Passageways & Portals: Rebirth, Part 3

“What kind of place is this?” The young man didn’t expect a lucid response, but he also didn’t want to be surrounded by silence and alone at the moment.

“This is a wonderful and terrible place,” the old man said. “Here we are everywhere and we are nowhere, all at the same time. We are nothing, yet we are everything. This is a truly splendid place indeed, son.”

The young man shivered at the words. There was something uncanny in the way the old man spoke that at first he could not shake, but he pushed the unsettling thoughts from his mind. “Have you climbed the wall of this crater?”

“No, no, no, that is not my lot my good man,” the old man said with a laugh. “I do not want to know what’s beyond the wall, I enjoy it fine down here, thank you very much.”

“Suit yourself. I’m gonna make my way up there though, I can’t spend my life dawdling down here.” The young man began to pull and hoist himself up the rock wall.

“May wings ever find you in the midst of your climb, son! Let me know what’s on the other side when you get there!” the old man called out.

As the young man reached out looking for crevices in the rock wall, he wondered if this was something he had ever done before. It felt like a foreign venture to him. That didn’t mean that he hadn’t done it before though, maybe it had been much time since his last time as a climber. Maybe there was a time when he used to do this for fun, or maybe he had to do it as a job of some sort.

He slowly pulled himself up, pushing with his legs when he could find good footholds. He tried not to look up or down, he felt that if he knew his progress it would either give him false hope or discourage him. The moment he was in was the most important part of the climb. 

With each movement upward he felt a little more exhausted and aches spread through his body. His mouth became drier as well and he felt hungrier. The pace of his adventure was catching up to him. How much longer could he keep up? He risked a look up toward the top of the wall. It loomed high above him, as if he hadn’t moved at all. 

The time had felt as though it had been dragging, he felt as though he had been climbing that wall for hours. He tried hoisting himself up further, but felt almost as though a weight was pushing against him. It wasn’t just gravity, something else was working against him to keep him from moving any further up the wall. 

“Are you having trouble up there?” the old man called out.

“I can’t seem to get any higher,” the young man called back.

“Look down,” the old man said.

The young man dared to look down for a moment. He was disheartened by what he saw. At that moment he realized that he hadn’t really made any progress. He didn’t even think he made it as high as the old man was sitting when they met. Some great weight was bearing down on him, keeping him from moving up the wall any further. Should he continue trying to scale the wall, or should he just stop and find another attack point?

He leaned his head against the wall frustrated. Sure, he could continue to try to make his way up the wall, but if there was something preventing him from making it any higher what was the point? There had to be some way out of the crater, he just had to regroup and figure it out. 

He began to climb back down the wall, but his footing was unsure. He slid a little down the face of the wall; his hands kept him from falling any further. Trying to regain his footing, though, his hands began to slip. Sounds of the old man starting to climb up the wall to his aid reached his ears just as his fingers slipped from the rock he was holding onto. Almost as if in slow motion he watched the top of the wall move further away. He watched the old man pass him. Then everything went black.

Passageways & Portals: Rebirth, Part 2

“Why hello there!” a voice called out. 

            “What the…” The sound of another voice in this deserted place startled the young man as he tried to catch his breath, and he fell to the ground as he turned to look up. What he saw was a balding old man. Around the crown of his head along the back and sides grew long white hair, and he had a beard that trailed midway down his chest. His wrinkly face was twisted up in a huge grin, and the young man could see a couple teeth on an otherwise toothless gum line.

The old man made his way down the rock wall of the crater edge to meet the young man on the ground. He moved nimbly for his advanced age to the surprise of the young man. He was also naked. For the first time the young man looked down and realized that he too was naked, and he realized that he felt no shame. He also didn’t feel compelled to turn away from the old man’s nakedness. For some reason this felt odd to him, but he didn’t understand why.

“Good day to you, son,” the old man said as he landed on the ground, “how ye be?”

“I don’t know,” the young man replied as he stood back up, “I don’t know who or where I am.”

“Does it matter?”

“I think so… I guess I don’t know.”

“Well, then maybe it don’t matter all that much. I believe what I say and I say what I believe and I believe you are who you think you are and that’s all that matters.”

