Carrie Tells a Tale

It literally means “to kill one-tenth of every man.” But it sounds oh so lovely.

Public transportation has a real knack for showing you the uglier side of humanity. If it’s not some drug-addled man yelling at everyone, then it’s some girl loudly talking on her phone about what a bitch so-and-so is, or that person who insists on getting on the train even though it’s clearly already over capacity by about 70 people.

All of it trains you to just think “Please. No one talk to me or touch me and maybe I can make it through this.” Without meaning to, you slowly start to dehumanized people. Instead of being fathers, music lovers, or a really great guy who just happens to have a cold who can’t help sneezing all over you, they’re just the bodies that you want to stay as far away from as possible. Eye contact is a huge no. Speaking? Out of the question. It’s a terribly dangerous mindset to get into: constantly expecting the worst from people and never enjoying the ride, only counting down to the destination.

That’s why when something genuinely kind and lovely happens on the Max, it’s a shock to the system.

Last weekend, I was on the train heading back to my apartment. It was a smaller, more subdued crowd in the late evening. I even had a seat. After 20 minutes of relative silence, a boy sitting the seat ahead and to my left took a phone call. Short, scrawny, marked with pimples and a lisp, he looked about 14 to me.

He answered the phone- it was his mother. Immediately he tensed, saying he was “almost there.” Apparently he’d gotten lost and was now back on the right track. Quickly, the conversation disintegrated, though. His voice got louder and his language cruder. Within a minute, he was out of his seat, pacing and yelling  ”I don’t need this shit! Fuck you, Mom!” until it finally ended as he hung up the phone. Still standing, feet wide apart and fists clenched, he mumbled to himself all the things he wanted to say to his mother. Then, a man sitting directly in front of me, I’d barely noticed him before, spoke.

-How old are you, kid?

-19.

-Wow. Well chin up! It’s not so bad. I promise you that.

As soon as he said that, I felt bad for the guy, Clearly, this kid had some major attitude and wasn’t going to listen to some strange guy on the Max.

-No man, you don’t get it. My life is so shitty! I work all day, then I come home to my mom, the world’s biggest bitch, and she makes me go all the way across town to pick up shit for her. Then she gives me shit for getting lost. It’s a shitty life, man.

I thought the man would give up. But he just went ahead, in a deep voice with a slight southern accent. He had a commanding, but gentle, tone.

-Hey, it’s not so bad. Don’t let her get to you. Don’t let her shit become your shit. I’ve been through some bad stuff in my life. I’ve seen the kind of things you can’t even dream of. I made it through, and you will, too.

-I know. I know I shouldn’t let her get to me. But you don’t understand.

-Maybe I don’t, but then again maybe I do. Maybe you need to stop thinking your life is so hard. Maybe you need to stop letting other people control your emotions. Only you can do that. Take some responsibility. If your life is shitty, then change it.

This time, the kids voice lowered. He almost mumbled, clearly struggling to say this out loud:

-She’s on drugs.

The man didn’t miss a beat.

-Well then distance yourself from her. Get out on your own. By the time I was your age, I’d already joined the Marines. You could be out of the house and making your own life.

-You’re right.

This is when my jaw dropped. I couldn’t really believe this all was happening. First, that this guy would have the audacity to think he could change anything about this kid’s life. Second, for the kid to actually listen.

-Damn right, I’m right. You ever thought about joining the Marines, kid? If you can’t get out on your own with a regular job, you keep that in mind. I got friends who retired by the time they were 45.

-Really?

-Hell yeah. But if it isn’t for you, then it isn’t for you. You just gotta get yourself into a better situation and stop feeling sorry for yourself. There’s no excuse not to.

By now, we arrived at the kid’s stop. He’d been nodding throughout the man’s whole speech. There was a look in his eye, a glimmer that hadn’t been there before. He walked over, looked the man in the eye, and shook his hand.

-Thank you, sir. I’m Tyler.

-I’m Jack. You’re welcome. And chin up.

Over a week later, I’m still thinking about these two. The realist in me knows Tyler probably didn’t change overnight and move out from his mother’s house the next day. He probably didn’t, and won’t, change at all. But hell, the whole exchange showed me I know exactly nothing about what humanity can and can’t do. So every other part of me is imagining Tyler slowly but surely fighting to make his life better.

Denis Johnson has a maddeningly beautiful way of saying things. Things you only wish you’d thought of first. This sentence never fails to unfold a new level of depth every time I read it. It’s utterly simple, yet poetic and transformative.

“I knew every raindrop by its name.”

-Denis Johnson, Car Crash While Hitchhiking

Another of my favorite words. The sound of it is just as beautifully heartbreaking as the meaning. The soft vulnerability of the “b” and “r” that lead to an abrupt, unexpected end with “ft.” It’s eloquent perfection.

Hello my tumblr friends!

