Draft # 1-2004 Revised, cont'd

Across the town, Mayson steps out of the bedroom through his window, leering suspiciously behind his back and towards the locked door. Releasing his grip against the rot of his window frame, he falls to the ground and lands on the grass. The first cold breathe of autumn air brought with the wind breaking against his face the thick and misty rain.
His youthful expression strains as he reassembles his hair and looks cruelly at the stars in the sky of his backyard. He turns away from the painting of ink and diamond, and with less than care in his black eyes, he answers the cell phone in his pocket.

He presses his lips to the receiver. "What's up?"

Tilting his head, he expose the soft and high structure of his cheek and the unknowing night glows on his skin to expose, if nothing else, his shapely jaw and the extent of his expression. The frustration forms and then erases all bad under the contour of his sloping neck and the shadow of sun.

He carefully steps along the grass outside his bedroom and whispers with a mock of ease, letting a cool voice offset the cross knit brow over his dark flameless eyes.

 "Hey Victor, are you outside my house?” He says softly to the receiver, dancing with silence and the darkness. He knew he was not supposed to leave his home. Pine leaves shudder down his spine, he passes his mother’s bedroom window. She had brought home another man that night. That man's car keys chime as he twists them around his middle finger.

“No, not yet,“ Victor says, “we still have to drive out to Stop Six.”
Mason nods and grimaces. He could hear his mother moan from outside as he steps through the crying air of cold fog and late summer steam. He opens his gate angrily and grazes through wild grass and weed to the sidewalk.

The street lights were lit well enough to see through the thick air and dark night. Mayson looks down the street and watches for his friend. The mile of concrete was somber and gray, and stretched out until sightless, so he sits under the light of the flickering lamp post and waits.

He notices the black car parked beside his house. He says not a word to Victor about the car in front of him or the keys that dance in his hand.
Mayson asks with amusement, “What road are you on ?”

He steps easily alongside the black and unmarked car, whistling with a smile.

On the other line, Victor was still at his house. Trying to overhear Mason through noise of a party downstairs. It was his parent's night to have guests. “Well, that’s the big problem,” Victor says finally.

“What problem?” Grayson takes his keys to the car paint.

He closes his fist until his knuckles turn white, driving and digging the silver further into the metal as it screams. He takes the keys down the entire side of the car, until he arrives at the back bumper.

With an empty and emotionless expression, he takes his foot to the car, slamming the back of his heel against the damn thing. A loud crack and a deep moan of plastic breaks and through the silence. Mason waits, but there is no response. The night did not care and no one would, not even in silence.

He smiles acridly at the shallow dent he made. He thrusts his foot down again, once more, this time painfully. The bumper breaks in this deep blow. The phone drops to his left side and Mason pauses, delighted.
He takes back the phone and is a bit out of breath now. “Huh? One more time?”

Victor was still on the phone, angry enough to shield his mouth from his downstairs guests. “What the hell was that? What are you doing you asshole?”

Mayson turns away from the black car and the light of his mothers window. He walks to the end of the street, sitting down beside a stop sign.

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to figure out how I can get the fuck out of here tonight.” He sparks a cigarette.

“Look, we’ve got to pick up Erin tonight. She says that she cannot drive tonight. Her grandmother borrowed her car, or some shit like that.”

“You are kidding?” he complains. “Did you tell Stephen? I mean, who can we call?”

“I don’t know, I am working on it. But Erin lives way over in Davis."
"Doesn't matter where the fuck she stays if we don't have a ride," he says and looks further down his street.

Victor groans.“I mean Mason, do you know how to get a hold of a ride?” He tired of his own thoughts and anxieties.

He waited to answer Victor and paid no mind, smiling guiltless at his night, looking up into his sky. The black car was still outside his house, and the keys were still in his pocket. He puts out his cigarette on the concrete.

“You are useless Victor,” he laughs, pulling up his black slacks by his chained wallet.

Victor hears him and also the glass of wine that fell to the floor down stairs.

“Oh, but that was our wedding china!” his mother gushes in a dizzy voice. His father laughs. Victor looks down the rolling staircase of cherry wood and red carpet. He could almost taste the wine that soured on the bottom floor. He shudders, before pushing himself back into his room.

“Shut up. I haven’t heard any ideas from you,” he says into the receiver.

Victor closes his blue eyes and presses his head against his bedroom door, jamming the lock in place. The small window in his room let in a light from the sky that was haze and fog, making his head hurt and reminding him of the dirty ash tray his mother left in the front yard.

Meanwhile Mayson walks back home under the starry and scathed sky of black, endless black. He thinks about Stephen while brushing his hair back from his eye. He lets the thought go with the breaking breeze, holding his phone to the ear.

He was irritated with Victor already, and they both knew why. The situation was becoming unnecessarily complicated.

“Look, I don’ give a damn what you and Stephen do when I’m not there. Okay?” Mayson says finally, to soothe the irritable conversation, and then Victor opens back up his eyes.

"I am glad you said that."  The grey light was still there. He turns on the black light so that everything turned purple and blue.

