Extant Creations

She was a thin drink of water that wandered in to my life. I could see her hesitate to pull off her driving gloves when she saw the condition of my office. She stood there in a dress, no longer pristine, that sang of better and easier times. You could tell by the look on her face that I was her last hope. Just what I needed, another needy dame begging me to find their father or lover and restore them to the glory of her once-fabulous life.

I ashed my cigarette nonchalantly as she pulled off her hat, letting her shoulder length locks cascade down in wave of curls and perfume, and steeled myself to hear her plea.

“Quite a place you have here,” she said, trying her best to mask disgust as she looked around. “Have you named the rats yet, or have they only just moved in?”

“Listen, honey, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but my door clearly says ‘private dick’, so cut to the chase or chase yourself out.”

“You’re quite the charmer, aren’t you. Listen, if you weren’t the very last person I had to turn to, I’d walk out right now and leave you and your rats to consummate this relationship. However, since every other Dick in this town has laughed me out of their office, it seems I have no choice. Looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

“No, it just looks like you’re stuck. I’ve got no need to help you, so get lost, and leave me, my rats, and my whiskey to it.”

“You’re a liar and god-damned bastard, you know.”

“Ah, I see my charm is matched only by your own.”

“I know you need me. I can see it written all over your face and the way you slouch in that chair letting your cigarette ash all over your shirt.”

I sat up a little straighter and casually brushed the ash from my sleeve.

“Honey, you can see I have bills to pay, but I get the feeling that helping you isn’t going to pay them. So take your sob story and get walking.”

“If you help me, your fee will be a million dollars. Take it or leave it, you jaded little Dick.”

Lyrics of some sort

There’s something to be said in a center of peace
looking in, looking out the eyes dance around
the flame leaps and soars on an azure sky
bringing memories of the days gone by

Swinging arms connect with opposing flesh
snapping, breaking there way though
running towards the distant shore
following a breath of wind

Nothing left to judge them by their broken chains
the cold calm water stretching forward to the end of the world
unintended answers filling in from every direction
cast adrift in a sea of delusion

a mind that speaks so ears can’t hear
a soul the cries to open night
a man who fires his voice to God
and dies adrift at sea

There are a lot of things that can be associated with the sound “crunch”. Perhaps you’ve just bitten in to a toasted bagel smothered in cream cheese. Maybe it’s the sound a potato chip makes as you crack it in half in your hand. Taking a first step on new fallen snow.

It’s also the sound my leg made as I hit the ground at the bottom of the canyon.

The pain was searing, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at it, afraid of what I would find. I tried to do a survey of the rest of my body while blocking out the pain from my leg. Eventually I managed to do it, and found nothing else wrong. Great, now I can lay here in perfect health and die because I can’t move. Or the predators will get me. Damn predators.

Time to look at my leg. OK, not so bad. Not bleeding. Definitely shouldn’t be bent at that angle, but otherwise it’s OK. Now, how do I get out of here?

Tick. Three steps forward. Tock. Two steps right. Tick. Jump forward two floor tiles. Tock. Drop to the floor. Tick. Roll to the right. Tock. Tick. Tock. Stop. Tick. Crouch. Tock. Roll forward. Tick. Stand up.

Stop the clock.

Now you can walk forward confidently. If you see a guard, shoot him. Be sure to equip a silencer before you go. Go up to the case and use the cutter to cut a 3 inch hole in the middle of the pane of glass. I expect the diamond on my desk this time tomorrow.

It’s raining out. Even through the closed window I can tell it’s that cold penetrating rain. That rain that falls like the icy fingers from an old ex-lover walking over your grave. I get shivers up and down my spine just looking at the poor fools walking below the window, covering themselves with whatever they can grab in a futile attempt to keep dry. I just know I’m going to have to go out in that mess, it’s just that kind of night.

I spin around in my chair to face my desk, the cigarette in my mouth leaving a thin line showing where it used to be. I pull open the top drawer and stare at it for a while. In the back is a picture of my Sheila, who left me so long ago. In the front, side by side, are a pistol and a small bottle of Jack Daniels. This time, as always, I opt for the bottle, and close the drawer. Next time it will be the pistol, so help me god.

I take a swig of the stuff, and it erupts in my throat. Every swig I can tell is one step closer to eating through those soft walls. The doctors say so too. I open the drawer to replace the bottle, and there again is my Sheila and my pal, my Colt Anaconda. Damn the doctors, a hole in my throat is better than one in my head today. I slam the drawer in a fit of sudden pain, and grip at my chest. Could this be it? A rupture that makes me gush blood and other less pleasant liquids in and around my insides? Oh if only.

But no, it passes and I can finally unclench. I look up to see a shadow just outside my door. A female shadow, swaying back and forth lightly, neither coming nor going. She’s going to knock, I just know it, and I’m going to have to head out in that mess. Well damnit lady, I haven’t got all night to go run your little errand, so you’d better knock soon!