I wanted to take a moment to say a few things. I promise it will be brief, if not entirely stimulating.

1. I’m sorry for my absence. I took a hiatus during the month of February to really focus on my work and my portfolio. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it in this sphere before, but I’m a copywriter in the ad world. For those unfamiliar with 21st century advertising jobs, I offer you this comparison- my job is like Peggy Olsen’s in Mad Men. Without all the sex and misogyny. But I promise to focus up on my fiction writing again. If you’d like to check out the site that’s been distracting me from the realm of Tumblr, you can hop on over to cargocollective.com/carriedunn and enjoy!
2. You’ll notice I’m starting a new recurring post called “Words I Love”- it’s my ode to letters arranged to perfection. I created it for my portfolio -and because I really love these words- and thought it would be great to share in this space, too.
3. You’re all wonderful. Truly and sincerely, thank you to everyone who’s shown me support and kindness in response to the writing I’ve shared here.

Thank you for your time. And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. I toss and I turn through the regularities and humdrum that is reality, all the while wrapped inside my night terror. There is no light I turn on without cringing, my body preparing to see his body lying on the floor. There is no dropped item, loudly echoing through the room, that is not a booming shot to me. There is no scream of joy, only one of terror in my cursed ears. There is no ketchup stain. There is no dull knife, no glazed over eyes, no back firing car. There are only ghosts of my sins.

That’s how I open it all. When the shrink asks me today, that’s my opening statement. And it’s pretty good, too. Maybe my best yet.

            I tell the psychiatrist it all began in the war. Correction, the court-order psychiatrist. I sometimes wonder if he ever listens, or if that notepad is coated in doodle of ways to kill small animals. There are the simple ways. The gun, the knife, the hands, the rock. But there are the more eloquent ways. Drowning in a river as I in my flowing robe say a prayer, hand crossing its furry forehead as I gently hold it under the ice cold waters. Beautiful. Or I can put that small animal in a tank with no outlet for air, and a heat lamp blazing down on it. Slowly the heat and air would suffocate it and it would have no choice but to lay down, close its small, dark eyes and accept the fate I made for it.

            It began with the war and the heat and the weight of that pack and their eyes on me and the feel of that band around my arm tightening until I tingled and the blast of death ringing my ears, making it so I couldn’t hear the words of those around me.

            “Tell me more about this war.”

            “Yes,” I say. And I do.

            It was a botched war in a botched country of brown people. We couldn’t even pretend to be their liberators or protectors or gods or friends. They’d heard all those lines one too many times. So we trudged and trekked from strange task to stranger task. None seemed to make a difference, each village we neutralized was the same afterward. Johnny was there, next to me, the whole time. I’d look down to my feet and the muddy ground below me. His hands were always there, hanging on the edge of my vision. The nails were ringed in a filthy halo of brown. I cringed every time he bit those things, chewing on a cocktail of parasites and germs. He was pathetic, really. I pitied him from that first time I saw him. He followed me around like a dog and I knew it was my duty to take care of him.

The land was cruel to him in ways it wasn’t to anyone else. He was permanently sunburned and dehydrated. Like his body had never dealt with heat before. I always ended up doing his jobs for him and taking care of him. I guess it was those eyes. They were blue and reminded me of our weird little dog from when I was little. So my hands would start doing his tasks before my mind ever made itself up to. But I guess that’s the kind of thing war brings out in a guy. The ability to persevere. Or maybe it was to cover for someone else. Or was it something along the lines of brotherhood? Yeah, that sounds like it could be right. It was a brotherhood out there. We had no one else so we had to stick together.

“Tell me more about this Johnny.”

“Yes,” I say. And I do.

I tell him about his nails and his red hair that made me think of an Irish girl from grade school. One time I knocked her to the ground when we were playing tag. Her eyes had widened until I say all of the blue and it made her hair look even more like a flame. And when she struggled to push me off I knew she couldn’t. I tell him about Johnny’s habit. He had a habit of saying every sentence like a question. Like he never knew one thing for certain. It’s that uncertainty that landed him in a stink.

We were doing a raid, same as always. By then, I was a machine. I’d crushed so many heads, that it was as commonplace as cracking the shell of a pistachio. For some reason I always found myself man to man. I never was the guy that got to make the safe shots to kill from a distance. No sir. I was the dirty jobs. The kind no one else wanted because no one else knew if they had the stomach for it. But I had the stomach for it. One time Johnny asked if I minded and all I could do was smile. Well he tagged along on my duty, going hut by hut to clean out the bitches.

A few had some old folks left in them, one baby in another. Most everyone knew we were coming and cleared out. But we get to one hut, and by this time we’re relaxed. We’re sitting pretty. And Johnny takes the lead. Goddammit I should’ve known better. I should’ve known that kid couldn’t hack it. But he opened the door and he immediately got blown away. I mean really blown away. His head opened itself, like a flower blooming toward the sun, and red sprayed through the air. And that’s when I knew death was art.