He sits on his wide bed. “But I don't know what you are talking about.” He looks at the fish tank. The colors of the fish dance in the light.

“You know what I’m talking about. But never mind,” Grayson retreats into silence once more. The air seemed thicker.

He arrives at the black car, now damaged but still shining with polish under a gleaming and cruel storm of moonlight. “I would call Rachel,” he begins.

“Why didn’t you again? This would be so much easier. I want to meet her too,” Victor says, and turns away from the fish. A Playboy poster stares down on him from the ceiling.

Grayson feels his chest lighten. “She is grounded, just like Stephen. I asked her to just sneak out.”

“What she get grounded for?”

“I was over at her house last week and her parents thought something was up. I accidentally dropped a needle, but they didn’t find it. All they found was the needle wrapper.”

“Surprised they knew what a needle wrapper looked like.”

“So was I. Turns out, her dad is diabetic. So I mean, damn." He grins a bit, "I was still putting my shirt on while they ushered me out the door.”

“Ha ha, busted. How hilarious.”

“Real fucking funny. Anyway, she won’t sneak out tonight.” Mayson continues.

“Why not?” Victor asks, holding the receiver close. "Thought you said she was okay with us?"

He shrugs off the question.

 “Anyway, Rachel said she’d wait it out for the weekend, and just smoke pot at home. She’s just being lame."

Victor looks down at his clothes, his polished shoes and the wrinkled sheets of his bed. He was dressed to leave. “So how are we going to do this again?” he asks.

“I think I got a car for the night,” Mayson says with a devilish smile and without a thought to hesitate him, he takes the keys and unlocks the door.


“What? How did you pull that off?” Victor asks, excited now and sitting right side up on his bed.

"I just found a car I could borrow. Why do you care?" he glares.

"No big deal, I just am surprised. Who let you borrow their car?" Victor asks.

"Don't worry about it." Without waiting for a return, Mayson hangs up.

He slides into the passenger side seat of the car, pushing paper work from the seat and crawls into the driver side. His long legs cram at the pedal and he pushes the seat back. A small note was on the center console, and he reads the handwriting.

Remember the wine, he reads the scribbled memo in blue ink. He crumbles it and throws the note back, turning the key into the ignition and feeling the sensation of panic sink and then rise inside.

“Well, can’t drink and drive,” he says and looks back at his home and with enmity. He scans the neighborhood once more, looking into his rear view mirror and then back at the house, a light of a window still on. There this man was making himself a home for the night.

The tires tread softly on the pavement and the engine hums. Mayson takes out a Marlboro red and lights up, letting the amber cherry burn the cigarette out in four swift drags.

He puts his side swept hair behind a shade of dark glasses he found on the floor board. Maybe I will keep them, he thinks with a bitter smile framing his frowning jaw. While he waits for the night to whisper her plans to him, his silent sorrow pouts over his lips. He would not admit to a word of sadness.

His shadow eyes cast a dark reflection. He throws the cigarette butt out into the street and turns down the avenue. And like the people whom he had burned years before, the cigarette dies as the wind gathers it along the street gutter, now a small rolling flame on the cracking concrete where his car spins its wheels and forgets.

Marveling at his strange paranoia, he flicks on the headlights as he passes his neighborhood, and quietly coasts towards the highway.

If you just turn back now, you know that there is something wrong tonight, he tells himself. He ignores himself once more. He changes lanes without signaling, and turns left under the highway. The station is playing a new song and he listens to that instead of himself.

“Got the money?” Mayson asks through the window before unlocking he car door. Victor stands and brushes dirt of his jeans, caught in the car headlights parked beside his estate.

Mayson watches Victor reach into those deep pockets, outside the busy home.

“What’s up with all the cars? Parent’s party?” he asks.

Victor walks to the back passenger door. “Yeah, so many people. Mom didn’t even notice,” he breathes. He unfolds his money in the back seat of the car as Mayson pulls away from the house. Victor is a bit nervous, but wary to let his eyes reflect it.

He has blonde hair that is too thin for someone who isn’t balding. His face is always a pallid white so that the heavy skin under his eyes were gray and with-drawing. His cheeks are so pale that not even the sting of wind, nor the fondness of an unsuspected touch, could bring blood flushing to his cheek.

The first thing he complains about is the cigarette smoke. There was plenty of it, and it was forming thick clouds in the car as the tufts of carcinogen crush in stagnation.

“Roll down the window then,” Mayson responds.

Victor resents that. He frowns angrily, and straightens his shirt collar. “Just to remind you, I am allergic to cigarette smoke. It makes me sick to my stomach.”

His words had no affect. Mayson says nothing, so he continues. “When I get real sick I start coughing, and it will hurt. When it hurts real bad, then I start vomiting.”

The words roll from his tongue and he stares dully out the window, as if he were dull with his own request.

That piteous tone was wary to Mayson, even the way he lifted his nose with distaste had lost his affection. The mock grimace he gave while unrolling the window for fresh air was not loveable.