“I don’t know what to think though.”

“Think whatever you want to think, man, this is a free world! No one ought to tell you what to think or who you are, you should just be.”

“Be what? What’s your name old man?”

“Name? What’s in a name, my good man? I am who I say that I am and that’s all that I am unless you want to tell me different.”

“But I want to know my name! Maybe it’ll help me understand who I am.”

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”

“What does that mean? I feel as though I’ve heard that before.”

“As well you should have.”

“Why should I have heard it before?”

“You tell me.”

“If I knew I would have already told you! Are you mad?”

“I don’t feel mad, do you think me mad?”

“I believe I do.” The young man was beginning to feel the pulse of a headache. He didn’t understand the riddles this man spoke in and he was beginning to feel wary of his company. As no one else was around, though, he didn’t beg him off. “How long have you been here?” the young man asked looking up the rock and sand face of the crater edge.

“Either a moment or an eternity, one can never tell in a place such as this.”

The Black Ring: Chapter 2, Part 12

The thought of it made him seethe as he sipped his beer and turned on the radio on his desk. All thought of trolling porn sites slipped from his mind and he completely forgot the perfect search he had come up with. He was already sitting before his computer so he opened it up and it automatically flickered to life as he questioned how he could have let one evening of simple pleasure burrow so deeply into his head. Simultaneously he was also feeling resentment for Monica for not allowing it to get to her. Whether resentment or self-loathing ran deeper he couldn’t be sure.

            Bryson logged into his computer and pulled up the Google Chrome internet browser as Bush’s “Machinehead” album played on the radio. As always his first move was to pull up his Facebook account. If ever someone felt that self-loathing was closing in on them, Bryson thought, they just need to open Facebook to realize that there’s always someone worse off in that department. He might have felt pathetic at this particular moment but Facebook was filled with sadsacks in need of therapists. He was hoping to see a status or two from some of his old classmates that would make him feel a little better.

            As a general rule he didn’t want to have anything to do with his high school peers, but he loved to add them to his Facebook friend’s list merely for a distraction and for stalking purposes. On Facebook everyone was on the same level, so he could say he was good friends with Marissa the head cheerleader in high school, even if they had never talked in high school; not that she was anything to look at these days. It was the nerdy girls and tomboys who blossomed from ugly ducklings to sexy swans and those were the girls he had actually been friends with back in the day. Of course, he didn’t evolve as they did so while they may remain friends on Facebook in real life they merely acquaintances.

            Those weren’t the people he was looking for today though. James who had been the captain of the football team back in high school went on to develop a beer gut, grow a mullet, and now changed oil at an Exxon station in their hometown. The other day he and his estranged wife had a massive public row online after she found out that he had slept with a prostitute at his friend Pete’s bachelor party. Through this so-graphic-you-can’t-stop-reading exchange his wife found out that he had been sleeping around since the night that they had gotten married, which she found out after one of the bridesmaids from the wedding chimed in explaining where he had disappeared to for an hour during their reception. They had been married for five years, now she had taken their two children, ages 2 and 3, to her parents’ place.

             These were the stories he was looking for tonight, but try as he might there was nothing more than images of sappy sayings like “Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here we should dance,” pictures of children being childish, and mildly witty philosophies.

Bored, Bryson realized his beer was empty and walked to the kitchenette to grab another one. As he opened the fridge door he could have sworn that he heard moaning coming from Monica’s room and considered putting an ear to her door to find out if he was right but decided against it. He figured that he’d rather think that he imagined it than confirm that he hadn’t.

He settled back down while taking a long gulp from his beer to the tune of “21 Guns” by Green Day when he looked at his computer screen. Because he didn’t use it too often he had forgotten that Google Talk launched whenever his computer booted up, but the fact that a dialogue box had popped up in his absence quickly reminded him of that fact. It had been so long since he had used it that he had to run through his list of contact to make sure that he had never spoken to anyone by the name of Chris Thomas before.

The words, “Hey Bryson, are you there?” stared at him from his laptop screen and Bryson was dumbfounded for a moment. He was fairly certain that he didn’t know anyone by that name, but he couldn’t be 100% sure.

“Do I know you?” Bryson responded.

