DESPERATE TIMES PRESENTS:

LIES AND DEATH

a short story

From the desk of Marvin Feltchnik

“If I can’t have all of you, I don’t want any of you.
If I can’t fall in love with you whenever I see you, I don’t want you.
I can’t share you. I don’t want you if I have to share you
It hurts too much to see you in someone else’s arms.”

I’m thinking about thinking about her.

I’m not thinking at all. I’m obsessing myself into a hole… into a whole lot of problems.

I can’t simply be friends with a woman. I need to devote myself to her. An innate need to fuck her senseless and make her mine comes over me and I can’t divorce myself from the idea that if I can’t fuck her, she’s not worth my time. This isn’t just with women either. Not that I want to fuck men, but whenever I get close to anyone, it ends in fear – I’m afraid to get too close. If I get too close there will be consequences, I’ll have to really open myself up, and that is something that I just can not do. So I lie to myself and I hate myself for it – I keep track of the lies I’ve been telling for years – since I was 12 and I was lonely one night – and I got in a fight with myself – I cut myself for selfishness sake – I played on trust and my best friend’s emotions. I suppose my subconscious had been garnering trust all around from people for years… waiting for the moment when I could use that trust to my advantage.

I was thirteen.

She had just gotten back from a bat mitzvah – my ear and neck were sore from holding the phone. My hands were occupied with a more important job; slowly picking away the skin from my fingers. I wondered how much skin I could scoop up. Each pick hurt a little less. Bleeding, I lied through my teeth… it was easier over the phone… didn’t have to look anyone in the eye.

Emily, I hate myself and I want to die. Every day when I get home from school I vomit, cut myself, cry and thrash about in bed. My mind feels stuck and I’m looking for a solution… Will you be my emotional mop?

Of course! I’m so desperate to feel important about myself that I’ll indulge your attention seeking attempts at psychosis.

Acting insane played on my psyche in a bad way. Growing to think these made up emotions were real, I would put myself in the mind set of an adolescent, riddled with troubles and force myself to believe in my fictitious symptoms. My fallacy came off as being the real me. The real me… I don’t know where the real me went.

I told her I was Depressed, which I was, but not to extent that I am now. She snapped in to action and nurse-maided me through life for most of middle-school. I hated myself for letting her take advantage of me. I put my trust in her and I was betrayed.

Years later I put my faith, my trust and all of my eggs in to another friend’s basket. He took my eggs out of the basket and stepped on them. He leaves a trail of my bloody yoke wherever he walks.

I was now seventeen.

Emily wept over the phone. The sound of her crying gave me an even bigger headache. I had never heard something so pathetic, so unfounded as her tears being spilled on my account. She asked me how long I had been cutting myself.

“Months” I said, and I dug my Mach 3 razor deeper into my skin. Her sobbing intensified.
Emily asked why I hadn’t told her earlier.
There was nothing to tell. She couldn’t take away the pain, she didn’t know how to listen.
“Emily, you’re a terrible listener; a shrewish, naïve, little girl. You wouldn’t have a clue what to do, should you find yourself locked in a room for all eternity with a tube of Vaseline and a quarter inch lead pipe.”

Getting her to climax was like getting Bin Laden out of hiding. You had to stake yourself out for a few weeks, waiting for the optimal moment of insertion. If you went in too soon or too late, you’d miss your window and you’d have to wait another few weeks, to even get near the kill zone.

She’d always been very needy and as she bawled, I went on.

All of a sudden, the windows looked like they needed cleaning. Flatly, I told her that “I never truly cared for you. I never loved you. I’ve been biding my time, waiting for something better to come along.” Her sobbing intensified again.

My head aches something awful, some despicable hateful feeling. My throat feels vengeful and the need to destroy grows with each beat of my heart. I decide to go for the kill. After holding my bloody forearm over the radiator until I could stand it no longer, I resign myself to the fact that if I can’t destroy the whole world, I would at least destroy hers.

“You never understood me.” I had told her on numerous occasions that she was the only woman, the only person who ever really understood me. Through wet sobbing tears, Emily managed to put a sentence together.