“Yeah, take that up with someone who gives a fuck.” He lets out a cruel and sterile laugh, but not loud enough to be shared. His right foot leaden and pushing the gas pedal, he lets the engine rev before he quickens through the street, tearing down the block and swaggering his left turn onto the route.

From the bottom lip, under the hand of his cigarette he says dully, “We got better things to do. Where’s the house at?”

Lawson Scene Cont'd- Very Raw 1st Draft

They drive towards North Richland Hills through the interstate.

“Hey man, can you turn that fucking music down?” Victor says finally, pushing through the backseat and pressing mute on the stereo.

“What is your problem tonight? Got something worse than anyone else to complain about? Huh?” Mayson shouts in the deep of his throat.

Victor says nothing at first. He hears the wine glass drop again, from the top of the stairs. He shudders.
“Shut up you idiot. Listen, I am about to tell you the fucking exit. Stop being such a prick for once, okay?”

Mayson settles down. “Fine.” He waits. “Okay, where do I exit?”

“You take 820 down to Davis, alright. Then go right.” Victor instructs, easing back into his seat. His heart was racing now. He knew they were almost there.

They turn down the lanes, passing the clubs and pool halls that they were too young to hang out at. Twisting through a winding exit, the black car spills onto Davis Boulevard. The rain was beginning to fall again.

“Great,” Victor says. His chest was heavy and his heart was thumping in small but fast way. He could nearly feel the warm sensation, something to take away the cold.

“Call her Mayson. She likes you more. Here, I got her number.”

He passes the phone and Mayson smiles. “Hey, is this Erin?”


There is a phone in her hand. “Yeah, who are you?” her thick lips answer in a sumptuous and womanly way.
The girl is sitting in her room with ashen blonde hair, wearing a black tank top. Her thin arms were pale enough to show the track marks of her obsession.
“I’m surprised to hear from you. Are you one of Stephen's friends?”

She has a few posters on her wall, but she was older than the two boys so she spent less time at home. She had spent the day with a cough, and could not go to work at the Strip Club. She was a bit pissed about losing the money.

Erin had been fixing a needle, clicking it with her finger to clear the air bubbles.

“This is Mayson. You remember me. We all hung out two weekends ago. Remember?” He smiles and his voice reflects it.


“Oh wow! Hey Mayson, what are you doing cutie? Are you two on your way over?” she asks, putting down the rig. It was only wash left over, anyway.

“Yeah, we’re on Davis right now. Can you tell me how to get to your house. We’ll come save you tonight. Okay?” he laughs.

She laughs as well, and puts on her black jacket. “Okay, sweetheart. But to get to my house, this is where you need to go.”


She tells them directions as they pass cars on the boulevard, and the two boys arrive after ten minutes.

“Okay now, boys. You two need to park three houses back, and cut your headlights. Okay? Give me five minutes and I’ll be out the back and at your car.”

“Okay, cut the lights Mayson and turn down the damn music! Death by stereo? Take a tip from the band. You will get us busted.”

He agrees and kind of laughs, the first smile since he woke that morning. He could feel his need grow, close as they were to getting their drugs.

From the dark and misty rain, and the eerie willows that sway down the parked street, a small and pale frame emerges. Her blonde hair is back in a hair tie, the pale skin and the shallow breast bone that breathes timidly in the air exhales in sickness. She coughs, but tries to stifle it.

“She is so hot,” Victor says. Their car is parked in the shade under a cottonwood tree, a few yards away. “Too bad her and Stephen didn’t work out.” He looks at Mayson who returns the sentiment.

“Yeah, that’s just too bad.” He smiles.

Her small and fragile face smiles at the car parked three doors down. She can see them in the car whispering like the young boys they were. It made her smile. Everything was new to them. Even she felt new to the world, looking at these highschool boys.

Erin coughs again though, and her aching limbs are stiff in the cold. She wasn’t at work that day because of her cough, and although she was a tiny framed girl, her topless dancing pays well. The guys at the club were already sending her texts about how they missed her. Andy, her stout and red faced manager was telling her they were already losing money and she needed to take it easy with the partying. He said it in a flirty way, but she knew she couldn't go on much longer like this.

Her methadone clinic would still accept her, and she was going to kick this weekend. She knew she had to.  Her paycheck and the tips she lost would make her short on her bills that week, and so she sighs and zips up the black jacket.

Story-Middle PT- 2004 Draft 1

The streets are lined with suburban vans and sport cars that stop and go with breaking traffic on an early Saturday morning. You may drive through the streets and see children on their bikes laughing, or watch teenagers with poster signs wave you to the car wash bathed in balloons and crate paper. You may notice also that no one meant any harm, as it was a harmless town where inner city news lines where watched and not lived. The only real problem now seemed to be traffic. Everyone wanted their home in Colleyville, the low crime rate and upscale real estate could earn you that high brow nod of approval, what residents sought after more than ever. Perhaps I just notice that more now, as I look back.