“Yeah, but it’s been a long time since we’ve talked,” Chris replied.

“How do we know each other?”

“We grew up together.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t recall that name,” Bryson typed even more curious than before.

“You wouldn’t recall this name it’s not what I went by when we were friends. Bryson, this is Ian.”

The Black Ring: Chapter 2, Part 11

They had parted ways when they finished dinner at Perkins that day, and Bryson had gone home to watch some TV. When the visit occurred he had been sitting on the couch watching Charles Carmichael, aka Charles Bartowski, worm his way out of another tight spot as the titular repository for all things CIA in the TV show Chuck. He hadn’t seen Mike and Melanie in a while and assumed they had found a little hotel for a romantic bit of hanky panky where it didn’t matter where they were when they dropped trou. As that thought occurred to him he laughed at the ridiculous amount of times he had seen Melanie naked and there was a knock at the door. He got up to open the door and was surprised at the site that greeted him: Monica in a gray trench coat similar to the one that he wore on a cold day over his service uniform in the military. The site struck him odd for two reasons, the first being the fact that she was wearing a heavy coat in the middle of summer. Secondly, he had no idea what she was doing there, as they had set up their next apartment hunting meeting for the following day after work.

As he stood there, about to ask why she was there, she sauntered past him and turned around by the couch leaning on the arm waiting for him to close the door. Slowly he closed the door, and a puzzled look crossed his face as he turned around to question her, but before he could get out a word she spoke first.

“I know you’re wondering why I’m here,” she said in a quiet seductive way as she unbuttoned the trench coat, “I just felt we had something to get out of the way.” The trench coat slid down to the floor revealing nothing more than what God, or nature, had given her at birth to let blossom for this day. This glorious day he thought, but he couldn’t uproot himself from where he stood. What if this was a dream? What if Mike and Melanie walked in to find him asleep with his hand down his pants grinding against the couch? Even worse, what if in the middle he called out Monica’s name and they told her about it? Well, in that unlikely case he would have to tell them unless they wanted him to see Melanie naked one more time, or if they didn’t want him off their couch they would keep their mouths shut.

 “Are you going to stand there all night?” she asked quietly, and his mind finally clicked and said, Fuck it, and his body followed his brain’s advice. What followed was nothing short of miraculous as the room and everything in it disappeared. Nothing existed for Bryson and Monica for those short minutes and he would be happy to live in that world for the rest of his life. Was this how cocaine felt? Marijuana? Heroine? No, it was ecstasy, pure uncut ex. Knowing how he felt he dared to open his eyes, and the look on her face showed him that he was making all the right moves. Besides the active parts of their bodies, they had become numb to the world around them, as if past present and future had all melded into one and had become timeless. The moment lasted forever and was over within the blink of an eye, and when the moment had passed they were both satisfied having reached that moment together at the same time.

They stared into each other’s eyes for days it seemed (now Bryson had the corny thought that they really were peering into each other’s soul before the thought caused him to nearly spit beer all over his Dell) as the world faded back into view. That was when they heard in a whisper of horror and fear from the edge of the couch, “My couch!” They hadn’t realized that they weren’t alone, and hadn’t been for at least five minutes. Bryson smiled internally as he thought: At least I’m not sitting here with my hand down my pants grinding against the couch.

 “Oh hey, I believe you know Monica,” was what he wanted to say, but what came out was, “Umm, a little privacy.” At least he had witnesses he would think later, but the witnesses didn’t matter because he never told anyone. After that day, when Mike and Melanie had left the room and Monica threw on her coat and gave him a smile and peck on the cheek, he didn’t even talk to her about it.

Things almost went back to normal after that. At first, Bryson thought her plan had worked. He wasn’t worried about getting into her pants, and she didn’t spend her time flirting with him. Sure, he thought about it, but typically not when he was with her. Generally he only thought about it before going to bed or, on rare occasions, when he woke up. That was before he came home from a late night at work to see her making out in the living room with some dude she met at the bar. His heart started racing, his hands became clammy, and his throat went dry. The first though to pop into his head was, “How could she cheat on me?” That was when he realized that the most glorious moment of his life was the equivalent to breaking the seal on Pandora’s little toy box. On the outside of the box there were only words of lust and like written bright colors to attract the casual viewer. He broke the seal and peered inside, just a casual glimpse, or so he thought. The moment that box opened he couldn’t jam the word love back in, it settled in his mind and corrupted his soul. If he let it, it would find him on the street with nothing but the clothes on his back and its evil in his soul.

