Anthology Complex by M.B. Julien (new reading .txt) 📕

Lynne for taking the kids away from Silvio. She calls Silvio an Hispanic bastard.

 

These adults now sound like they are going through typical high school bullshit. She also adds that she doesn't trust Silvio's temper.

 

Then Lynne tells me that she knows that Silvio found her last time because Claire told her where Lynne was staying, and that this was the reason why she hated and suspected her sister. Lynne's face is so red that I decide I have to change the subject, and I tell her that her plants are dying. She looks at me confused, then the redness goes away. She walks into the other room and then a few seconds later she walks back out and hands me something. A packet of seeds.

 

She tells me that she made the mistake of trying to plant zinnias where there isn't much sunlight. That zinnias can't survive in a shade garden. Since there was no other place to plant anything she was instead going to plant Peace Lilies. She tells me that Peace Lilies flourish in the shade. She's finally smiling again. This happy gene.

 

Not too long after I hear a knock on my door, and I go see who it is. I'm hoping it's not the return of Claire and Silvio. I look down the hallway and I see a police officer and I inform him that I'm the one who lives at that door.

 

The officer asks both Lynne and I if we saw or heard anything strange last night or this morning, and we both say no. Lynne asks why and the officer tells her that there had been a murder not too far from here. The murder that I walked past.

 

The officer tells us that before the man was murdered, several tenants from other apartment buildings said he knocked on their door and asked strange questions and looked as if he were confused. As if he didn't know what was going on and he had no real connection to the world outside of his mind. As if he were unaware of his actions.

 

The officer asks if either of us received a visit from a man like that and we both said no, and then went on to ask others in the building and then he left.

 

Two nights ago I had a dream where I was digging a grave. At first I'm standing in front of my mother and my father's tombstones, and then I'm standing in the grave digging deeper and deeper not realizing I won't be able to get out. I'm looking for my mother and father but no matter how deep I dig I can't find them. It's funny how I say "them" instead of "the bodies." When a boy is alive and well, you'll call him Jason, but when he's dead and his body is lifeless, most people refer to him as "the body." Where's the body? Bring me the body.

 

Not where's Jason, not bring me Jason. I think most of the times the people who knew Jason would keep calling him Jason because they don't want to realize his life is gone and all that's left is his body. The human psyche at work.

 

I keep digging and digging but all I can see in my mind is Abraham Lincoln's face and what I think is his voice. "We can never fool all of the people all of the time." I look up to see if Lincoln is above me, speaking down to me, but he isn't there. Just a voice in my head.

 

When I look back down to start digging again, I see that woman, and she is laying face down. That damn woman that haunts my dreams. That damn woman who won't tell me who she is. I start to turn her body, and before me I see a woman who resembles my mother.

 

After I wake up I try to figure out what it means but all I can really come up with is that the dream when I'm in the utopia and this dream mean something, that they're connected at least in my mind. If the woman laying in that bed in the utopia that I am leaving is my mother as well, then maybe what I'm hoping for subconsciously is that my mother is in a better place now. In a peaceful place. Or maybe that I'm willing to switch places with her if she isn't.

 

Before my father died my mother committed suicide. I believe she killed herself because she felt as if she was born in the wrong time period or the wrong parallel universe. She didn't say it but I know she hated most of the people she met. She hated them because she hated people in general, she hated human tendencies and their lifestyles. Misanthropy.

 

She hated the imbalance in the world, and she hated the people who didn't care about it even more. Her hate grew so much that it eventually consumed her and took away her life, literally and metaphorically.

 

The one thing I could never understand was how she loved my father. How can you hate so many people and find room in your heart for this one person. Now my father wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't that great either. He didn't beat my mother, not with his fists at least, but in a way he did hit her. He ignored her, and he didn't care how obvious it was that his work was more important to him than his wife and his family. Somehow she found the strength to stay with him until she died.

 

After she died, my father realized how much he ignored her. How worthless he made her feel. His guilt turned into physical body complications and then he eventually died. In a way they kind of killed each other, but only in kind of a way.

 

I remember when Maria thought I needed help, that I needed to go see a psychiatrist or a therapist or something like that. I saw her point, my mind was out there, so I decided to humor her and go see one.

