I think people went through and cleaned house while I was away busting balls on the site but to each his own. No point in bitchin'. I might've done the same. Or not, I'm lazy.
Things go well and spring break nears an end. I had to tap into the tattoo collection fund for insurance again so it's back at zero. So sad. I need a jar to just put bills in like a barkeep. Set it up at work. Speaking I left the bookstore to help manage a video store. It was an hours issue more than anything.
Cyanide's love letter contest's deadline approaches, so enter before it's too late.
And now a story for your crying pleasure. It's currently making the rounds seeking publication.
Tempest of Guilt
by nicholas steven campbell
I can taste the dirt of her step as the farm road disappears underneath the tires of the thirty year old el dorado her father gave us as an engagement present, because we had no form of transportation of our own to cross the great plains of the lone star sky. Cotton fields unfold like origami cranes alongside the path we blazed across the horizon, but appearing to be snow covering the land that never fell and never melted.
She would stop and collect a handful of snowflakes in her hand and present it to me as a gift and a reminder and now it hangs from the rear-view mirror with the same grace and dexterity it possessed when she first passed it along to me, to remind me that I was something special to her. Something unpolished, but untainted.
A country heart born to a city of decay and running the streets with soleless shoes until I stole a pair and landed a job so I could save for schooling, a dream she inspired before I even thought that I was capable of such a feat. But now I drive in our car with a streamer of heartstrings and musical notes pouring through the windows and trailing as we speed towards a home once forgotten in the transition. Each word spoken and each note played a message she speaks to me from a distance that I can't see.
I light a cigarette, a habit I only picked up again when she was gone, inhale as much as I can in one breath and exhale the smoke. Her face appears in the splash of gray air on the windshield before disappearing out the driver's window, but not without a kiss. These are the few moments that make me understand the pain of distance without being able to see it.
Behind me, in the dust, over the skyline, and buried in a town miles from a life we knew, sits a landfill of human bodies decorated with headstones and crypts. A splurge of money for those who felt the didn't spend enough in life and had to wait till death to waste even more, but each tombstone burns a path across the green wilderness and leads to her bed underneath a tree dug in the echo of night.
Every Sunday when the caretaker puts flowers on all the graves so that none of the souls feel neglected, he passes hers unaware that she's sleeping between the wealthy who paid an extra buck for the shade of the tree. I can't plant flowers or even leave any because he'll notice so I bring bird seed and leave it at the base, so the birds will visit her. She always liked crows or anything black with wings. They have a majesty to them that kings and queens will never possess.
When I'm spreading seed around the base the wind seems to blow strongest and push the branches down around the tree like a birdcage to onlookers, but I know it's her reaching out to hug me with the only thing she can. I never see anyone there when I'm out, but every time I return to the car to make the tearful trip home there's a postcard hugging the windshield underneath the windshield wiper. The image of an abandoned gas station one week. The mountains on the plains of the Texas frontier the next. Always a different reminder.
I have a shoe box in the passenger seat, buckled in place with all the cards I've found since the first time I visited. The box sits with her same attitude and sometimes when I look over into the passenger seat, I see her hair flapping in the wind with the words she'd whisper and her hand surfing the air current next to the side mirror. Eventually, paint made its way on to the box lid and other reminders, such as magazine short stories and shirt patterns I think she'd have enjoyed.
Unfortunately, or fortunately as it will become, the box is getting too full and I'll have to find another and I'll probably have to move them to the trunk after three years and seven shoes boxes. They'll be able to sit with the other boxes that already line the floor boards with the notes we shared and stories we wrote each other while the other was studying in the next room for a midterm or working late at the restaurant trying to make the extra money to pay for the electric bill.
She once wrote a story about how the stars would fall to the ground and cause a panic the world over like the coming of an alien invasion, but with less reason behind it. These stars would raise the temperature of the world and upset the natural balance setting of tidal waves that would suffocate cities and countries, but when we saw the one heading for our house in the Great Rain she'd walk out onto the deck with me to watch the beautiful spectacle of Monet colors hurling towards us. Just before we were killed she'd take my hand and whisper I love you.
