imanant :: look at me go.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Two new slightly edited chapters of Patrick Midleton losing it.

play catch up:
Chapters 1 & 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

“Chapter” Six

As I lay in bed I could hear the apartment shift. Unsteady piles began to slip, unbalanced pieces sliding to whatever surface lay below. Magazines on to the desk, books on to the floor, computer printouts everywhere. Menus held up by magnets on the freezer door began their slow decent downward until they all collected just above the gap between the freezer and refrigerator doors. Dishes caught drips from my leaky kitchen sink faucet, saucepan pools overflowed to create a lagoon of kitchenware. As the heat came and went, the house would creek, expanding and contracting. Curtains hanging above closed windows would sway gently against rising heat. The light bulbs creaked in time with the banging of my old steam heater. I’d imagine water flowing through the pipes like the blood of a circulatory system and I saw myself as a malignant growth in an otherwise healthy apartment building body, spreading my sloth like a paste across my one bedroom, third floor apartment. Therefore, I felt it’d be better for everyone if I stayed mainly within my cancerous confines.

For a brief period I began to believe in ghosts. I’d see Jamie, now a translucent silver, walk over to a pile of Billboard Magazines and poke at it with one finger like an inquisitively like a child learning the world for the first time. When the stack would tumble, she'd giggle to herself. She had a great giggle. It would bubble up from her throat before she could do anything to conceal it. Her body wouldn’t allow anyone to dictate where she could find pleasure. A sense of humor that free is confidence bubbling over. I bore witness to her unconscious snubbing of the little things which pile up on the rest of our shoulders. And it wasn’t that she was naïve or unaware, she just naturally focused was elsewhere. She entered situations like a scientist looking for enlightenment. When she found a connection, she’d smile, she’d laugh, she could warm to a stranger in minutes, as they would warm to her. She'd ask questions which showed she was listening. She'd direct the conversation, but could make anyone feel like the lead.

Besides her charm, Jamie was physically disarming. A girl next door brunette, with a beauty that resisted a simple definition. Her true beauty could be found in her softer and unseen features. The corners of her mouth rested natural up, ready to raise her apple cheeks just below her eyes with a smile. Her wavy honey-brown hair would slip from behind her tiny ears to frame her face on either side. Not a tall girl, she had a child like presence, that is, until challenged. I’d kid with her that her ancestors were porcupines. Cute until you dare try to make them lunch. When faced with an opinion she couldn't abide, she'd launch a full throated opposition, feeding on the fire of intellectual competition as it burned.

There was her real beauty, the hidden piece which made all of her features, from her tiny fingernails to her bad knees from years of field hockey glow radiantly. It was the confidence which drew me to her. During a lecture on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, she began an argument with the speaker during the question and answer period over not speaking harshly enough on the separation between real science and "scams labeled theory by political hacks playing on the general public's inability to define theory”. I cut in front of three people at the cheese and crackers table to talk to her.

And yet here she was now, finding humor in toppling my old Billboard magazines. I’d call out to her, but she’d vanish when our eyes met, as a dream upon waking. This was my first specter.

So I lay there among the still of the ever changing apartment, trying not to let my mind drift. Yet my shift from healthy and clean to unstable and unpleasant was so sluggish, I didn’t even recognize the change until I woke up one day and realized I had no idea what day it was. I was in a state of collapse, the apartment was just an extension of my slide.

After my two week break and five calls from Chuck I didn't return, he left me a message letting me go.

“Look, I know it’s been rough, but we have a business to run. I can’t have employees who don’t show up for work.” Chuck sounded regretful, whether it was because he had to do it over the phone (to an answering machine no less!) or that he had to do it all, I wasn’t sure. “Give us a call when you get back on your feet. Ok buddy? I’ll speak to you soon.” The end of that sentence was a bit stuttered. S-oon. He wasn’t expecting to hear from me soon. He expected I'd fall off the face of the Earth. Become a mountain man in the adirondacks. Move to Walden Pond and set up camp next to the ice cream vendors. What’s more, I don’t think Chuck wanted to hear from me. No one did. I'd spooked them all away. A co-worker of mine, Randy, had stopped by to see if I was ok (i.e. still alive) a couple of days before the final call from Chuck.

“Pat? Patrick? Dude?” I heard him knocking from my bedroom. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do. I hadn’t spoken to anyone but delivery men since I left work before my vacation and in my sleep-deprived state, I’d almost forgot how. I challenged myself and opened the door.

“Randy. Hi.” The greeting took a moment to remember. I opened the door enough to poke out my unshaven face. “What’s up?”

“Hey…Dude…,” perhaps my uncouth appearance came as a shock to him. What’s more likely is I fit exactly the image he’d cooked up for me on the way over. “We were worried about you at work, wanted to see if you were ok.” Randy had known me since I first started at MarketShare two years before. A gentle guy, we got along well enough talking mainly about work or our shared love for the Albany River Rats, but this conversation was out of our range.

“Yeah, great. Doing fine.” My face was tense, my voice overly peppy, like a labrat about to snap because he can't find the damn cheese. Unsure of what to do and perhaps feeling a rush from the cloud of awkwardness which floats around the defeated souls of the bereaved, he split real quick like.

“Well, ok, great. I’ll tell everybody back at the office. Ok, see you at work!” Then he turned to go. I watched him shuffle hurriedly down the stairs, careful not to trip over his tail. He no doubt was the sacrificial lamb come to tell me I’d been let go. I closed the door, went back to bed, and stared at the ceiling some more, hoping to ward off Jamie’s ghost before she got bored with the piles and started knocking down walls.

“Chapter” Seven

Have you ever had caked blood on your hands? I mean copious amounts of caked blood? It’s like sun-dried clay, with a glaze of cum. Thick, sticky, and so repulsive you don’t want to touch yourself. Rank, putrid, rancid, yes, all of the above, but none more qualified to describe the feeling than this: death. I felt Jamie dieing on my hands. Whether she was dead already, I’m not positive. I’d learn later her neck was broken when the front passenger side absorbed our impact with the barrier.

As we were spinning, the last thing she said was my name, like it was her last thought.

“No! Patrick!”

But she didn’t take her seat belt off and she didn’t respond to my shaking. She didn’t respond to my screaming, she didn’t respond when I finally dragged her out of the car. Is it morbid to suggest she was just there in spirit?

By the time the police officer who’d been waiting in a speed trap only a hundred or so yards ahead found his way over to us, my shirt was red. I’d been clutching Jamie’s head against my chest. The cop didn't say a thing.

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