“I just, don’t, understand, how can you do something like this to me? Doesn’t our friendship mean anything to you?”

“Not after what you did to me” I scowled with soap-operatic vigor. “Not after your lies and deception, your cheating stares and faraway glances. If you can’t give yourself to me entirely, then I don’t want any part of you at all.”

“What are you talking about!?” Cried Emily, “I’ve been nothing if not completely faithful to you.”

“Don’t lie.” I grimaced as I noticed the callous on my middle finger burned away. This would make tonight’s recording session difficult. I had no problem playing guitar for five or six hours straight, but if my callouses peeled, I would be worthless for the rest of the night. Emily was cry-shouting at me; something about not talking about my feelings or opening up to her, something like that.

“We need to talk about this-“ I interrupted her,
“I can’t talk now Emily. I’m running out of battery. Emily I think my phone’s about to-“ I hung up on her and turned off my phone.


SEVERAL YEARS LATER

I stare down at the computer’s blank screen; waiting, wondering what was going to come out. Thirty-six hours till my self-imposed deadline. What had I spent the last thirty-six hours doing? I stared outside my window to look at the dilapidated front porch. Amber, my ten-year old Golden Retriever had been running around the house all day, in a vain attempt at catching the local mongoose. I named the mongoose Ricky, out of some misplaced sense of childhood sentiment (I consider my wealth of childhood sentiment to be my worst flaw). The mongoose had taken up residence underneath my front porch. Amber, being too large to fit through the crack that the Mongoose used as it’s route, had decided to (instead of waiting the animal out) run an ongoing marathon around the perimeter of the house, apparently hoping to catch the snake-killer out in the open at a weak moment.

This had been going on for months. Amber only came in to eat… and occasionally cuddle. I could tell she was lonely – the way she looked up at me with those big brown eyes. She knew things were different. It seemed like she was beginning to understand the emptiness in this house would now be permanent. For a while, Amber moped around; listless, brooding. Then she took up hunting the neighborhood mongoose and her life seemed to have some purpose again.

When Amber came in, I would curl up next to her, pretending to be an Australian Sheep Dog.

My mind drifted to the lies I had told my family. When I was twelve, I hurled a fastball through the living room bay window, shattering it to pieces. My mother asked me who was responsible. My mouth fumbled around as I searched for a believable lie. Desperate to escape punishment, I blamed the broken window on my younger brother. His television privileges were revoked for a month and I, I felt slightly guilty.

My whole life had been a lie. After trying to fit in with those around me for so long by assuming their personality traits, their isms, I had forgotten who I was. Perhaps I never knew who I was to begin with. The blank stare only went away when I could find some attribute to allow me to fit in with the crowd. Then the real truth dawned on me: I hate the crowd and everyone in it. I have no desire to be like anyone else. I want to be myself, but 25 years of lies have left me vacant, devoid of any feeling but guilt.

I am the Bates Motel. Guilt has just pulled up. Guilt looks a lot like Janet Leigh. I have to kill my Janet Leigh before she kills me.

Maybe this was me. Maybe I’m just a vengeful demon on the hunt for blood, I can’t placate the world with smiles and laughs.

Amber had been running around outside the house for hours in the rain. She enjoyed it, and who was I to begrudge her some measure of purpose.

“I hope you know you’re staying on the leash in the kitchen untill you dry off!” I think she heard me.

I lit a cigarette and stared out the window.

"Someone should really dust these."

Lithe as a cat; I darted from the kitchen to the living room in four solid leaps. You’ve got to understand the distance from the living room to the kitchen. It’s a good thirty feet. Not only do you have ten feet of Living room to traverse, a five foot entryway and another fifteen feet on a right angle in the dining room just to get to the kitchen entrance; you’ve gotta avoid the low ceilings.

Apparently when they built this monument to colonialism, back in the 1700’s, people were no taller than five foot six.

Case and point; I had to make long; Bernie Williams-like strides in addition to bouncing and pivoting like Baryshnikov to make it to the kitchen in four leaps.