But those were just stories, because if the stars actually fall she won't be able to enjoy the sights with me, and I'll probably take a gun out to the deck with me to fire a few rounds into the star before putting one to my temple to make sure I didn't suffer through the incineration. Plus I'd be by her side seconds before my body fries, melts, and turns to dust to be spread across the ocean by the winds with a eulogy tucked between the leaves. Sometimes I consider doing it before the stars fall, but I now she would object and I'm in not in the business of disappointing the one person I ever loved with half the heart I possess. I don't want to be a postcard moment for her. I want her to hold up one of the stars and say that's you and me burning worlds with our love.
I open the top of the box in the passenger's seat and look at the top card on each stack, three stacks lining the base. The card in my hand recently freed from the windshield wiper's grasp stares back at me with a picture of a little girl with pink ribbons in her hair flapping towards a tree in the background. She's holding a balloon the color of developing sky purple and wears a party hat decorated in polka dots of yellow on a violet base, waving and smiling to her mother and father.
The message stood on the paper and raised a riot until it was known while the car speeds along unaware of the missing weight of her grace. I drop the postcard back into the box having seen the life that should have been, and pick up the second trying to read the million words that every picture captures in its cage. The words flow effortlessly into the cavity that holds the birdcage that once held a heart. The melting sky in the background picked from my memories of sitting on the roof and sharing tales we could create for each other in under five minutes before mosquitoes bit and the joints stands behind the ferris wheel where a couple lays into each other at the peak.
On top of the world and only enjoying the simple pleasures of it for the five minutes that it would last, isn't that what being there is about? I put the second down and look at the road unfolding and sun descending into darkness with the colors of vibrant fish swimming behind it. Picking up the third card, tears dry in the corners and build up like a tropical storm out to sea and no one sees the beauty except those trained to identify it, but sometimes they get lost in the terror of its power.
The third card features a parched blue sky stripped of clouds while a murder of crows formers a Rorschach blot easily identified as profession and emotional investment. Glance at the road to see it disappear and flick the filter of the cigarette long dead between fingers. Looking back only reminds me of the symbols and words begin to form in the groves like a love letter written posthumous. I drop it into the seat and put the cover back on the box. Those three will go into a photo album of my fondest memories of her.
I pull the pack of cigarettes off the dash and fish a slender stick out of the crumpled plastic, using the car lighter to bring life to it. The initial smoke dances the wedding tradition without looking for approval and a sigh from my lips sends it towards the windshield to highlight a sign saying that home is only twenty minutes away. I inhale and close my eyes, I want to be able to see her when she appears in the smoke, exhale and open. My lungs fill the familiar warmth of a hand disappear, but the mind says it's still there, because the face is.
Like a poison, the smoke takes its time before vaporizing and leaving me shivering in the spine and boots. I repeat the process for another ten minutes, the death certificate for the sun of the evening signed and approved. Lights at the edge of town try to warm the bones with their halogen glow and human touch, but it possess too much control and not enough natural chaos that the naked eye can distinguish for it to be of any comfort to the traveler looking for home to seep into his skin.
There's a comfort in places we can call home. We seek them out and try to build them so that we don't fall victims to Maslow's Hierarchy of Inadequate Lives, but what do we do when we know that the thing we seek lies buried deep beneath the surface of grass under a tree in a cemetery holding on to our dreams that were redefined to incorporate what we found? Do we start the quest over again to see if there's a second, like we are the fortunate one or do we try to go on without it?
A twist of fate or psychological flexibility changes things forever and they don't like to be confined into a box for daisies to sprout out of while worms drill through it. Mistakes are made in those few vulnerable moments when you've had too much alcohol or talked to an ex-lover who did something to infuriate you such as call to tell you it's your baby she'll be birthing when you haven't seen her in two years. It shouldn't be an excuse, but you hear it, speak it.
I find comfort in the pain, knowing I'm suffering, because of what I had done and where she'd gone. All the efforts she made to calm the tempers and soothe the gods that spoke with a bitter tongue, faded in one night of maybe a possible ten throughout our relationship. Nothing came of the storm. The house still stood, but it was the beginning of the end, where the real story begins. Guilt rots the fondest memories and warps the truth, the guilty walk using canes with red tips to act as feelers. They no longer hold onto their sight.