I neared the top of hill, battered, broken, and bloody. My one leg dragged useless behind me, but I pulled myself forward, leaving a trail of my blood in the trampled green grass. Ahead of me I could see a tree, which had stood tall at the beginning of the day, but was now shattered and burnt, the twisted wreckage of it a reminder of the fierce battle below. I hauled myself upright using one of the few intact lower branches on the tree, and looked out over the glittering ocean ahead of me. On the waters great warships sailed round each other, firing cannons and flaming arrows to try and sink their opponent, or burn the ship to a floating husk. Mirroring what had transpired only hours ago behind me on these now sovereign shores. As I watched the mayhem unfolding on otherwise peaceful waters, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned in time to feel lead rip through my stomach and sever my spinal cord. The final strength taken from me, I crumpled, my eyes focusing only on two black boots and a flash of red as my life faded to nothingness.

A streak of blue in a sea of mousy brown, weaving and ducking, dipping in to the sea for a moment, then surfacing valiantly and plunging on in a new direction. I chase after her, my only hope of discovering her lying in my keen eye and the dazzling blue of her hair as it swirls and sways off down the road ahead of me. This way and that it darts such that keeping up with seems nearly impossible. I forge a straight line through mundane faces, a blue spark in my eye, trying to catch up with the azure dance before me. My foot fails to find the ground. I trip and tumble, trampled by the pressing crowd until I can fight way to my feet. I look round and seen nothing but drab grey and mousy brown. My spark has left and wandered off where my gaze cannot fall. Tired, beaten, I surrender to the crowd and am carried, eyes downcast, away from my fall. For a moment, as I am carried off, I think I hear a beautiful bluebird singing just to me, and as my eyes alight on the horizon, I catch a glimpse of something beautiful. Something pure. Something blue.

The A key played at midnight. A perfect 440 Hz pitch sounding in the cold dark. The A fell a half tone and then a full tone as two more keys sounded out in the night.

A gloved finger lifted itself from the piano and brushed against a nearby bookcase, picking up a fine layer of dust. “Sloppy,” the man thought to himself. “This man obviously has no self-respect to leave his home in such a state. Trash on the table, dust everywhere, a pile of clothes in the corner. Including a… thong? That’s not right. This man has been single and lonely every day for the last three months. Figures, leave it to my luck that the night I come to do this is the one night in his pathetic existence he manages to get lucky.” He pulled out his gun and loaded a second bullet in clip. “Damn waste, but necessary I guess. There’s always a complication, let’s hope this is the last.”

The man gave his gun a quick go over and then re-holstered it. He continued his surveillance of the downstairs, making sure it was all clear, and then turned his attention to the stairs.

Who knows what will happen if I lose all self restraint. The madness never ends, it just becomes all consuming like fire on a man doused in jet fuel when you take a match to him. The husk of the man that remains is charred and broken, burnt and useless, but the madness that consumed him, the burning fire, that energy is released in to the world where it spreads, playing on eddys and currents in human emotions, before sparking another flame somewhere else.

You see all of the worst parts of America from a train. Between the back alley construction sites and wearhouses lay piles of scrap and other debris carelessly left to rot. There are no nice homes near the tracks. The closest you get to viewing an upscale neighborhood is when you pass through a city or are high up on a hill, and faintly, in the distance, you can see a gleaming area of economic prosperity from which the tracks are just barely visible. You pass abandoned industrial areas and train yards, stretch after stretch of long forgotten land, left as the country moved from industry by rail to industry by truck. Silently you curse the teamsters and their boss, Jimmy Hoffa, for making the real estate next to the tracks the least prime land in the country. Sure, it was never the best place to build a residential neighborhood, but there were times when railside properties were of value to people looking to start their own businesses. Times when you could throw your factory or warehouse right next to the tracks and get your wares easily and cheaply from coast to coast. Times when the view from a train was one of prosperity and ambition.

Now there are merely slums and poor neighborhoods where broken down factory workers and their families live paycheck to paycheck, trying to make it to the next month or the next meal. There is no keeping up with the Jones next to the tracks, because the Jones probably have less than you.

Ocassionally though, as you pass scrap yards or the relieving stretches of train-exhaust polluted forrest, you see a troop of kids, trudging towards the tracks, and your mind starts cogitating wildly. What are they doing out here in this all but forgotten wasteland? Are they simply trying to get from one side of town to the other, or are they after something more? What drives someone to risk life and limb heading towards active railroad tracks? What drives anyone to go near the tracks these days?

The possibilities start whirling as you pass an old maintenance yard, long since closed, where old broken trains cars sit, disused and covered in indiscernibly many layers of graffiti, the top-most a cutting image above the faded and running colors underneath. All along the cars the glass is broken, and holes are appearing everywhere as the pools of water, collecting here and there among aging aesthetic accouterments and collapsing controls, rust the aging metal, and spill down, brown to the soiled ground.

What were those kids doing way out here? What, for that matter, am I?