I sit on my windowsill, watching the town from the back window of my room. Smoking my cigarette in my usual manner, I stare down at the leather bounded journal which is open in my lap. As always, I fumble for a description of the morning. I enjoy the rise and fall of day, and this was not a new habit for me.
The wind was stealthy, pulling the hair back from my face with that shivering radiance which follows cold surprise. I begin to jot down my first thought.

The wind grows, first from the sky but now rising in the dirt of the ground, born to us as breathe. The soil is where, like all things, all things become life.

A mid September gust whirls above, dancing in the trees with invisible delight. I see past the oaks of my backyard, and onto the dirt road behind my house.
Two high school teenagers are walking home with heavy backpacks, stumbling in pants that hide their childish figures. All the while they balance the weight of their text books and shrug off the irritation with ease. They were still freshman. One of the boys hands the other his I-Pod.
“There is this program you can use to download any song you want,” he says to the other, a cold breeze hitting his face now with surprise. His cheeks burn under the brushing wind and his hair blows about.
From the corner of my room, I take my hair into a bun and exhale smoke through the window. I did not know these kids, and watching with less amusement, I inhale once more and continue to write.

You cannot see the wind, but you know it is there. You can see and feel the effects, how it brushes through your hair, moves throughout the town and cools your face. The breeze is now lost in the sky somewhere between clouds, forming the hues of sky above. A normal day in Colleyville, Texas has a sky of the brightest blue and is dotted with clouds as gauzy as the paintings a child could create. Hopelessly perfect.

I close my journal and lift the window pane open in full, staring now outward and squinting to see something form in those clouds. Maybe Mason’s face would form on those far but ascending gray sails in the sky.

I already miss him, and I enjoy retreating to my personal sorrow. In that personal place we love to spend our time, I observe how this was the only way to know that I was alone. Misery and I stare blankly down at our small town, a dull enchantment like someone’s sad reflection in a frozen riverbed, now reflects in my eyes.
That man I love was out there somewhere and I sighed at the walls of my room.

My parents are both downstairs and the television is now blaring noisily as is custom for loud and a disrespectful upbringing. I think of those clouds, feel the cold riverbed in the depth of my eyes and know he was already waiting for the night to arrive.

Stupid journal, looks like it is me and you again tonight. Let’s make something of it? I jot this down without much thought but a bitter hope, something to make the night worth living.
I hate being grounded. It was a wrapper that they found. How could Mason let a needle wrapper fall out of his pocket? I need to see him, I need something. 

Today the sky looks tainted with some sad and unspoken knowledge, it breathes onto the tireless sky and reveals that ageless gray which is peaking and is to watch over the town people in a circumspect way. The clouds tell me there will be rain.

I continue writing until rain starts to push me from the windowsill I sit upon. I close the red curtains against the cold and wet air.

Underneath the slight swell of sky, an edge of excitement rides on everyone’s mind in town. What would the night bring? The cryptic and guiltless minds that await the night are of an adolescent esurience.

These are my friends who hold their head up the highest, heavy sweatshirts and chains adorn them, each with a cap or bill worn and tilted with an angle, an affront. You don’t have to see them to know that they exist, waiting in their stalled cars with bass booming low. They are the young ones who penetrate the streets while they pass down the road, waiting to make their money or their name.

They are the young and callous faced men and women who haunt your alleyways and confine you with the terrors of that unlit street corner.

But this community is faceted with close knit neighborhood watches and police, all to guard the well built stores and restaurants that are made from stucco or brick. Callous and seasoned kids who are raised in empty estates may complain while they each grow up within wealth and convenience.

Our local high school was reputable and wealthy, without a tatter to memory and did well at sustaining the legacy. Our local school board has meetings twice a month to discuss the drug use at our school, and they speak together about at risk students and strange student behavior.

Luckily for me, my Senior English teacher was on this school board and new to our school district. Always an advocate against drug use, she now has a reason to bare her teeth and smile, and she did, each time I wrote a paper and smelled like cigarettes.

She was quite proud of her social work at Colleyville Heritage already, and it was mid September of the fall semester. Sadly I knew she was somewhat fond of me, but perhaps she did not know why I always wrote about the sun and stars, and wind. Percy Shelley explained it well the other day in class.

I am daydreaming now, reiterating points which dissolve like the rain outside my window. The humidity settles and I open my journal once more.

Tonight will be a cold and wet night, I can tell by the way the air is beginning to hang heavy in a sufferable fog. The wind is cold but now sticks to you like an afterthought, but as humid and foreign as someone else’s sweat on your face. A horse whip cracks from above and the sky throbs with the heavy clouds.
 Two cars are parked outside of Wendy’s drive through, their swisher house bass creeps out of their windows with the blunt smoke. I watch the new noise and smile, recognizing who they were.

I cannot see them anymore, but looks like another drug deal at our local Wendy’s. Who could it be? It has to be Bailey and his friend.

Once again I throw down my pen, but this time I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Who? Mike Jones!”
“Who?”
That anthem was new then.

A boy steps out of his silver beamer and pulls the hood of his red ecko sweater over his head. He shuts his car door quickly, running under the rain and handing two bills to the car parked beside him. His name was Brandon.