The wheels squeal as I turn into the driveway in front of the house, the light still on in the kitchen from when I left in the dark cover of morning. I tuck the postcards in my pocket and head in doors, towards the living room to fetch the photo album from underneath the couch. I set the cards down on the table to flip through the memories, but they're no longer the same. All cards in black and white, the first a lynched child in a dead tree, the second an abandoned ferris wheel, the third a caged bird that screams. Thoughts of everything I should have done fill my head crowding it like a churched, the spirits of the dead stuck in purgatory, the spirits of the living stuck on Earth forced together under one roof with no room to breathe without catching the soul of the person next to you in your lungs. It'll gather there and torment you with the same annoyance of water in the lung, waiting to rot.
She says it wasn't my fault, wrote a letter about how she hated to fly and admired the birds for having to live a life that required it. Ostriches and chickens didn't count, because they were gimped. The night before every flight she would write a letter just in case while I slept, then we'd rotate duties and I would drive while she slept, dictating emotions and soothing words into a tape recorder for her to listen to while flying so she wouldn't make the gentleman in the seat next to hers skin crawl down his leg and out the emergency hatch. She flew to New York for me to attend publisher's meeting since I was sick, but when she returned she had to take a cab, because I had driven down to Houston to meet with my agent. The driver, taking advantage of the situation, took her inside, split her apart at the legs, and cut her off at the throat. I pulled in as he was leaving the house wiping the blood stains on his shirt. I cracked the pillar on the porch, the pillar I built for her, fragments piercing his skull. I left him impaled, blood and juice pouring out the side of his clenched teeth held open by a fragment through the base to his eye.
The police didn't press charges after I gave my testimony and now I don't leave the house unless it's to drive two hours to the cemetery to spread birdseed at the base of a tree, because I sit here comfortable and pining. Between her and the stars she sought.
Things go well and spring break nears an end. I had to tap into the tattoo collection fund for insurance again so it's back at zero. So sad. I need a jar to just put bills in like a barkeep. Set it up at work. Speaking I left the bookstore to help manage a video store. It was an hours issue more than anything.
Cyanide's love letter contest's deadline approaches, so enter before it's too late.
And now a story for your crying pleasure. It's currently making the rounds seeking publication.
Tempest of Guilt
by nicholas steven campbell
I can taste the dirt of her step as the farm road disappears underneath the tires of the thirty year old el dorado her father gave us as an engagement present, because we had no form of transportation of our own to cross the great plains of the lone star sky. Cotton fields unfold like origami cranes alongside the path we blazed across the horizon, but appearing to be snow covering the land that never fell and never melted.
She would stop and collect a handful of snowflakes in her hand and present it to me as a gift and a reminder and now it hangs from the rear-view mirror with the same grace and dexterity it possessed when she first passed it along to me, to remind me that I was something special to her. Something unpolished, but untainted.
A country heart born to a city of decay and running the streets with soleless shoes until I stole a pair and landed a job so I could save for schooling, a dream she inspired before I even thought that I was capable of such a feat. But now I drive in our car with a streamer of heartstrings and musical notes pouring through the windows and trailing as we speed towards a home once forgotten in the transition. Each word spoken and each note played a message she speaks to me from a distance that I can't see.
I light a cigarette, a habit I only picked up again when she was gone, inhale as much as I can in one breath and exhale the smoke. Her face appears in the splash of gray air on the windshield before disappearing out the driver's window, but not without a kiss. These are the few moments that make me understand the pain of distance without being able to see it.
Behind me, in the dust, over the skyline, and buried in a town miles from a life we knew, sits a landfill of human bodies decorated with headstones and crypts. A splurge of money for those who felt the didn't spend enough in life and had to wait till death to waste even more, but each tombstone burns a path across the green wilderness and leads to her bed underneath a tree dug in the echo of night.
