The Thirteenth Step: Chapter 3

Detective Preston Emery stood quizzically gazing into the toilet bowl, pants bunched like hand-cuffs around his ankles, pondering. He had been routinely bleeding into the toilet for nearly three years now. Seeing as he is, in his own words, not a sodomite, he was rather profoundly alarmed when he first discovered this phenomenon upon standing after a particularly painful posterior purge one evening— the toilet-water resembling a Shirley Temple if the grenadine had been added a drop at a time and hadn't been stirred. In the intervening years he had entertained all manner of flighty notions regarding its cause: from ascending colon cancer to swallowed razor-blades or finger-nails, from semi-conscious beet consumption to randomly rupturing vital organs. He never consulted a physician regarding this matter, as he presumed the doctor would believe him to be engaged in homoerotic activity— and that simply would not do. Furthermore, if it was indeed indicative of a larger problem, he would rather not know. Denial was more comfortable than having to cope with the knowledge that something was wrong with you.

In point of fact, Emery suffers from an anal fissure; an unnatural tear in the anal skin likely resultant of his attempts to regulate his own bowel movements. Emery's regimented existence rarely afforded him the luxury of an unscheduled intestinal elimination (shit to the layman), thus he felt he should attempt to coerce his body to acclimate to a routine by violently clinching his rectum whenever he felt the urge to purge out of cycle. This act of forcibly holding the feces in his intestines to facilitate the fluidity of his schedule eventually stretched the anal mucosa beyond its capability, causing a tear that would bleed violently following particularly hearty stools.

Not being profoundly knowledgeable on the subject of hemorrhoids, he was certainly at a loss for an explanation of why he was continually concocting a Bloody Mary in his porcelain distillery. However, with time one can easily acclimate to anything. As such, Emery was not staring into the bowl in another vain attempt at puzzling out the source of his bloody emission this evening. Tonight he was simply stricken with an unrelenting sense of foreboding. For reasons unknown he was dismayed by the call that had interrupted his allocated bathroom time: a request for his assistance investigating an assault perpitrated by a drug-addled prostitute on a young male resident of Chester Mulligan's "roach motel" in Carver park. The young man was in critical condition and in transit to Saint Theresa's while the woman was being held for questioning.

The lion's share of his trepidation eminated from Emery's hatred for that psychotropic sanctuary-- it was like an ant farm of pharmaceutical freaks nurturing their habits for the sake of an unnamed queen. As such, it was a hot-bed for criminal activity regardless of the legality of the drugs being consumed there. In fact, it was nearly routine for most beat-cops to make at least one pass by the place during their shifts. Something was bound to be rotten at the "High-Tower" on any given evening. Not more than three days ago an elderly female occupant of the building had hurled a feces-filled waterjug at a fellow inhabitant, presumably in reaction to his attempted intrusion into her room. The next evening a couch, completely engulfed in flame, had been hurled from a second-story stair-well out onto a fire-escape scaffold and into the street. Luckily enough, the windows in most rooms at the place were too small to fit anything of considerable mass through. Otherwise, flaming furniture of all shapes and sizes would be randomly expelled from the building without fail. As such, when Emery had the misfortune of being assigned an investigation within the harrowed halls of that disreputable dump he felt his insides begin fighting to get outside.

Perhaps his mood was also compounded by the fact that there is something unnerving about seeing his blood constantly co-mingling with his body's waste. Emery felt like a car leaking oil... he was certain that he was always on the verge of a break-down. Needless to say, a feeling of vulnerability is not the bedrock of solid detective work. Thus, his concentration was suffering from his constant worry-- and this in turn caused further physical deterioration. Hitching his britches, Emery made his best resolution to flush his fears along with the other worthless shit swirling in the toilet and exited the rest-room.

The hallways of precinct five were teeming with activity-- which was not entirely unheard of at 2:30 A.M, but it was certainly not a typical occurrence. Emery was not fond of crowds, which was why he requested the night-shift position in the first place. The trade-off for the accommodation of his social anxiety was that the bulk of the city's heinous crimes took place at night-- which put Emery waist-deep in detritus for the better portion of his career. In light of this fact, avoiding perpetually focusing on the morbid aspects of his existence was always a challenge.