 

The problem with that was that the medication they were giving me was messing with my memory, and in turn, I couldn't remember my dreams no matter how hard I tried. For two months, it was as if I had no dreams. I couldn't live like that. I wouldn't live like that.

 

Chapter 19:

THE MURDER DISEASE

 

Few things are worse than the bad person who pretends to be good. The person in charge of a charity fund who every once in a while steals from the funds, the law enforcement officer who takes unusual advantage of his position among civilians, the politician who sanctions the murder of thousands of people for his own gain. These people make the common criminal who does not hide in plain sight respectable.

 

In a dream I had not too long ago I am sitting in a car waiting for someone. Time goes by and then the passenger's door opens and my partner sits down. He has food so we start to eat, and then after a while he asks me why I do this.

 

Later on in the dream I find out that we were sitting in a parked car because we were waiting for this corrupt law enforcement officer to come home. I tell my partner that I don't do these things so much because I love the innocent, but because I hate the wicked. I tell him that there is more hate in my heart than there is love.

 

What makes a person more hateful than loving? Is there a mathematical formula? Is it environmental influence? Is it simply biology? Maybe each person at one point in their life is ultimately defined by a dominant emotion. Maybe there is one emotion for each of us that will develop who we are. If at that point you are always feeling angry, you will start to develop this angry persona along with all the emotions and feelings that can be branched from it, emotions like hatred and feelings like contemptment. This is you turning on your anger gene, your hate gene.

 

Or maybe at that point you are always feeling peaceful and you start to develop this persona that is always patient and loving. This mind that turns on the kindness gene, the love gene. This hatred that I feel asks for peace, for balance in a world that seems to be run by evil people. Balance has become such a large portion of my psychology that when I stub my toe, I have to stub the other so that they both feel pain.

 

Suddenly my partner puts on his sad theater mask, and I look out the windshield and I see the law enforcement officer walking into his home. In the theater of ancient Greece a comedy had a happy ending and a tragedy had a sad ending. Performers often wore masks to conceal their identity so that the audience didn't associate a specific character with a specific role. That fisheye view.

 

A performer who was a king in one scene could be a peasant in another. Theater masks, or drama masks, are often associated with the genre of drama, where the happy-looking mask represents comedy and the sad-looking mask represents tragedy. Everyone has heard of the philosophy that in order to know happiness one must know sadness.

 

There is a theory that in order for you to be happy, someone else in the world has to be sad. Perhaps these are to keep a sort of balance in the world, to be able to co-exist.

 

After he puts on his mask he is about to get out of the car but I tell him to sit down. I tell him that if we want to get the mayor on corruption as well, we will need to find out about him by watching one of his closest friends, this law enforcement officer. Then when we have him, he will know who we are.

 

We will show him our faces so that he can associate these faces with the people who killed him. For the few seconds he would have to live anyway. This hate gene that turns on will make us prone to the murder disease.

 

Chapter 20:

"PROSTITUTE'S FOOT AMPUTATED"

 

Last night, I had a nightmare. In and out, back and forth, up and down. There are moments when I wish this prostitute was my spouse so I didn't have to pay her for sex. After we're done, she gets up and starts to put on her clothes and I ask her where she's going.

 

She tells me she has other customers to tend to. I tell her that I'll pay her double what I owe her if she just stays to keep me company. If she left me, my loneliness gene would turn on and I would be prone to the suicide disease.

 

She agrees to stay and I tell her to lay down next to me. We lay there silently for about ten minutes, and then I get up to go use the bathroom. In the toilet I see a phone floating there. On my way back to her I see that she has fallen asleep, so I go to my coat and I take out this syringe. I have no idea what this liquid is but I inject it into her upper left leg. After some time passes, I feel for a pulse on her neck and there is none. No signs of life.

 

I look over her naked body, this work of art. The body part I give the most attention to is her left foot. I reach out to touch it, it's warm. I slide my hand across it. I do it again and again until it becomes cold, and then I take out a less than normal-sized axe from under the bed and I cleanly chop it off. The blood is minimal.

 

I go to place the foot in my freezer but before I could do so I hear