The Sad Man

A sad man in a sad house was finally taken to a sad nursing home where other sad people sat around drooling from their sad mouths and searching hopelessly-wordlessly-through sad eyes.

Happy children with happy smiles would come to visit the sad people and bring light into the sad nursing home. But the sad man sat in his sad room and would not see the happy children, for they reminded him of what he never had.

Bright women with bright eyes would come to talk to the sad people and bring laughter to the sad nursing home. But the sad man sat in his sad room and would not see the bright women, for they reminded him of what he never had.

A writer came to visit the sad people in the sad nursing home. “Tell me your stories,” he told the sad people, but most just stared at him with their sad eyes and mumbled nothings from their sad mouths. The sad man stayed in his sad room, for all of his stories reminded him of what he could have had.

Finally the writer found the sad man in his sad room and asked him for his stories. The sad man shook his sad head and looked around his sad room as if to say, “This is my story.”

The writer was a clever man with a quick mind and a caring heart. He saw the sad man in his sad clothes in such a sad room and he knew the sadness came from somewhere. “Tell me your story. Everyone has a story. Something led you here. Tell me your story.”

The sad man was silent with his sad thoughts but quietly, quickly, his sad words started to fall from his sad lips.

The sad man told of a sad childhood with no mother and a sad father. He told of a sad war where he lost many of his friends and came home to people who didn’t understand his sadness. He told of a beautiful woman with blue eyes and blonde hair who loved him until, in his sad drinking, he got mad and made the beautiful woman sad and took their sad kids and left him to his sadness. He told of how his sad friends who made it through the sad war took a sad way out and he couldn’t help them in time. He told how he almost took the sad way out, too, until he adopted a dog who made him happy until the dog got sick and the sad man was too poor to save his friend and on a sad day in October he put down the last friend he had. Finally, when his sad body was too weak to take care of him, a neighbor helped bring him to this sad nursing home where he would live the last few sad months of his sad life.

“That is indeed a sad story,” said the writer, watching the sad man wipe a sad tear from his sad cheek.

“If you must use it,” said the sad man in a sad, tired tone, “Make it dark, lonely, and painful and shameful. Let others learn from my mistakes. I don’t want anyone to end up sad like me.”

The writer nodded, shook hands with the sad man, and then left the sad room and the sad nursing home.

Shortly afterwards the sad man died his sad death and went to his sad grave. The writer became wealthy and wrote many, many stories, but he never forgot the one about the sad man. Everyday he kissed his happy wife and his happy kids. He did his best to live a happy life so that he would never ever end up like the sad man in the sad room, just as the old man had wished.

The End

Anger Management

“You can call my Cindy, okay?”

My “therapist” gives me this sappy look that’s supposed to look warm and friendly but really just makes me want to throw my cheap hot coffee at her. I raise my eyebrows to let her know I’m unimpressed.

She keeps the smile for a second longer and then lets it go. She has seen my files. She knows why I’m here. For the next hour she asks the usual questions and I give the usual response, which is literally nothing. I hate therapist. I hate doctors and experts and quacks who assume they know everything about me just because they’ve read stuff in fat, dusty old books. As Patient A who has had X, Y, and Z done to her, I clearly must be treated with This and That and a little bit of Those and voila! I shall be cured. But I am not a textbook case. I am me. A person. But no gets that.

When the session is over I drive out to my boyfriend’s ranch. He’s out in the field, combining the winter wheat, but I’m not here to see him. I rummage around his house, find what I need, and drive out to the pit behind the automobile graveyard. Load ‘em up, shoot ‘em out. Back in the day I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. After just a few weeks of practice, I’m almost as good as my boyfriend who has been shooting almost his whole life.  

Blasting the hell out of old cars, empty gas cans, and hundreds of beer bottles. Now that’s what I call therapy. Sometimes, if it’s late or there’s been rain, my boyfriend will come join me. It’s not quality time together, though. There’s no teasing or laughing or flirting. Just bang bang bang bang, reload, bang bang bang bang, reload. He asked me once if I picture certain people in my mind when I shoot. I just shrugged. Usually it’s just mindless. I just do it to settle my nerves. But when the nightmares get bad, when flashbacks threaten to pull me under, then I’m aiming at someone. Someone in particular. Someone who, if he wasn’t already dead, killed in the raid that resulted in my rescue, I would be tracking down right now. But someone else took him out before I got my revenge, so this is my alternative.