Emery strode into his office and quickly, yet discreetly, eased the door closed on the chaos outside. Enclosed in his haven he slank around his desk and delicately eased himself into his faux-leather office chair as though he were climbing into a bath of unknown temperature. When he was able to join padding to posterior without any stabbing anal-pain, his muscles began to slacken slightly. When his gaze finally fell onto his desk, he noticed two of his pens and a stapler were ajar and that his phone had been shifted at least three inches away from its designated resting place. At the sight of this Emery burst up out of his chair and lurched to open the office door.

Performing a Kramer slide into the hallway (which caused a slightly irritating rectal itch) Emery bellowed like a bleating bull to no-one in particular, "How many times do I have to tell you guys NOT TO TOUCH MY DESK!!!!"

Several beat-cops were shocked out of their trance-like report-typing to throw a doe-eyed stare at Emery, while other officers around the office froze in mid-stride. Lieutenant Jensen, (the portly, shorn-scalped watch commander for the evening) struggled to bite back a laugh at the front desk. The scene was punctuated by the sound of a coffee mug shattering in the background somewhere, and shortly thereafter the general ruckus resumed. Emery strode angrily back into his office, oblivious to the chaffing such a stride caused, and slammed the door upon entry.

After acquiring a steno-pad (and re-adjusting the contents of his desk) Emery gathered up his briefcase and overcoat, then shuffled out of his office. He checked the lock on the door several times before vacating the premesis (seeing as he had to prevent the heathens from tampering with his arrangements), turning the knob with considerable force at various speeds to ensure it was tamper-proof. When he felt assured that the security of his office was ensured, Emery started on his arduous trek to his refurbished classic 1998 Buick Century waiting in the motor-pool. As he returned to his office door to verify that it was locked a paltry two times before actually leaving the corridor, it appeared to be the start of a very productive evening.

Rhretoric

Somewhere in the darkness
silence is born.

Midnight's veil is drawn from
the waking face of dawn-
the light erodes the quiet.

You and I,
gathering the mornings' breath,
dodge the creaks and groans of floorboards
on our way elsewhere...

Words spill into the silence
in incoherent moments
where our mouths
spew like lacerated veins--

Hours fill with discourse like jars of discarded change--
(always intending to trade them in for larger currency)

Rambling
like a grandfather's story
we waste our time complaining about
what little time we possess...

Always struggling to pin-point the moment when
we fell asleep as children and awoke as men.

I wish we could realize
(before the descending curtain of dusk
brings our conversations to a close)
in our youth
we were far too eager to sacrifice the silence...

The Thirteenth Step: Chapter 2

Maddy peeked out from under the gray standard-issue military blanket she used to isolate herself from the world. This time she was certain she had heard yelling. She glanced upward and noticed that neither of the 3x1 windows near the ceiling were showing any hint of sunlight. That meant morning was at least a few hours away and her meds had all but worn out. Maddy groaned outwardly. Restful sleep came too infrequently, and Maddy was never in a hurry to be rushed back to this lonliness.

Maddy sat up in bed and hung her head forward letting all of her matted graying hair flow over her face. She reached at it trying to run her fingers through but was unsuccessful. It had been at least two years since she cut it and about a year and a half since she stopped caring about her personal hygiene. Since she stopped caring about everything really.

That was the last time she had visited Dr. Culligan Manchester, a man who until that time had been a friend to her and her husband. During her one and only session of chemotherapy it was he who broke the news to her regarding the death of her family. It was he who suggested that she move into this place with the rubber walls and the mindless apes. It was he who explained to her the benefits of using drugs to stay alive. He told her, almost compassionately, that there would be light at the end of the tunnel.

Obviously he was one who didn't know what it was like to live at the end. And had to run up ahead just to find out what that light was really going to be. With those words it was he, who in effect, removed all hope. Such thoughts of those from her past did not frequently visit Maddy on account of her meds. And for this she was grateful. Who wished to live in the land of was? Surely not Maddy, surely not anyone whose entire life is now was.

Becoming aggravated with her own thoughts Maddy bent over to pick up a half-empty gallon in order to placate the dryness of her mouth. As she pressed the plastic to her lips she hoped she had picked up one of the gallons with water, and not one filled with piss and shit that she used to relieve herself - though, she realized, it didn't matter much to her either way.

Still unsure as to what she had drunken Maddy wiped her mouth with the back of her arm somewhat satisfied. Placing the gallon on her nightstand she stood up and crossed from one wall of her room to the other in thirteen short shuffled steps. In her time here she had paced this room thousands of times...back and forth...back and forth, always thirteen.

