It’s a funny thing, inspiration. It’s that feeling that I could be something more, that I could really make something of myself. I love it, I crave it, and yet it always disappears within hours.

This life that I live is amazing. I have a beautiful fiancee, two awesome dogs, a cat, and a home that is mine. (Okay, ours.) Yet occasionally I get this image of a life that is beyond. Of a kitchen that is mine and mine alone. Of dishes, desserts, and just a cacophony of memories and dreams.

I don’t know when, or if, I will reach that dream. But when I think of it, I feel empowered. I will make it through another day. I will continue to dream. And I will try to find that magical place, where I can just focus on my passion.

If I don’t try, then what is the point?

I’m visiting here from Bassett Nebraska and I’ve got to say, this city is wonderful.

I’ve never seen so many people before, and it’s exhilarating every time I go out in the streets to wander. The press of people upon my mind, the sounds of cars, and the general smell of a city delight the senses. Everything around me feels alive.

Just last week I would have to drive an hour to go see a movie. Now it takes a short cab ride and I can see the latest plays, movies, comedy, and concerts. My hotel room is small, but there are so many things to do here that it doesn’t matter. I find myself wishing I didn’t have to go back.

As I pass a man on the street, I pour out my feelings. I gush about my excitement, the general atmosphere.

With glazed eyes he stares at me, shocked beyond belief that anybody would mention it. When he speaks, he only has three words.

“Fuck off. Tourists…”

He walks away shaking his head but I am undeterred.

I love New York.

Jak awoke, breathing in the air and reveling in the prospect of another day in paradise. He hit his alarm the moment it started to ring, pleased with himself for another day of getting up a few minutes early.

As he got dressed, Jak thought of all he had to do today. The solar panels would need cleaned, the satellite dish needed to be repositioned, and trash needed to go out to the curb. He still found himself delighted by the fact that he no longer needed to do any yard work, a direct result of a condition that came about when he turned twenty-four.

That condition? Living on Mars.

Jak’s morning routine was short and sweet. He got dressed, brushed his teeth, snagged a piece of toast and sat down in his lazy chair to read. Before he could get past the first page however, a small round face peeked over the arm of his chair.

Jak feigned disappointment at the distraction as he tousled his daughter’s hair. No matter the problem, and there weren’t many anymore, she could always cheer him up. He sometimes wished she had been born on Earth, to cheer him up through the strife that had characterized his relatively short time on that planet. In any case, she was here now and would be a pain in his side for years to come.

Today, though, she looked puzzled. It was like she was mulling over a problem, and Jak found it adorable.

“What’s up, sweetie?”

She still had that look of confusion on her face, and Jak almost thought it was nothing until she finally found the words.

“Daddy, what’s that blue dot in the sky?”

Jak sighed. Sometimes it was still hard to let the memories of Earth go.

“That blue dot in the sky is called, ‘Earth’. We used to live there, but we must never go back.”

“Why?”

Jak smiled, pulling his daughter up into his lap.

“Because sometimes, you need to leave things behind. The Earth was broken, sweetie, and some very brave people brought me and your mother here. And we are very thankful, because it’s thanks to those people that we could have everything we ever wanted.”

“Like what daddy?”

Jak found his eyes welling with tears as he held his daughter close.

“Like you, Mal.”

I find it odd how sometimes, I am skilled. I am accomplished. I’ve made something, whether it be food, code, a smile, a moment. My heart swells, and I feel complete.

It doesn’t come too often. But maybe I’m a half-glass-empty kind of guy.

My natural state is bumbling about, failing left and right and somehow pulling a functional human being out of it. I forget. I lose things. I break things. And life somehow goes on. Maybe it’s a side effect of being human; those moments of clarity only come occasionally. The natural state is failure, and success occasionally rises like a phoenix from the ashes.

I look at all I’m blessed to have. I have a house. I have a beautiful fiancee. I have a dog, a car, a stable job. I can cook a pie like nobody’s business. My life is pretty good. Not perfect, but close. And yet, that failure nags.

Sometimes, it’s easy. Sometimes it’s hard. I suppose, not matter my mental state, the results speak for themselves. Comparing what I am to what I used to be, I see the progress.

I just need to keep that in mind.

“Well, now we’re here.”

“I always thought the last monster would be more… Well, I figured it would more clearly be a monster.

“I mean, you get what you get.”

Steve sat in the darkness, watching the heroes bicker. The darkness surrounded him always, for reasons Steve had never been able to figure out. Occasionally one of the heroes gestured over towards him as they decided what to do.

“Hey guys? Maybe you could just dispel the darkness around me. I’m not scary, I swear.”

Steve felt good about his lie. He didn’t actually know what he looked like. He knew that he had the same number of limbs as these folks, and was only a little taller than one of the people, and eye level with the second. He squinted at the short one, trying to figure out what was on its head. It looked like little black blades of grass peeking out of its skull, going all the way down the creature’s back. The other’s was shorter. Perplexed, he felt at his own head. Nothing.