So yeah, it all started with the war. Johnny’s death never left my mind. And I knew, shit, we’re all going to die no matter what happens. Might as well make it beautiful like Johnny’s.

“Mmm Hm.”

“Yes,” I say.

“I hear you’re allowing a visit from a priest this evening. Is this true?”

“Yes,” I say. And I do.

I tell the shrink a few more stories from the war and decide to call it a day. When I say goodbye I look into those black eyes and see how a knife would reflect so clearly in them as it came toward him. Probably the neck wouldn’t be a good destination, since it’s so bloated in fat. No, the wrist or heart would be better. Each with their own benefits. I see his eyebrows raise slightly as I stare and quickly smile and walk away.

They walk me the length of the hallway and each step echoes. They open my door with a clang and I enter. They leave me with Carlos and his litany of prayers to the Virgin Mother. It’s only a few hours before the priest comes in his robes of black. That collar is perfectly placed to tighten until the esophagus narrows to a slit then nothing. He sits across from me. I can tell from his constant shifting that this must be new to him.

“I came to talk with you about your sins, my son.”

“Yes,” I say. And I do.

I tell the priest it all started in the foster home. It was my third placement, and this one stuck. Not because they loved me. It was because they were cruel enough to not care. Because my behavior was monitored with a fist and minimal food. They had a couple of us, all an easy way to collect money for their drug habit. And they kept us raving when the inspectors came to visit with threats of the belt. We knew they had a gun somewhere, too. It was almost worse that we’d never seen it before. It was a phantom that we feared more than any fists or starvation. Johnny was younger than me. His red hair and blue eyes made him seem so much more fragile. He was already pale, but he became almost green when they beat him. Each bruise showed more starkly against him white skin. And his nails. They were always encrusted in a halo of dirt. Yet he refused to wash them, and always chewed on them. I knew it was just a matter of time before he got sick from it.

He followed me around like a puppy. Like that dog our neighbor’s had. It seemed to think we had food for it. But it was wrong and in the end so was Johnny. It was a botched home in a botched system of corrupt idiots. No one cared about who we were, so long as we grew up and got out of their hair in the end.  So one day, we haven’t had food in three days. That’s right. We’d had a piece of bread each day for three days. So the kids always looked to me for the dirt jobs, and I did it. I didn’t mind. So we decide it’s time to find the key to the pantry.

We all banned together and are assigned different areas of the house to search. I, of course, got the master bedroom. I had to go in their domain and search in the place that could get me beaten within an inch of my life. But I didn’t mind. The thrill made my fingers hum. Johnny wants to tag along, he says. I just shrugged my shoulders as his freckles stand out more than ever before.

The floor creaked and I didn’t know when the Smiths, that was their name, were getting home. So we operated quickly and efficiently. Like a regular troop we each attacked simultaneously. Johnny and I opened the master bedroom and began rummaging through every drawer. Hands shaking from hunger opened and closed closets, drawers, and cupboards. Then I went to the bedside table. There it was. Black, cold and heavy. It seemed to beckon to me, as if it had spent this whole time waiting for me. I picked up the gun that had for so long haunted my thoughts and knew everything was alright now.

Johnny stopped and turned to stare at me. His blue eyes widened and his thin lips formed a circle. We both observed a moment of silence. Through both of our minds ran the possibilities of freedom and revenge that lay before us. Beautiful redemption coursed through my veins. We had the power. Johnny held out his hands and I solemnly let him hold the gun for a moment. His tiny arms shook with the weight, then the gun slipped. It fell toward the floor and felt as unstoppable as the fall of the sun toward the horizon. One moment of precious release. Then it hit the ground, aimed up toward Johnny as he bent forward to try and catch it.

The bullet released and went straight toward his head. Bullet reached brain before I heard the shot that announced its release. It went in and out so easily, taking parts of his brain with it. I couldn’t help but see the watermelon we had dropped from the roof of our school. Soft, gooey chunks scattering across the ground and leaving their red dye. When he hit the ground, his hair was no longer flaming, but a deeper red.

“And do you blame yourself for Johnny’s death?”

“Yes,” I say. But I don’t.

After the priest spoke about forgiveness and admission of sins, he left. He had that look in his eye. The one Johnny had right before the bullet hit him. I tell Carlos later that night. I tell him how Johnny was just a kid when I initiated him into the gang. He was just a kid but he was so lost and looked at me so weirdly with his blue eyes so we hit him. We hit him and hit him until a punch went wrong. Pushed his nose into his brain. He bled from his nose on the sidewalk as we left him there. But it wasn’t blood. It was that watermelon again.