He couldn’t let it go, though. The words never crossed his lips, and he tried to maintain himself around Monica. As time went on though he found himself going out less unless he was with her, and he spent a lot of time waiting for her to come home. He found lots of things for them to do together as friends, but in his mind they were dating.

The Black Ring: Chapter 2, Part 10

Unfortunately, he hadn’t really done much in the way of savings, and Circuit City didn’t necessarily pay the bills as it was, let alone the bills he would have to take on if he got his own place. He started asking coworkers and barroom friends if they knew anyone looking for a roommate, but most of the people he knew lived in the dorms at UW-GB or were shacked up with their significant others, and naturally three was a crowd. Weeks went by and Bryson wasn’t having any luck finding a roommate or a cheap out, and both Mike and Melanie were starting to lean on him harder and harder to get out.

That was when salvation came in the form of a mousy brown haired beauty named Monica. As it turned out Monica was getting tired of living in the dorms where the girls acted like they were still in junior year of high school and was looking to find a place of her own. She didn’t mind having a roommate as long as they were adult about the situation, and since they had practically become best friends she figured they should try to become roomies. He, of course, wasn’t going to turn her down on her offer. After all, didn’t most guys and girls who started out as friends and roommates typically end up as lovers? Probably not, but that didn’t stop him from dreaming of catching a quick peak here and a fast glimpse there of perfection in its raw form.

They started browsing through places online and in apartment guides they found at gas stations around town. Bryson was partial to the west side, as the east side always appeared to him to be filled with wolves ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims so they could tear the flesh off their bones. Monica was partial to the east side because it was closer to campus, and if you went far enough east you could find fairly affluent neighborhoods with quick access to the highway to help you avoid the wolves who resided closer to the Fox River. In the end they settled on a fairly large apartment on Humboldt Avenue which was close enough to Highway 43 for easy access to everything, yet far enough away where you could hear the traffic. Monica also remained a stone’s throw away from campus there. They signed the lease early in the month prior to their move to give them a few weeks to make sure they had the money for utilities and other necessities. Everything was running smoothly, that is, until the visit.

Monica spend a lot of time joking with Bryson about the sexual tension that was sure to rise up between them when they moved in together, and how they should each release some steam before they decided to move in together. Bryson always laughed it off as a joke, even when she was standing too close to him and he felt a bit flushed and a tad too big for his britches; he just hoped in that moment she wasn’t looking down. With each visit and with each meeting about a new place she seemed to become more aggressive with the jokes, and Bryson began to wonder if they really were jokes or if the tension she kept speaking of was turning into her own frustration. When they parted ways after each rendezvous, though, he took his thoughts to be a mirage of his own growing frustrations. Her words loomed large in his mind in the nights before he fell asleep after their visits.

 “You know, we’re both going to wonder what the other is like in bed when we move in together. It could ruin our dynamic if we let it get in the way, maybe we should just get it out of the way,” she once said with a smile and a hand on his leg as they sat in Perkins eating omelets and looking over rental guides. A mental picture popped in his head and he thought he would save that for the swelling in his loins and let out a nervous laugh at the thought of himself saying loins more so than for her suggestion.

Now, sitting in his room, sipping on his beer debating whether to watch TV or surf the net (or both) he thought back to the visit. He always held it in an esteemed place in his mind, one of the finest moments of his life. His graduation from boot camp was his most proud moment, but the visit was by far his most prized memory. In his mind he could imagine that it lasted for all eternity, even if the moment itself only last for fifteen, maybe thirty minutes tops. Sometimes, only the middle played through in his mind. Other times he viewed the whole video in his mind’s projector like watching a home movie. How it ended never escaped his mind’s eye though, and that was the moment he fell in love.

