhaps warranted this.” He spoke from his gut as his grip loosened from the phone, “thanks doc.” He said, while staring blankly into space.