But as one dependent on others Maddy was used to playing this waiting game. Like everything else she did, it was not enjoyable to her, but it was the deed that required the least from her. Twice a week she waited for the person, her savior, to bring her the lifeblood on which she lived. Three gallons of water, some non-perishables, and her meds - a veritable grab bag of pills, both prescription and non. A total amalgamation of drugs to take her up, down, left, right on a goddamn Wonka-vator of highs.

That is what she was in need of now, but at this hour instead of finding nectar in her hallway she would only find calamity. Nothing Maddy was afraid of, or couldn't handle, just the type of shit she would rather not deal with. It wasn't horrible enough to match her own life for her to care. So as she heard the repeated thud of a man's hollow head hitting the floor she laid down to cover herself once again. The man's labored breathing; the sound of life fighting to stay alive became her metronome. Maddy drifted off again hoping the nightmare of a darker, colder, more fucked up world than this would find her.

Songcraft

We struck a chord then,
she and I;
Her discord and my discord
manipulated into unity
bled into airwaves
bled into eardrums
indiscriminately—

bystanders killed by stray bullets.

We surrendered
a portion of our pain
to one another;
to them all.

Disseminating harmonic disharmony to the masses,

we broke barricades
on scenes too grizzly
to view with impunity.

Our fingers probed the loam—

our songs were gravesites
wherein we entombed the past—

Unknown fingers
harvesting
sown seeds of discontent
flowering from carcasses;

Amassing superficial beauty stemmed from
obscured decomposition.

There were
anthems to agony,
melodies from misery,
lullabies of lies.

Strange how there is succor in collective misery.

Pillowtalk (aka Truth Hurts)

Beloved,

gazing down with
bedroom eyes
your doubt seeps in again--
befuddled by my resolve
to retain my virtue.

I fear it is not my resistance that wounds you;

Perhaps you struggle to recall
when you last felt needed
without towelling off afterwards...

The Thirteenth Step: Chapter 1

To the casual observer, Jann might as well have been a re-animated corpse acting on muscle memory for all the coordination he exhibited upon trying to discreetly enter the edifice at 1138 West Warm Springs Road at the early hour of 1:37 A.M. Upon missing the lock three times with carefully scrutinized stabs he accidentally dropped his key-ring to the ground and slammed the door rather violently with his head in an attempt to recover them expeditiously. It seems a 72-hour bout of sleep deprivation imbues one with the grace of a stumbling drunk. As it stands, the front door of the building had been battered to such an extent that the impact of Jann's head-butt (quickly accompanied by his entire body weight as he pitched forward) was sufficient to finally dragoon the wood away from the hinges. Needless to say, Jann would not have been more pronounced upon re-entry had he shot up a signal flare before entering. Oddly enough, though, his passage was unnoticed.


The compound at 1138 West Warm Springs Road in Carver Park, Nevada had once housed the New Castle Assisted Recovery Center prior to the ratification of the 37th Amendment to the U.S Constitution. Following this governmental declaration of legality for many “heretofore illegal substances” (concurrent with U.S. government subsidies on world-wide distribution of said substances) many of these rehabilitation clinics went the way of the dodo. As such, the buildings themselves were frequently demolished in an attempt to salvage property value. However, the New Castle center was purchased and refurbished by a prosperous and ingenious Las Vegas rounder by the name of Chester “Chess” Mulligan, who subsequently (and rather ironically) created a paradisiacal haven for newly liberated drug enthusiasts from the ashes of this monument to prohibition.


Forcing himself up off the door/floor, Jann cradled his head for a moment as he tried to re-orient himself to his surroundings. To his direct left was a rather spacious room bedecked with varied neon lights advertising the locals’ favored brands of spliff— amongst them Spectors, Watsons’ and the infamous White Widow brand. A brilliantly adorned three-foot-tall spun-glass bong stood like a lone reed in the room’s far south corner, adjacent to the scorched remnants of what may have passed as a pool table in a more civilized realm. Several strangely entwined potted plants and a headstone for someone (or something) named Bertha rounded out the current inhabitants of the compound’s “social suite.”