The wind was fierce, causing him to lose his balance and nearly topple to the wet pavement under his gangly feet and heavy denim. His clothes were soaking under the storm.

“Hey fool, there’s supposed to be a tornado watch for all Tarrant county,” he says while stooping his head into the window of a black escalade. He was nearly six foot five, but carried his height awkward so you would not notice.
“Me and my girl gotta get back to my place. I’m not staying out in this tonight,” Brandon says. There is a crackling flash of lightning above, and the the sky darkens. He stares at the driver.

The driver sits warmly, the heat blasting against the new leather of his car. His girlfriend sits beside him with a faint, wrinkled smile. She seemed spent. The driver of the car was dark skinned but non Hispanic, being absurdly tall himself and outweighing his new friend with hard arms wrought with twisted muscle. There was a strange look in his stare, it was a toughness that was bred through upbringing.

The light tan of Bailey's face glows under his chocolate eyes and black hair. He is known by everyone and sits well in that escalade, letting the heat blow on him. His friend stands in the storm outside the passenger window.

 He takes a drag off his blunt and hands it to the girl beside him. His gestures were slow and seamless. His car quiet and he exhales smoke slowly, letting each expression he cast belittle his friends and enemies with a careless motive.

 On his arm was a new watch and he was hoping Brandon would pay him a compliment. The hand of the clock moves while he leans further into the seat. Time was never hastening in his cruel and patient gaze. He looks at Brandon, his old friend from junior high, and studies that desperate face under the dark rain, the rain that grew heavier and ticking like a bomb.

“Get back in your car,” he says finally. “You are going to get us busted.” His girlfriend laughs with her full lips and cocks her head to the side.

“Yeah, seriously. What is your problem?” she takes a deep hit off the blunt and without a thought, passes back to her boyfriend. “Did you know it’s raining outside?” she laughs in her own exhale and is lost in smoke. Her beautiful jaw line and her thick lips were gone, now.

Brandon glares and feels the cold air again. He shivers a bit, and digs his hands into his wet pockets. Bailey stares at his friend and joins her laughter, inhaling the blunt and, coughing hard, he clears his throat. His eyes are red now, and he takes a slow moment to enjoy his new car, to sink back into his snug leather seat. Knowing his friend was jealous about it, his new car and his watch, he smiles. He knew Brandon never had money and would probably never own more than his late make beamer.

So he dismisses the silent argument he held in his head. “Shut up and stay out of this,” Bailey finally says. His cold and dark eyes address her privately.

The girl takes a look at the floor, that clean floorboard and smells the leather of the car. Her silent submission is what hangs her soft sloping neck, and now remembering what happened the night before, her thin arms ache. She had hid last night under her sweater. Her arm was stained with bruises, but they are darker this time. They are purple and black, these bloodless stains made both her and Jon Bailey cry when she undressed at night. When they made love.

It hurt worse this time, she thinks quietly to that clean floorboard. The painful bruise on her eye was nearly healed. A week ago she was arguing with him, but she dismisses the fight, only glad that her face was not colored in bruises now for having brought it back up last night.

Bailey continues to laugh but alone, and looks at the guy outside the passenger window, soaking in rain. “Seriously, did you hear me Brandon? Get back to your ride and take it easy. They will be here in about ten minutes, I just got off the phone. Get back in your car.”

Brandon turns away shaking his head. This tall and thin guy struggles through the rain, the puddles splash up onto his jeans and he shivers through the parking lot. He runs to his beamer, the wind hitting down on him just like the cold rain.

He sinks into his car and puts his trembling hands to the heat vents. His friend sat next to him and his girlfriend was settled comfortably in the backseat.

He looks at his best friend, a short and chubby blonde. His name was Kasey and right now he was staring at his phone. He had been chasing down an old memory for the past fifteen minutes. All day he was silent and in his head, he spun his broken wheels in an effort to put back together the pieces of an image.

The girl who wouldn’t answer his phone call, that girl he cared so much for- she kept each song for his lamentation, her name he couldn't help muttering along with every word he spoke. Each time he opened his mouth, he returned to her and spoke about her as if she were with him still. The radio unearthed his pity and every thought was wasted on what could have been said to her. He held the detached and out of focus gaze that was not idle nor in daydream.

Kasey was the one who kept quiet most of the time. When he spoke it was usually cruel and those harsh criticisms were best spoken when only the best of company could share in laughter and in shadow.

“You wouldn’t believe what I just had to deal with,” Brandon mumbles, and looks at Kasey. The radio is on again and he glares.

“Turn that shit down,” he continues, “man, what is up with you? You’ve been crying or something?”

Kasey wakes back up and flips his phone off. “Sorry, what’s up? Bailey can’t come through?” His eyes speak that he was trying very hard to be there.
 

Novel PT 3- Near End

NEAR THE END OF THE STORY...STORY LINE? About 6 Years after EXCERPT posted Before THIS ONE.