Every Sunday when the caretaker puts flowers on all the graves so that none of the souls feel neglected, he passes hers unaware that she's sleeping between the wealthy who paid an extra buck for the shade of the tree. I can't plant flowers or even leave any because he'll notice so I bring bird seed and leave it at the base, so the birds will visit her. She always liked crows or anything black with wings. They have a majesty to them that kings and queens will never possess.
When I'm spreading seed around the base the wind seems to blow strongest and push the branches down around the tree like a birdcage to onlookers, but I know it's her reaching out to hug me with the only thing she can. I never see anyone there when I'm out, but every time I return to the car to make the tearful trip home there's a postcard hugging the windshield underneath the windshield wiper. The image of an abandoned gas station one week. The mountains on the plains of the Texas frontier the next. Always a different reminder.
I have a shoe box in the passenger seat, buckled in place with all the cards I've found since the first time I visited. The box sits with her same attitude and sometimes when I look over into the passenger seat, I see her hair flapping in the wind with the words she'd whisper and her hand surfing the air current next to the side mirror. Eventually, paint made its way on to the box lid and other reminders, such as magazine short stories and shirt patterns I think she'd have enjoyed.
Unfortunately, or fortunately as it will become, the box is getting too full and I'll have to find another and I'll probably have to move them to the trunk after three years and seven shoes boxes. They'll be able to sit with the other boxes that already line the floor boards with the notes we shared and stories we wrote each other while the other was studying in the next room for a midterm or working late at the restaurant trying to make the extra money to pay for the electric bill.
She once wrote a story about how the stars would fall to the ground and cause a panic the world over like the coming of an alien invasion, but with less reason behind it. These stars would raise the temperature of the world and upset the natural balance setting of tidal waves that would suffocate cities and countries, but when we saw the one heading for our house in the Great Rain she'd walk out onto the deck with me to watch the beautiful spectacle of Monet colors hurling towards us. Just before we were killed she'd take my hand and whisper I love you.
But those were just stories, because if the stars actually fall she won't be able to enjoy the sights with me, and I'll probably take a gun out to the deck with me to fire a few rounds into the star before putting one to my temple to make sure I didn't suffer through the incineration. Plus I'd be by her side seconds before my body fries, melts, and turns to dust to be spread across the ocean by the winds with a eulogy tucked between the leaves. Sometimes I consider doing it before the stars fall, but I now she would object and I'm in not in the business of disappointing the one person I ever loved with half the heart I possess. I don't want to be a postcard moment for her. I want her to hold up one of the stars and say that's you and me burning worlds with our love.
I open the top of the box in the passenger's seat and look at the top card on each stack, three stacks lining the base. The card in my hand recently freed from the windshield wiper's grasp stares back at me with a picture of a little girl with pink ribbons in her hair flapping towards a tree in the background. She's holding a balloon the color of developing sky purple and wears a party hat decorated in polka dots of yellow on a violet base, waving and smiling to her mother and father.
The message stood on the paper and raised a riot until it was known while the car speeds along unaware of the missing weight of her grace. I drop the postcard back into the box having seen the life that should have been, and pick up the second trying to read the million words that every picture captures in its cage. The words flow effortlessly into the cavity that holds the birdcage that once held a heart. The melting sky in the background picked from my memories of sitting on the roof and sharing tales we could create for each other in under five minutes before mosquitoes bit and the joints stands behind the ferris wheel where a couple lays into each other at the peak.
On top of the world and only enjoying the simple pleasures of it for the five minutes that it would last, isn't that what being there is about? I put the second down and look at the road unfolding and sun descending into darkness with the colors of vibrant fish swimming behind it. Picking up the third card, tears dry in the corners and build up like a tropical storm out to sea and no one sees the beauty except those trained to identify it, but sometimes they get lost in the terror of its power.
The third card features a parched blue sky stripped of clouds while a murder of crows formers a Rorschach blot easily identified as profession and emotional investment. Glance at the road to see it disappear and flick the filter of the cigarette long dead between fingers. Looking back only reminds me of the symbols and words begin to form in the groves like a love letter written posthumous. I drop it into the seat and put the cover back on the box. Those three will go into a photo album of my fondest memories of her.