The Black Ring: Chapter 2, Part 9

The door to the apartment opens from the outside. As he walks in, Bryson slowly closes it behind him. Next to the door is a tray to place his keys, he drops his keys on top of another set of keys already sitting in the tray. Everything is dark, his roommate must have gone to bed, or she's busy with another query she brought home for an overnight rendezvous. The thought of it brightens his day to no end causing him to forget what he was considering doing before he walked into the apartment. He stands for a moment in the middle of the cluttered living room trying to figure out what he meant to do next, and allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark. After a moment of standing around he finally decides to go to the kitchenette and grab a beer. Carefully stepping around the clutter that litters the living room floor he makes his way to the kitchen where he grabs a Bud Light from the fridge. As he heads to his room the thought that his roommate may be in her room with another man makes Bryson jealous and he stares at her door with a heavy glare as he walks through his own.

Sometime after Bryson was discharged from the military he decided to leave Florida. He didn't want the reminder of his former flame and best friend lingering in every relationship he tried to recreate, and since a few of his former fellow recruits had talked about Green Bay he decided it was time to make the move. Well, that and the fact that the other people he formerly knew that still wanted to associate with him were into drugs or much less savory past times or had simply moved on to greener pastures that he did not find quite as green as they did. While his first few months in Green Bay didn't seem particularly fruitful, he forged ahead not intending to relocate once again. Finally, he garnered friendships and acquaintances from his time at work and frequent trips to some of the local bars.

In the seven years he had lived in Green Bay, Bryson had held many jobs. From the bad (telemarketing, ala Boiler Room) to the worst (working the seafood department at the local grocery store is not a good way to score chicks unless they dug a guy who came home from work smelling like shell fish). Every once in a while he would find a job that seemed to be going somewhere, or at least seemed enjoyable, the company would either fold, he would learn the dark side of the business, or other circumstances would cause the job to go the way of the dinosaurs. After a few marginally successful to dismally disastrous employment opportunities, Bryson finally settled for a fun, if low paying, job jockeying a register at a local Circuit City.

While he hated the customers, he loved his coworkers. From the hipster hippie Aaron who trained him in his position, to the hot yet accessible Anna who he used to jokingly argue with about their (fake) juvenile delinquent kids, to the retarded yet lovable drama geeks it was possibly the most fun he ever had at a job. That’s also where he met Monica. She started about six months after him, and he helped train her. A local journalism major at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, she was something of a tomboy, not afraid to get her hands dirty and easily fitting in with “the guys,” but she still had very feminine qualities in how she held herself and dressed at work. Also, she was a celebrity look alike, the spitting image of Eliza Dushku; in other words, she was every guy’s dream, and she knew it.

She flirted with every guy that laid eyes on her, even the ones who weren’t buying what she was selling. She never gave any of them the impression that they were getting more than her friendship though, but that didn’t keep them from speculating, and Bryson in turn enjoyed the feeling that he was something more than average. Having a friend that was equally comfortable having a beer while watching a football game, going opening night to the latest comic book movie that was driving local fanboys wild, or sitting at home watching a romantic comedy had its advantages, especially when she was willing to do the latter on her own. Bryson found himself more often than he had anticipated on the very uncomfortable stage of a local bar for an unfortunate karaoke duet with Monica. Despite the discomfort, he didn’t really mind it too much; the candle he harbored for her was brightened by being able to call her friends, even if that meant sharing a sticky stage in front of a drunken crowd.

At the time that Bryson had first moved to Green Bay he was staying with the cousin of one of his old Marine Corps buddies on the condition that he would eventually save up enough money to get his own place. Well, that didn’t quite work out the way that Bryson had initially intended. Between trips to the bar, and the occasional lack of work when things didn’t pan out, Bryson wasn’t really contributing or even coming close to getting out. Now his roommate/landlord, Mike, was getting antsy. Actually it wasn’t so much Mike as it was his fiancée, Melanie. When Bryson first moved in she wasn’t used to walking around Mike’s apartment clothed, and in the several months that he stayed there she still didn’t seem to have a clue what pajamas or night gowns were for. Bryson didn’t mind so much, but she seemed to have a major problem with it. While at first he didn’t have too much of a problem with the living arrangements, Mike was starting to get irritated with having to confine business to the bedroom so he was starting to push harder for Bryson to find his own place.