The back of his tool shed was met with wary eyes, and I didn’t want to recognize it under the sunrise of the prison yard. Morning was religiously quiet and the light that spoke of our incriminating weakness was in the eastern horizon with the palest of white rising under midnight and the glowing moon, the star light. It was dark when we breakfasted because night had yet to pass, and my appreciation for all that was could be admired with the others.

No numbers were called in the morning, and no headcount was made. This kept everyone feeling free. It was hard to feel that in a place where cold steel fenced you in. If you step away from the yellow line you walk on at all times, the condemning shot of a rifle will remind you of the guards on high fence posts watching.

It was real, they had to let us know with a pointed gun in the four corners of the barbed wire box. The trees were spray painted yellow to help aim in case of riot, and it reminds us that we were to walk and act according to an officer's mood swing.

Swine flu passed, and I let that go as I walk to the laundry room and get my daily set of whites. Whites were to be tucked into your pants which let the other prison satellites know we were from another unit. They said it was because we were specially assigned and it was a medical aided facility. I think about this and know I won’t have a seizure if I know I won’t have one.
Possibility dies in the brain, but that was later found in Hitler’s Meine Kamfe.

Apparent to me, this leader of leaders was female and human, and in every aspect she displays it. Her hateful reproach catches me in the shameful and tired defeat of the afternoon, when I am tired she will attack and it was a tiresome ache to know she was right. The painful shame I should feel. 


I remember speaking with Shane when innocent and years were not yet told. I was an eleven year old, staring into the sky and with a joy that needed no hope because it knew no sorrow.
He told me he would give me a star. That I was promised one star, closest to his he’d say.

I want the north star, I would say and smile at the moon beside it.  He kept saying I couldn’t have it because it was taken.

By Whom? I’d ask, wondering of it in the mindless skies.

He'd go ask his mother. I don’t remember, but I met her once at a family get together. 

Mom who is it? What’s the name of that chick who is…

I hear his mother speak to him as I wait on the other half of the phone. To his question there is a brief response, and Shane shines through the receiver.

Brandy. That’s Brandy’s star. And…Never mind, my star is over there where those lights are. You see them over in Steeplechase? You can over here in Churchill.
I could almost taste the air and feel the grass of my old home, but halt. The Guard begins her yelling drill.

I wake up from that memory, vivid like film on blind eyes. I look to the moon and stars, and a quiet sense of godless emptiness fills my heart and head. The weight of it all is burdened within my deep chest and I carry it with a light headed, despondent denial. To replace that empty affection with a new one would make Brandy the sun as well, to which I envied and grew paler with the moon over my head. Sometimes I still feel that way, without even a hum or echo, as I sit inside a house and reflect.
On my way to breakfast, I walk thoughtlessly and appreciate the dark shadows in the morning grass. I could not see the hooking barbed wire or the security marksman in post outside. The light of the kitchen and the smell of baking bread gives me a reason to look beyond the sky and back to my place.
Apprehensive and sometimes outpacing others in the line, walking in beat with the inmates in drilled precision, I let the idle and amusing thoughts die. The guard glowers and draws closer as we approach the whistling kitchen.

Under a black starlit canvas and the linear pale break of the dawning horizon, the fresh thought of freedom is placed on hills outside the fence post.
The countryside was broken and jagged, rising high into cliffs of dirt and cactus, begging to be enjoyed. The fenced yard closes in and the gunmen guard this freedom, so I knew sadness.
The female officer approaches me with a drill yell that is an awful pitchy scream. I think of her husband and imagine her life at home, as I step out of the inmate line. It was her usual way to be cruel, knowing there was no help for me as there was none for any. The other inmates are cold and walk past me, heads down and ashamed. I keep my chin up the way Matt reminded me, and remember the sad smile he gave before I arrived here, his glossy eyes warning me to be strong.

Other mornings I could walk without disturbance to the lunchroom. I’d think of the night and love on those mornings. Coffee was well with the latter, and about our menu there was some concurring joke between sex and food. I was hungry but only because I was without friends and couldn’t blindly negotiate a commissary pass from the scorn of my peer group.

Matt was there, I like to remember, walking beside me on days as I struggled to breakfast and kept the will to live. I drew from that a silent reverence of nature and at dark shadows hiding within the bristling trees, discovering my own mute and dismissive wonder at the maker of sky.

From the prison, my voice had the echo of someone else. It was a fabrication, false and empty. My thoughts became solitary and foreign, telling my original nature to dismiss the idea of love and light, to cover even my shadow with a self proclaimed shame to overshadow my denunciation. The strength of Matthew’s memory was just as quickly dismissed and twice the more a shame, as I step into the lunchroom.

First Half -Middle PT-Rough Draft 1

The night surrendered to deep conversation, while we whisper oaths and meaningless testaments until early morning.  Sitting beside my open window and listening to him talk, I would stare at the airport field just east of town.
I sat on my windowsill, quietly wondering how all those lights could be so close to me. Watching the planes take flight I could think about leaving the city forever. I knew that school would be starting in less than an hour. I had been restless since Mason called me, unfit for sleep and wanting so badly to climb from that window and leave my house forever.
The small bag was opened each hour, helping me lose myself in a world of disregard and anxious excitement, free but chained to the silent dark of my bedroom.