I pull the pack of cigarettes off the dash and fish a slender stick out of the crumpled plastic, using the car lighter to bring life to it. The initial smoke dances the wedding tradition without looking for approval and a sigh from my lips sends it towards the windshield to highlight a sign saying that home is only twenty minutes away. I inhale and close my eyes, I want to be able to see her when she appears in the smoke, exhale and open. My lungs fill the familiar warmth of a hand disappear, but the mind says it's still there, because the face is.
Like a poison, the smoke takes its time before vaporizing and leaving me shivering in the spine and boots. I repeat the process for another ten minutes, the death certificate for the sun of the evening signed and approved. Lights at the edge of town try to warm the bones with their halogen glow and human touch, but it possess too much control and not enough natural chaos that the naked eye can distinguish for it to be of any comfort to the traveler looking for home to seep into his skin.
There's a comfort in places we can call home. We seek them out and try to build them so that we don't fall victims to Maslow's Hierarchy of Inadequate Lives, but what do we do when we know that the thing we seek lies buried deep beneath the surface of grass under a tree in a cemetery holding on to our dreams that were redefined to incorporate what we found? Do we start the quest over again to see if there's a second, like we are the fortunate one or do we try to go on without it?
A twist of fate or psychological flexibility changes things forever and they don't like to be confined into a box for daisies to sprout out of while worms drill through it. Mistakes are made in those few vulnerable moments when you've had too much alcohol or talked to an ex-lover who did something to infuriate you such as call to tell you it's your baby she'll be birthing when you haven't seen her in two years. It shouldn't be an excuse, but you hear it, speak it.
I find comfort in the pain, knowing I'm suffering, because of what I had done and where she'd gone. All the efforts she made to calm the tempers and soothe the gods that spoke with a bitter tongue, faded in one night of maybe a possible ten throughout our relationship. Nothing came of the storm. The house still stood, but it was the beginning of the end, where the real story begins. Guilt rots the fondest memories and warps the truth, the guilty walk using canes with red tips to act as feelers. They no longer hold onto their sight.
The wheels squeal as I turn into the driveway in front of the house, the light still on in the kitchen from when I left in the dark cover of morning. I tuck the postcards in my pocket and head in doors, towards the living room to fetch the photo album from underneath the couch. I set the cards down on the table to flip through the memories, but they're no longer the same. All cards in black and white, the first a lynched child in a dead tree, the second an abandoned ferris wheel, the third a caged bird that screams. Thoughts of everything I should have done fill my head crowding it like a churched, the spirits of the dead stuck in purgatory, the spirits of the living stuck on Earth forced together under one roof with no room to breathe without catching the soul of the person next to you in your lungs. It'll gather there and torment you with the same annoyance of water in the lung, waiting to rot.
She says it wasn't my fault, wrote a letter about how she hated to fly and admired the birds for having to live a life that required it. Ostriches and chickens didn't count, because they were gimped. The night before every flight she would write a letter just in case while I slept, then we'd rotate duties and I would drive while she slept, dictating emotions and soothing words into a tape recorder for her to listen to while flying so she wouldn't make the gentleman in the seat next to hers skin crawl down his leg and out the emergency hatch. She flew to New York for me to attend publisher's meeting since I was sick, but when she returned she had to take a cab, because I had driven down to Houston to meet with my agent. The driver, taking advantage of the situation, took her inside, split her apart at the legs, and cut her off at the throat. I pulled in as he was leaving the house wiping the blood stains on his shirt. I cracked the pillar on the porch, the pillar I built for her, fragments piercing his skull. I left him impaled, blood and juice pouring out the side of his clenched teeth held open by a fragment through the base to his eye.
The police didn't press charges after I gave my testimony and now I don't leave the house unless it's to drive two hours to the cemetery to spread birdseed at the base of a tree, because I sit here comfortable and pining. Between her and the stars she sought.
ink:
Oh how I would love her to visit my area. She would get such an ass kicking... but wasting money on her so she could fly down isnt the best solution..... the best solution is to drive up to see her... beat her ass in her hometown and then spend time in her city and shop.. lol
ink:
haha ya that would be good.. but her face might break the camera lense... haha oooooooo so old school