Scanning to his right, Jann saw a jumbled mass of flesh containing numerous limbs undulating rhythmically across the banister and steps of the ascending stairwell. Rather than fully analyze the jumble he groped furiously behind him for his keys. Upon locating them, he scurried past the surging sexual entanglement on the stairs whilst massaging the impact bubble that had begun to rise on his forehead. Trailing along the outlandishly graffitied hallway toward room 7, Jann recoiled violently into the wall screeching wildly as a calico cat with a smoldering tail darted out of the dimly lit corridor ascending from the basement. Heart aflutter, Jann composed himself as best he could. Squinting to try and discern any sign of the feline’s assailant in the gloom, he shakily closed the distance between rooms 4 and 7 in an excruciating three-minute crawl.


The three-story compound consisting of two above-ground floors and one subterranean level was created to comfortably house anywhere from 38 to 45 patients at any interval. Chess re-christened the compound the High Castle Assisted Discovery Center, establishing a business predicated upon another innovative Nevada rental establishment, the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. Initially at Chess’ High Castle, societal outcasts could indulge in their socially lambasted activity of choice on an hourly, daily or weekly basis away from the rheumy courtroom eyes of public opinion.


To facilitate the fluidity of the business aspects of the establishment, 12 staff members were housed within the compound itself to enforce what little sense of order one can impose over such erratic activity.


The business thrived for several years, until the bestial conduct of the clientele (and also, in truth, its’ proprietor) coupled with an almost cancerous public acceptance of many designer recreational drugs decimated the once lucrative industry of operating a den for private chemical consumption. Chess then converted the rooms to rent on a semi-permanent basis, and subsequently the building became the living quarters for many of its strongly loyal patrons. It also became low-income housing for individuals willing to sacrifice a measure of creature comfort for frugality’s sake. Enter Jann Whittmeyer.


Upon reaching the door affixed with a neon pink 7 emblazoned in grease paint, Jann again made several fitful attempts at coupling key and lock before finally using both hands to guide the key around the cylinder roulette-wheel fashion until it slid home. The recent burst of adrenaline from the cat frenzy did little to steady his hand. Upon finally finagling the lock into insecurity, Jann violently thrust the door open and burst into his room as though the devil were licking his pant-leg. Upon securing the door behind him, he proceeded to bolt the three redundant locks he had self-installed that aren’t engaged when he is outside it. With the rest of humanity effectively locked into a periphery realm, Jann collapsed onto his bed and drifted quickly into oblivion.


With the gargantuan levels of marijuana being consumed in the house at any given interval, nothing need justify a moment of quietude on any given evening. Stints of silence lasting up to 2 consecutive days can be indicative of a unilateral shift from DMT to grass by the freak faction downstairs. These trends do not last, however. The sound of shattering glass, the metronome for any significant gathering at the High Tower, had been noticeably fevered the past two evenings. With that providing context, one could assume that the madness was merely simmering its way back up to a boil. This was the main motivating factor for Jann vacating the premises and retreating to the few established areas between Carver Park and Las Vegas that were not overrun by addicts or avid experimenters looking to commune with corporate artwork or VdT flash displays.


What was once deemed an uninhabitable desert had been fashioned in the spirit of the vast majority of the great American continent; converted to a sprawling concrete jungle that forcibly prevented societal disconnect as much as it encouraged it. The modernization of miles of open desert had driven many activities once limited to moon-washed dunes and sand-bars into downtown avenues and side-streets. Few areas truly offer solace. Even Jann’s favorite library was relegated to a nearly-full hash bar peppered with sour-smelling, disheveled college students staring blankly at Foucault like a chimp attempting mathematics. Regardless of the lack of sanctuary, when the High Tower is ablaze with the vibrant sparks of true freak-dom it is advisable to be elsewhere.


The basement, which largely consisted of padded cells utilized in suicide watch during the rehab days, had long ago been cordoned off as the drop den. Given that the Tower’s quota of hallucinogenic flights had been reached years ago the night that Chess and his then coital companion Melanie did a tandem leap from a balcony whilst engaged in an ecstasy- induced slide-session, it was decided that the house's occupants would appear to be fizz-gigs to the greater neighborhood alchemists if nude couples continually plunged from the compound’s upper story. Thus, in the old days, all major chemical activity was relegated to the subterranean realms of the compound. Consequently, upstairs cubbies were intended to be utilized for smoking and imbibing substances with relatively mellow highs. While the building had converted, the mentality had not. The stoners stayed in the air, the crack-heads colonized the loam.