I kept this silent wake all night long, going into the closet and whispering my dull confessions to the only person who would listen. I couldn't let my footsteps betray me, or have the creaking floor board scream in the silence of the lifeless house. I felt the truth trapping me again as light started to lift in the dry of dawn. Refusing to let any noise tell of my sleepless night, I kept myself restrained, although my heart was racing and I minded my pacing steps with a keen awareness. Mason and I combated eachother with words that were better left unspoken, whispering our delight in the night.

 I could hear my father's snoring across the hall, and would be startled every time he stopped. Waiting for his nock on my door, his outburst, I kept looking back at the door while breaking lines onto my desk. But it never came and my mother never woke either. Instead, I held my phone and spoke softly to the man on the other line.

“We have to be in school within the next few hours. Are you okay?” I ask.

"What do you think?" he answers quietly. He looks out his window and at the crescent moon hanging above.

"You know I don't know what to think," I whisper into the receiver, huddling in the closet, furthest I could be from my anyone overhearing me. It would be a painful discord to an otherwise harmonious night.

"Are your parent's still asleep?" he asks me.

I wait for my response, and hear the snoring again. Dad was still asleep.
"Yeah, I wish I could leave already. I could be over there by now." My confession was low and bitter, but honest. I think about this truth I had hidden from my parents, these ideas and these drugs. The memories.

Mason was already getting dressed. It was hard to tell him that the future would be another memory, that this pain and these problems were not new to me.

 In the haunts of my dark room, I could silently recall the memories of youth. More bitter than his tears, my life whispers regret and nothing more.

“The news, Rachel. Have you seen the news yet?” he asks gravely. His hair falls over his right eye,  he pushes it back with annoyance and continues reading the obituary.

His mother had left early for work that day and Jamie was just now starting to shower. Family portraits hung outside his bedroom, but his father he could not remember. He knew his father a little, but there was not a single photograph.

I ask myself whether it was better to have made mistakes than to have been chained to a life you could not live in. Which was more painful? My head starts to ache, and I sigh.

 “No Mayson. I can’t turn on the television just yet. My parents are still asleep, and if they know I have been awake all night, they will lose their shit,” I whisper.

Every thought, every event- it was passing so quick and I felt so anxious about it, although nothing was important anymore. There was a long pause on the phone.

I could feel the distant silence, and knew there was something new to trouble him. It vexes him in a way that could be felt. I try to understand him. I couldn't explain my fear or his, but rub my aching forehead instead.

Feeling beaten I ask, “What is it? Please tell me. What did you see on the news?” My inquiries drill further, and curiously I walk to my window. The stars were fading into the light. I take a cigarette and spark it. The flame lights and he responds finally.

“You will see for yourself soon enough. Something bad is about to happen, and I am afraid to go to school today,” he whispers in his dark way. I knew he was not betraying any emotion, which was an alarm.
 Across town, the memories and the pain haunt him in solitude. The ideas of a void existence and chains worse than the past now torture him from within.
He sparks a cigarette as well, and lets his mind sort out the truth. His truth was to find a way through the dark and confusing night. He wouldn't be trapped again, he confirms to himself.
Through desertion or deliverance, he would arrive one day. With fragrant lips I had touched with mine, his confidence trembles. There is more silence.
He shuts the computer down and turns the television off, it softly hummed through the night. He goes outside and let's the cold air hit the tears on his face. With a deep breathe, he inhales the fresh morning air and swallows the ache, now nesting in his chest. He takes his time smoking and burying his tears.

“Just tell me, Mason. What is going on? I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to you. There is nothing to be afraid of,” I say.
Soothing him in quiet murmurs, he listens and knows this. I am hoping my parents would not wake up.

His shame was not shared, he realizes. He knew I would not understand, and like light dividing day from night, he knew I did not carry the burdens he wishes to share. I could not help, he knew.

He goes to the tool shed outside his house, and feels more alone now for it.
“Who said I was going to need your help? I am not a fool, Rachel. Don’t fucking kid yourself. I just want you to turn the news on Channel 8, just so you will have a chance."
"A chance for what?" I laugh. "You try so hard to intimidate me. What a joke," I confess.

In the shed behind his house he listens carefully, nods while fixing his needle. "Ok fine. But before you pick me up for school, you better watch the televison." He takes the needle to his arm and breaks the skin without pain.
 "Now do you promise?” he asks, now warm and letting the comfort erase the pain.

I take my small bag into my hand, in the closet and unearth an old capsule. Dark and brown, sticky like dark honey and molasses.
 “Yes, I can be at your house. I’ll pick you up for school like usual. Please tell me what’s on your mind?”
My soft voice stung him, touched him in a way that hurt.
 “Trust me, Rachel. You don’t want to know. Trust me. Pick me up on time, though." He smiles and walks back to the house, wondering why he cared either. He hated his first period teacher.
He goes inside and I hear his brother ask him something. He walks back to his room. He doesn't notice the television or the highschool being broadcasted.