Where would my mother’s phone book be? My mother held on to the same gray eight-inch by six-inch address book since I was born.
The book was nowhere in sight.

I dug through the junk-drawer next to the oven. It was that same God-awful drawer that every kitchen had; you know, the one crammed with too much shit to open without jamming? Not only did you have to jiggle the handle, you had the stick your hand inside the drawer and maneuver the chopsticks around so that the drawer would open more than three inches. You did this at your own peril, fully aware that your little brother’s last act on this planet may have been to carelessly throw your father’s unsheathed machete into the drawer in a potentially finger-slicing position.

Preoccupied, I shoved my hand in the drawer and let out a bloodcurdling scream. I ripped the drawer out of the shelf unit. The contents of the drawer; Reynolds wrap, cling wrap, pens, pencils, batteries, a condom wrapper, a stick of licorice, seven or eight Candy Corns, a toy unicorn and my late mother’s address book went flying. I looked down at the metal shish-kebob skewer, sticking through the skin between my right index and middle finger with bitter malice. Like a fool, I yanked out the skewer and wrapped my hand in a roll of Brawny paper towels. Chinese food was in order.

As I sat down to order my chicken and broccoli from David Chen’s, I remembered whose number I was looking for in the address book. We had a lady who cleaned for us every week. That’s selling her short. Her name was Jackie Koh, and she had looked after my great grandmother for the last twenty some-odd years of her life. Jackie’s demeanor was pleasant, she never raised her voice, she always wore a bright smile on her face; always eager to talk to you and her toilets were clean enough to eat off of.

David Chen's didn't open for another five hours.

Jackie developed her strong work ethic and moral fortitude in her native country of Malaysia. When she came to America, she was the ideal worker – a symbol of the land of opportunity. She’d gone to night school while cleaning houses to earn her nursing degree. After she got her nursing degree, Jackie still kept up my Great-Grandmother’s house, even while still pursuing her Master’s in Political Science. After my Great-Grandmother passed away at the age of one hundred and one, Jackie continued to care for sick elderly women while going back to night school again; this time to earn her Doctorate. I asked Jackie, with all her education and skills, why she never pursued a career outside of nursing.

“It’s good to be educated.” She’d say.

Jackie had attended the funeral and returned to the house before everyone else to make it habitable. I had never met a nicer person. I cherished her thick Malaysian accent. For all her education, Jackie still didn’t speak English a hundred percent. I’ve known Jackie my whole life; and what I’m getting at here is, the woman has never given me cause for distress. She’s quite the stand-up lady.

I look up her name in my mother’s address book. My cell phone says it’s seven twenty AM. I never used to get up this early. I reached for the portable phone on the wall and dialed from my house number. I hadn’t used the house line in a month.
The call went to voicemail after five rings. “Hello, you have reached, Jacki-Koh. Please leave a message with yaw nem, pho-numba and rihson for yaw call. Thank you. (BEEEP)”

“Hi, Jackie,” I violently cleared my throat “this is Marvin jr. I was just wondering if you could perhaps come over this weekend to clean.” I paused for a moment, and dragged on my cigarette like it was the last drag I would ever take. I started to pick at my skin again. “Thanks Jackie, Bye.” Being that overly polite on the phone usually kills me, but the fact of the mater is, I really appreciate the woman. She’s an example of a genuine, hundred percent; kind person. After the funeral, Jackie ran the kitchen and took mourner’s coats at the door. She knew this routine well. Any trip to my Great-Grandmother’s house included Jackie taking your coat at the door. Aside from cleaning and collecting clothing, Jackie was a whiz at dinner parties. The funeral reception presented Jackie with the same tasks as a dinner party. She served her function well, bringing out trays of cheese and crackers, mashed potatoes and meatloaf to the guests. Not one to chitchat with guests, Jackie seldom spoke unless spoken to.

I was bleeding pretty badly now, but it didn’t matter. For a minute, I could feel the pain, then it was gone. I couldn't feel it anymore. I sat around for the next few hours watching the wet blood running down my arm collect into a small pool on the kitchen floor. I never let it dry.