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. That’s what Johnny told me that first night we spent together in rehab. He had the shakes and was trying to quit his coke habit. I was sweating as I tried not to go grab some meth. He was deep as fuck. I’d never met a true Irishman before, but he was one. His red hair and freckles, left me no doubt about his heritage. I wanted to joke and say, shouldn’t you be addicted to Guinness then? But he looked too weak for that. I’d save it for another day.

So we talked in that room for a while and I think I helped him. But I couldn’t help noticing the rat scurrying under his bunk. I wanted stab it with the only thing they gave me. A pencil to mark off the days I’d been clean. I wondered if lead could get me high. Maybe with the proper technique. His shakes eased until his eyes closed. With his blue eyes closed he looked less like a lost puppy. I had no idea the meth head was going to lose it that night. He tried to get out and pulled a gun. It went straight through our door and into Johnny’s head. It pushed his eyebrow ring into his skull, and then out the other end. I found it on the ground the next day and put it in my pocket.

I’ve already planned it out. I know what they’ll ask.

“Do you have any last words?”

“Yes,” I’ll say. And I do.

I didn’t always want to be a writer.

At first I wanted to be a doctor. Later I wanted to work with the UN delivering help to those suffering from genocide, draught, famine and heartbreak. Then I wanted to work with the disabled. My first year of college, I went to school for nursing.

But in the end, I couldn’t get away from writing. Which makes sense. Because when you look at the path of careers I gravitated toward, the overall theme sounds loud and clear.

All I’ve ever wanted to do was to help people- to make a difference with this life I’ve been given.

Stories are the best way I know how to do that.

“This circle represents people who are breaking my heart. And this circle represents the people who are shaking my confidence daily. And where do they overlap? Cecilia.”

God bless How I Met Your Mother.

Now this is pretty wonderful.

via boringconversation:

illustrated by Meghan Murphy (Tumblr) :: via murphypop.com

Damien never sits when he rides the MAX. He always positions himself as close to the door as possible, never touching the handrails without gloves. His shoulders slouch forward severely, either from the weight of his black trench coat, the contents of his backpack, or some other force, while his eyes slowly, constantly scan. On principle, he never puts in headphones or reads a book, claiming dependence on sensory distractions would be the No. 1 Cause of Death when the time comes. He taps his left foot, making a repeated low thud.

The sound makes Damien weigh, for what must be the thousandth time, the pros and cons of his clunky Doc Martens.

Pros:

• The two-inch boost is a necessary height advantage. Especially for lookout in crowded spaces.
• The solid, liquid-repellant base means running in puddles of water or other liquids won’t be an issue.
• The lacing system is more secure- less chance of tripping over a shoelace and losing precious seconds.
• Hefty weight ensures maximum damage to attackers. It’s important to know you can shatter a skull with a properly executed curb stomp.

Cons:

• The extra weight can slow down speed and shorten overall running distance.

That’s one huge con, but to Damien, the pros definitely outweigh them. Especially considering humankind would depend on the few prepared when the Apocalypse came. 

In Damien’s backpack are 7 different knives (4 standard switchblades in different sizes, 2 butterfly knives and a butter knife he grabbed on impulse that morning), an axe, a machete, 2 hospital masks, a fifth of vodka (to be used for medicinal purposes and cleanse infection from wounds), and 10 granola bars. He’s confident this is the amount required to fight his way through a hoard until he can secure a safehouse. After that, all the supplies in the world will be up for grabs. Technically, it isn’t looting when the vast majority of the population is no longer fully human.

The contents of his bag would definitely warrant an arrest and probably put him on every no fly list in the world. His mom pestered him every time he came home, asking him what he carried around. Damien would come and sit at the kitchen table, his all black clothes strangely contrasting the tattered flower tablecloth, setting his bag down with a resonant thump. She would come at him, gray hair flying loose from the bun she attempted and wielding a ladle. Or a spatula. Or a pencil. She’d shake it at him and demand “What do you carry around? What is in that backpack of yours? Drugs? Dead bodies?” and his shouts for privacy were never heard. One day she asked again and again, “What do you carry around that’s so heavy?!” and Damien snapped, saying, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the responsibilities of being the man of the house ever since you drove dad!”

He regretted saying it, but it got him his privacy. It was for the best. Back when he just kept the bag backed in his room, he’d once shown it to Lauren. She’d freaked out and said he needed help. A while after she stopped answering his calls, he sensed it. He felt that the time was coming soon.

So now Damien carries the bag everywhere, just waiting for his chance. He rides the MAX daily. If the Apocalypse is coming, it’s likely to hit right here in the heart of human contagion. Where diseases, bacteria, genders and classes mix alike. Damien constantly watches for the coughs, the sneezes and the downright crazy to morph into something greater, something nastier. And when it does, with a machete in one hand and an axe in the other, he’ll take what the world has always denied him. And he really hopes that the jerk in the suit who intentionally shoves him as he exits the train is among the infected.