This left many of the buildings nouveau occupants, Jann included, as the ersatz cream filling between layers of hallucinating hooligans and Bob Marley enthusiasts. One would be hard-pressed to conjure a greater justification for an overwhelming feeling of unease than residing between an irresistible force and an immovable object. During Jann’s tenure at the High Castle, many an evening’s tranquility had suddenly surrendered to a cacophonous din of dope fiends orgiastically savaging their minds— but after two straight nights of seeking sanity in different surroundings, he was in dire need of a decent night’s sleep. Yet, just moments after surrendering his consciousness to a comfortable contour of his pillow, the suffocating silence of the house peeled back to reveal the frenzied beast it had so easily contained mere moments prior.

"I require more psychedelic mushrooms you corpse-fucking codpieces!"

Leif, the elfin arbiter of the chthonian chemical crew, was screeching with malcontent as he burst from the basement corridor and into the first floor hallway like an infant angrily shedding its' uterine cocoon. The battle cry of a freak-power behemoth banshee-wailing like Morrison's ghost on a quick ascent up a walkway is not something one can easily acclimate to waking up to. Consequently, Jann's semi-conscious full-torso recoil into his headboard was utterly uncoordinated and resulted in his becoming a trembling heap of bedding and trepidation on his floor. Leif's beleaguered bellowing faded like a siren ebbing into the distance as he had presumably moved from the hallway to the cafeteria in pursuit of his stash of psychotropic fungi that were languishing under an undisclosed sink.


There was a brief period of silence, and then a violent impact tremor shook the door to Jann’s abode with considerable force. Shocked, Jann struggled to remove himself from the bed-sheet tangle while his door endured another heavy impact, followed quickly by another with slightly less force. Then silence resumed it’s dominion over the compound. Perplexed, Jann sat for a moment in quiet contemplation of what strange creature had carried out the random onslaught.


After extricating himself from his bed sheet Bastille, Jann stumbled to his door and fumbled with the four bolt combination in the hopes of reassuring himself that the beast that bludgeoned his entryway had indeed vanished. The yawning maw of the basement corridor to his left was bellowing smoke, and several roving vagabonds from Leif's menagerie of miscreants were spewing into the first floor hallway in conjunction with Jann's exit from his sanctum. Any one of these individuals could have hurled themselves into his door, he thought… but upon Jann’s turning to his right to survey the rest of the hallway, a disheveled young woman clumsily adorned in an askew halter-top and whore skirt caked in what appeared to be either mustard or grease paint furiously hurled herself down the hallway, spearing him at the hip and mowing him down like a wrecking ball.


Clawing violently at his hair and neck with a wolverine’s intensity, the skank cyclone wreaked havoc on the sluggish and disoriented Jann who squirmed violently beneath her frenzied form. Jann could see a trail of blood flowing freely down her forehead, along with bits of wood embedded in the flesh of her scalp as well as her right shoulder.

“I know what you are!!!!” she wailed, “Come out of there!!! You can’t hide!!! Come out!!!!”

The two were an entangled mass of flailing limbs that was not altogether alien to the various onlookers in the hall given the mass Jann had previously encountered on the stairwell. Finally, the woman’s fingers found purchase at one point on Jann’s scalp, entangling with the ragged matt of his hair. He bucked violently beneath her, beginning to howl with the effort as she slammed his head repeatedly into the matted hallway carpet. The fluorescence of the hallway lights fluttered in and out of focus in Jann’s perspective as flashes of white pain like bursting fireworks overwhelmed his vision with each blow. With the squeals of the ravening she-beast resounding in his ears, Jann’s head came down with a firm, moist thud in the blood and fiber of the carpeting that finally extinguished the lights entirely.

Paddleball

In a relationship like paddleball,

someone has to be the string.

My sister loved her dad, so it

must have been her.

One day the string broke and we

never went back.

We hid at my grade school

with our jackets turned inside out

so he couldn’t recognize us.

It was dark and we ate shredded mini-wheats

out of a bowl that once contained butter.

It was a Sunday.

I remember because my mom asked me to get our

bowl back the next day at school.

I told her I couldn’t find it, but I never looked.

What was I supposed to tell the playground monitor,

“I need to find my mom’s bowl

that we left here last night when we

were running from my sister’s dad.”

I could have, but I was eight

and I already understood.