Maybe I am terrifying.

The heroes continued chatting. The short one’s plan seemed to be to fire an arrow in the dead center of the darkness. The tall one did not like this plan, however, for reasons Steve couldn’t quite make out. He inched slightly closer.

“Agh!”

The tall one jumped backwards, which elicited a snort from the short one.

“Hey Jack, you really are jumping at shadows now.”

“Shut up Ann.”

The two, suitably unafraid, continued to go back and forth. Steve finally caught a hint of what the tall one, Jack, was saying. Jack wanted to look the monster in the eyes before he would fight him.

Ann seemed to find the idea ridiculous. Finally they seemed to make a decision. Ann pulled some device from her belt and pointed it at Steve, hitting a switch. Their eyes widened, pupils dilating in fear. Just as quick as the light came on, Ann switched it off.

“Hey guys, try one more time. I wasn’t ready.”

Steve’s suggestion fell on deaf ears as the Ann dropped the device and both heroes ran.

Walking up to the device, Steve took it in his hands and sat on the cold ground. He shook his head, feeling rejected. Finally, he started talking to nobody.

“They didn’t even want to kill me. I guess I really am worthless.”

Sad, cold, and in the dark, Steve Buschemi lay on his side and tried to go to sleep.

I met her when I was in a dark place.

The girl before her had died. Suicide. I still can’t even think of it without gripping whatever is close and hyperventilating for a moment. She was there, though, to help me get through it. I allowed myself to hope again. I allowed myself to dream.

Still, the thoughts come, unbidden and intrusive. What if she’s not the one? I shake those thoughts out of my mind as they come, but still the question remains like a phantom in the back of my mind. She’s not the nicest. She’s not the best with my family. She’s not the emphatic, relatable person that Allison was. But I love her still.

It’s funny to think about the first time my family met her. Allison had been gone for a month when I turned up to family dinner with Kacey in tow. My mother gave me her signature look, raised eyebrows and all. My father didn’t say a word to Kacey. My little brother went on about high school, I went on about college, and my parents hardly said three sentences between each of them. Steak had never tasted so bitter before.

I can’t help but smirk as I think of that.

Last week we went to the movies, followed by her favorite restaurant. The movie was fine; it’s always fine when there’s no reason to speak to each other. Dinner, though… Sitting face to face brings out the hope. The reason I believed. I’d never been with a girl that would split the check. Even Allison. As we walk to the parking garage my hand slips into hers naturally, like it was meant to be there. For a half hour I am happy.

Then we get back to our home. She moved in shortly after her first dinner with my family. When she’s asleep or away I wonder how it would work if we were to break up. What happens when you cosign on a house together? Who does it go to? Maybe I’m just planning for what will surely happen eventually. Maybe I’m just being silly. All I can think of is my thoughts when Allison was with me. I didn’t wonder how the breakup would go. I knew that in the event that she left me I would move somewhere else, maybe California or Massachusetts. In her final act she had robbed me of that decision. So I stayed here, where I grew up. Where my family was from. Where I was safe.

Sometimes it was easy to forget where Kacey had come from. Sometimes she wouldn’t let me forget. Through it all, though, it’s impossible to forget where we started.

We met each other in a dark place. And I feel some responsibility to make whatever place we leave in a better place that the one we met in.

Part one here.

Jackson  thought once more of those five damning words. What’s in it for me? His partner would remember it, if he were alive. As it was, his partner was swinging from a meat hook in a slaughterhouse somewhere, a bullet firmly planted in his brain. Michael had always been the man with the plan, the man who made Jackson’s grand schemes work. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

But it had.

Jackson’s head was covered with a velvet sack, his hands held together with a zip tie. The vehicle they had shoved him into seemed to hit every pothole on the way out of the slum.

That’s probably on purpose. 

Jackson shook his head. Even if he knew where that slaughterhouse had been, what would be the point in going back? Michael was dead, and that wouldn’t change. Maybe Jackson could have gone back for the body, but he couldn’t even begin to think of who he would bring it to. Michael had always been tight lipped about his family, only going so far as to say that he hadn’t seen any of them in about six years. No, recovering Michael’s body would do no good.

After about ten minutes of driving, the vehicle stopped. Jackson heard the door open, then hands roughly pulled him out of the car. He mouthed the phrase to himself and barely began to wonder where they took him before the sack was taken off his head.

Jackson blinked at the sudden light. The sun shone down directly above him. It seemed that they had dropped him in an alley. One of the heavies took out a knife and lazily cut off the zip tie. Jackson brought his hands forward and started rubbing his left wrist, the normal one. His right didn’t feel pain anymore; that was the benefit to prosthetics. He looked up and tried to get his bearings as the vehicle, a white van with black windows, drove off. He quickly determined that he had been here before, but it wasn’t familiar enough to tell him where he was.

Jackson began walking towards the main road that the alley connected to, and quickly discovered where they had dropped him.