I used to draw for therapy. That was back when the only things that upset me were school, friends, or my obnoxious roommate. The me that drew for therapy didn’t know how easy she really had it. I can’t do that anymore. I tried. All I ended up doing was digging the pencil into the paper, carving the word “Fuck” right through the paper into my desk. After I broke the pencil and threw at the wall I decided I needed something that would channel my anger, not try to whitewash it.

“Anger Management.” When they said the two words I thought of the Adam Sandler movie. But instead of Jack Nicholson and a hilarious comedy, I got a dozen “experts” prescribing drugs and telling me “healthy” ways to manage it. Apparently pulling out a small arsenal and shooting inanimate objects in the middle of no where doesn’t count. Maybe if I stopped flushing the meds down the toilet I would be more considerate of their opinions. But the drugs make me feel weird, like there’s a haze between me and the rest of the world, so I avoid them.

Instead, I pelt a rusty Oldsmobile with some .45s and wonder if the continuous recoil from the guns is the actual therapy, kind of like electroshock but with less sizzle and more bang. I wonder what Cindy would think of this therapy, with her sappy smile and crappy coffee. I thank God for a redneck boyfriend who doesn’t mind part of his land being used as a war zone every few days. We both know that’s what it really is. It’s me versus the pent up rage, the confusion, the chaos that is always on the brink of consuming me. I fight it, quite literally, with bullets. It sounds terrible out of context but it is what it is.

I wonder if I’ll ever win. I don’t consider the alternative. When the thought of losing crosses my mind, I head out to the ranch. I grab something heavy and powerful, peg that thought to the side of a dilapidated Dodge, and blast it to pieces. My therapy might be unorthodox, but it sure does work.

Dreams

What are dreams made of?

Are they made of water, meant to drown us in hope and despair, and then evaporate over time?

Are they made of sand, built into lofty castles, only to be dashed away by the surf, or blown away in the wind?

Are dreams made of clouds, that build up into thunderstorms that crash and flash and tear away at the very foundation of our rational, only to dissipate to nothing; to be pulled into wisps that linger only in the most distant region of the sky?

Are they made of flowers, that look pretty and smell good, but wither and die no matter how much care is put into them?

Are dreams made of bubbles, that float above your head as you stretch your arms high to reach for them, only to have them pop at the faintest touch?

Are any dreams made of diamonds, that glisten and glitter and, despite some flaws, are considered priceless by many? Dreams that can never be broken; that will live forever?

Are there dreams that are like wild stallions, that run free in the wide-open lands of your mind, that can be caught and tamed but still hold that spirit?

Are there any dreams that rest on the tails of shooting stars, go up with the smoke of blown-out birthday candles, are made at 11:11, or fly on coins into wishing wells? Dreams that are caught by the invisible hand that holds the power to make them come true?

What are dreams made of?

Are they made of unicorns, pixy dust, fairies, and other such silly things?

Or are they made of water and air and earth, the essence of our very being, which we could never live without, even if we tried?

What are dreams made of?

Ars Poetica

I wrote this after taking a Creative Writing: Fiction course sophomore year of college. To this day, it still stands as my greatest testament to why I write fiction.

They say that one of the reasons there must be a God is because it is impossible to create something from nothing. If that is the case then people who write fiction must be part-God because they hold the ability to take a blank piece of paper and create whole other worlds, unique people and imaginative settings. These elements do not actually exist, but in people’s mind they will. They will see them; they will hear them; they will cry for their losses and cheer for their victories. 

In addition, you hold the future in your hands. In your fiction, your character could die painfully or live to see another day. They could be there to save the one they love or fail at the last minute. It is your world and within it you control everything. Perhaps this is why so many people enjoy writing fiction; because they can feel like God. 

For me, while I enjoy the God-aspect to writing, I also marvel at how a piece of paper covered with letters, words and punctuation marks can actually not be a piece of paper at; it is another dimension, someone’s life, people’s worst fears. You are not holding paper but life, death, bitter cold, mountain tops and ocean depths. You are holding leaves scattering in the cool breeze, hugs and kisses, or the raging inferno of an erupting volcano. The fact that all of this is not literally real, but is just as real to you as the sun outside or your own fingers, is amazing, beautiful, and the whole reason I write. 

Fiction is about taking a reader to places they may (or may not) want to go, to experience new things, to think or to simply escape. Maybe it is a control thing, or a God thing, or maybe it’s just a chance to experience more than what life has already lain out before you. Whatever it may be, writing fiction is one of the most liberating and exhilarating experiences someone can have in their lifetime.