"Make sure you watch the news. I will call you in two hours. It’s just," he pauses, and his brother pushes his shoulder to the television. The newscast was on again. Jamie turns the volume down and turns to his brother, cold and scared.

"The police are outside, on the left down bayberry by Ashley's house. But I guarantee they aren't watching her," his brother whispers and I barely move. I wanted to leave. To be there with them both.

"Oh Rachel. It’s just that things are getting worse. Not better. I know you know what I mean. Just turn on the news, I can’t talk anymore." He feels his eyes sting. "I hope you understand. See you at 7:30. Be on time for once.” With that, he clicks the phone before I can hear him.
In his room, he holds his head and starts to cry. Jamie does, too.

I wish I could hold him, I think. I sit up from my closet, and turn the light off. I fall into my bed, and set my alarm. It was time to keep my eyes closed, so that my parents could open my door before leaving for work. They needed to see me asleep, so I would feign sleep for the next hour. But my mind wondered over the conversation I just had.

Mason is in his room now, smoking from his small pipe and listening to music. The high kept him from crying, but he was only half aware now. He felt free from what he was hiding. Old photographs of Stephen Lawson were spread across the floor. The last needle he used, the needle that caused his best friend's death sits on his table now. He cried a bit earlier, but is glad that Rachel couldn’t hear it.

Meanwhile, I wait and listen to the familiar sound of my family waking and rising with the new day.
Inside my dark room I close my eyes, blinded by my impatience. I wait longer and let my heart pound like a funeral drum. Feigning sleep is so hard. I wish I could just be awake. It was painful to think about anything other than Mason or my highschool, without devising a plan or feeling uncomfortable. People were now starting to avoid me. I told myself to not care, but without making sound or sense with the silent room, it was hard not to.

I lie still and sleepless with closed eyes as Mother opens the door to check how my night had been spent. She opens the door and flicks on the light in the most invasive way, so my inner actor rose and made a groaning implication of being roused. My bed sheets a fall to the floor and I pretend to wake up.

The door shut quickly, too quickly. I knew now that she had heard me awake that night, and perhaps my performance made her angrier still. In the small hallway upstairs and beside my door, Mother has her a quick canter with my father.
Her deep voice is followed by the short and clipping response of my Father’s falsetto. There was a deep inclination of a secret intelligence to what I would carelessly deny.

“I don’t know what to do with her. As long as she goes to school,” my Father echoes while walking down the stairs for coffee and his car keys. He looked into the cabinet, before he left, beside the china and plates. His diabetic syringes had been untouched. But he looks closer and observes on his own that the small needles hadn’t been used.
“It isn’t heroin, then” he mumbles with a relief, and goes to the door.

 “Alright, see you at work,” he turns to my mother and they kiss briefly before he leaves.

However he hated to admit this, Father and I both knew how he left several clean syringes for me in the stale cupboard. He knew you could not stop someone. However that was mother’s governing rule to do and oversee. He felt it best to not encourage drug use, yet quietly kept his syringes out for me in case I would need them. He hated to think of me sharing a needle because I could not use his.

It was a way of silent sympathy, just as my mother would leave me money on the dining room table. She knew I would not buy food with it.

The air was low and sweet morning dew added a taste to the air. Cool but without wind, and the sun not yet risen from it’s bed on the east horizon, the day was unbroken and beautiful for my father.

Dad sits in his ridiculed Lincoln and drives through the small town, thinking more about social problems with work than his daughter’s growing resentment. He turns onto the highway, the sun peaking low with pale light in the gray sky where airplanes began flight.

At least his eldest daughter was doing well, and he kept that small gratitude with him and within his head, to quiet any stirring reproaches of his fatherhood.

Instead, he thought of the joke he would forward to his friend before work began. Smiling, the music on the radio lulled him into the daydreams of comfort as he drove to work. His dreams at night were always imageless and of empty terror.

My mother is still downstairs when I dare stir from my bedcovers. The oppression of sound made my pulse quicken with the guilt and urgency. I take the prints and patterns torn from magazine and fabrics off the floor, knowing that interior design class would be expecting my presentation that afternoon.

 The vibrant and amusing classmates listened to my tales of scheme and secret lavishing as we would work on projects. If my throat were parched, or my eyes dilated without explanation, they would bemuse and love my affliction before asking if I suffered the woes.

Who Made New Orleans Cool?

I am supposed to visit this famous house. Maybe I should toilet paper it. :)

Writer's Block and Writing

 The sold recognition
and an unrecognized word, something of desire and pain.
I could write it down but it is absurd with no one to read in vain.
I am too busy with myself to notice there is nothing left.
The hours pass and so do the people,
and I bring an old memory to every new conversation.
It is pointless, these blogs are never read.
This is just a mirror, and your reflection was better.
Can I have that one instead?
To make this point broken, I break and am pretending
with dawn to rise

***I don't know what the hell that was, but i'm keeping some of it. it hurt too.