His apartment rose before him in all its red-brick splendor. Concerned, Jackson started to move towards it. Cooper knowing where he lived didn’t surprise him, but Jackson saw it as a subtle threat. He shoved past bystanders and crossed the street at a run, finally reaching the door to enter.

(A liminal space is a threshold, or a place of transition and ambiguity. That can apply to many situations from the feeling of disorientation between stages of life or ritual (that strange time during major transitions where you aren’t in one situation or the other, I like to think about “The waiting place” from dr. Suess’s oh the places you’ll go), or to a more supernatural idea, like a place where the veil between “here” and “there” grows thin (for this i think of urban legends and fairytales, the forest where strange magic dwells or rest stops that don’t seem to exist).

Write a story about a liminal space, however you choose to define that.)

Day 23

Today is the day.

I don’t even know why I start with that. Since, shit, nearly a month ago I say that every day in the slim, unsubstantiated hope that it will be true. Then I write out my thoughts to this stupid journal. I’m starting to think this is an exercise in futility. But, such is life, right?

Each day that passes brings another rejection letter. Another forced attempt to be encouraging. Another instance of, “We’ll keep your resume on file for six months.” As if anybody does that. I don’t even know why I bother.

My wife is getting irritable, lately. She comes home and asks how my day went, and in classic Sophia fashion, she’s really only interested in one thing. Not my latest fun-filled session of Fallout, not my latest Civilization 5 game, where I’m playing on a higher difficulty and actually kicking Babylon’s ass. Not even in the fact that the house is spotless. She wants to know how the job search is going. What am I supposed to say? Sorry honey, I only applied to a single job today and didn’t hear anything back. One is the goal I’ve been shooting for. I’ve been able to reach it so far. But Sophie is starting to get jaded and cynical. I suppose paying all the bills must do that to a person, but she should still understand what it’s like. I’m trying. I really am.

It’s just hard when you get cut loose from a job after ten years. “Restructuring” is the word they use. Not life ruining change. Not how are we going to get by. Integrated Systems Incorporated can kiss my ass. Jake only got to stay because he kissed the boss’s ass for six years. I tell the boss how it is. I wish I could see things like he does, but I don’t have the benefit of having my head as far up his ass as he does. Good riddance, is what I say to that.

Each day is more pathetic than the last. I’m starting to lose hope. That’s not good; it comes through in interviews. I just need to hope. Today is the day.

Hmm. I just checked my email. I have an interview on Friday. Wish me luck, journal. Maybe I won’t need to write in here again.

Fort Crook Road has slowed down.

That’s not to say it’s died, but rather that it isn’t the street it once was. Once it was the highway that linked Bellevue to Omaha, now it is only the second-best route between those two point. Highway 75 has replaced it in all daily commutes; even the people that take Fort Crook only take it to Chandler, where they get on the new highway.

I was confused when my friend told me that there was a dead building on Fort Crook. “How can a building be dead?” I asked. He paused, then finally asked me, “Why don’t you find out?”

Today is the day. I stand in front of the Southroads Mall, remembering times in Boy Scouts when I would race my pinewood derby car on the bottom floor. Now the bottom floor is empty, the storefronts now bare spaces cleared of anything to sell. The JC Penney’s on the first floor is gone; now the space is empty, almost haunting in it’s lack of anything.

The entire mall feels like a place that I shouldn’t be, that nobody should be. It’s a place that feels like it explicitly detests visitors. I finally turn and walk out the front doors.

This place is indeed dead.

Of all the records that I “borrowed” from my parents, there is one that has survived in all its fantastic glory. But maybe I should start at the beginning.

Years ago, just as I was moving on from my second phase in music (Maroon 5, in case you were wondering) I started listening to a few rock albums from the eighties. I had the Greatest Hits for Journey and Boston, Styx and Kansas. I had the pleasure of seeing three of those bands live. Granted, they were less a few members but the music was still there.

My writing process consists of myself seated at my desk, whiskey in hand, and a record playing. Tonight I was focused mainly on some of my records that I hadn’t heard in a while. During “Office Wage-Slave 437″ I listened to Strange Desire by The Bleachers. During my bit about A Song Of Ice and Fire I listened to The Fray’s Scars and Stories. And during the Hunger Games I listened to This is War by 30 Seconds to Mars.

But now I’m listening to A Night At The Opera.

It takes me back to a drive out of Arkansas one summer day. It was just my mother and I, and we were listening to Queen’s Greatest Hits. Bohemian Rhapsody came on and I sang along as I often do. When I got to the line, “Sometimes wish I’d never been born at all,” my mother turned to glance my way. She put her hand on my knee and gave me a look that said she hoped I would never mean those words.

I have my hobbies, I have my vices. They’re all too mundane to use those words on, but the fact remains that I’m not perfect. I’ve disappointed my parents countless times, I’m sure. I’ve failed in my personal life and school, and bitched about work every step of the way. Through it all though, one thought is in the back of my mind.

Sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.

I think about how I’ve never meant those words.