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

him. "I am so glad we found each other," he replies. They continue to dance slowly to the mellow music being played in the background, as do all the others who were invited to this victorious celebration party.

 

There is a smell of expensive perfume in the air, and any other type of smell would simply be unacceptable. In the middle of the large extravagant room there is an elegant piece of marble, a statue carved to depict a man holding the hand of a child. The people dance around the piece of marble, and those who aren't dancing mingle with the others who aren't dancing.

 

One says to another, "we are doing God's work." In the corner of the room there are bottles of wine and other types of fine drinks, but these drinks are overshadowed by the seemingly endless amount of food ready to be eaten. This is a party for the celebration of a charity organization that had just reached a remarkable goal.

 

Even though the party in this dream seems as if it had been going on for a long time, the night was still young.

 

My partner and I walk through a parking lot filled with cars that could only be owned by individuals with a high standard of living. The high class. We put on our theater masks and get through all of their poor attempts at security, and then we knock down the doors and interrupt the most beautiful party you have ever seen.

 

My partner fires a round into the ceiling of the room and everyone stops dancing. Everyone stops talking. Soon after the music stops, and that's when we know we have the floor. The owner of this charity foundation, who is standing on the stage waiting for our demands, he's a thief. Not a thief like me or my partner, but a thief who hides behind the persona of a decent and honest human being.

 

He wears this mask that is his actual face, hiding in plain sight. He steals from his donators and with this money he provides for himself a lifestyle that people can't even dream of. Well, most people.

 

There was a man who said that all warfare is based on deception. To seem as if you are attacking when you are actually resting, and to seem as if you are resting when you are actually attacking. Of course, this doesn't just apply to warfare, as this owner has figured out.

 

My partner and I drop the two dead bodies we are carrying on our shoulders. These black bodies that are losing flesh, and we explain to them how their boss was the one who caused this. How people like him are causing problems around the world because of their greed and selfishness.

 

We tell them how this boy and this girl, who were extremely close friends, could have had a life together. How they could have danced in the rain, how they could have held each other, how they could have gotten married, how they could have had kids. But instead, the only good thing they had in their life was the fact that they died together, of starvation.

 

By the end of the night we have killed the owner and destroyed the statue of deceit. Before we killed him, before he starts begging for his life, he tells us that it's the mayor's fault. That he himself had nothing to do with the stealing of funds from the charity, but everyone here and everyone like this owner lies. My partner asks him, "what about her life, what about his?" He has no answer. After he's dead I think to myself how many people we will have to kill before everything is right, how many people will have to die, and then I wake up.

 

My father always told me that if you can think of something, and comprehend it, then it is possible. That the only things that are impossible are the things we don't even have the capacity to conceive. The owner thinks of starting a charity company out of goodwill, but along the path he loses his way and thinks about stealing from the people who want to help; then he makes it happen.

 

What he failed to comprehend is that you can fall when you are up and you can rise when you are down. Memento mori. Philosophically, metaphorically and literally. Robin Hood would agree.

 

Some people think that it's money that can make the world a better place, that it's money that can change the world, but even if a person who was determined to make a difference had an endless supply of every type of currency in the world, the person wouldn't be able to change much. There's a chance that they could make the world worse.

 

The person starts giving out all the money to all of the poor people in the world and then no one is working. The system that was so similar to the system of our bodies shuts down because red blood cells no longer need to work. They can stay at home in their large mansion and let the brain cells experience cell death.

 

Some people think a better way to change the world is to take from the rich and give to the poor and balance everything out. That everyone should be financially equal in every way. The word "communism" may come to mind, and there are those who dread this idea. Those who will do anything to stop the idea from spreading.

 

Change is difficult; maybe because the world wants to stay this way because it is already this way, or maybe because people don't want to change because they are the way they are and want to stay that way. If that makes any sense.

 

The phone rings and it's Kathleen, Joe's mom. She tells me that Joe had waken up, but soon after had a seizure and is now in critical condition and will probably slip right back into that brilliant coma.

 

As she's talking, I can hear that sound of a person who wants to start crying but never does. The little pauses, the sighs, the regret. She thinks that it's her fault that Joe was about to die because she didn't stand up for him. Because she didn't even stand up for something that was part of her, that came out of her, that was her flesh and blood and DNA. Her capacity to conceive had cast a shadow on her capacity to nurture.

 

Her depression reminds me of my mother, and in turn her suicide. I think of Joe and I think of Kathleen, I think about how their relationship now has the same amount of dialogue as it did for the past who knows amount of years. Now I can't help but think about my little brother and the event that happened with my mother.

 

How she fed him poison and then fed herself poison. How she was the one who decided that this world was too cruel for her young son to grow up in. I still have that image of them both in my head, coming home from school to find them both just there, lifeless. It took a long time to let them both go, but what I learned from that is that people's flesh wither away because you have to let them go. You have no choice. The human heart beats 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime, but eventually the beating and the pumping must stop. That muscle must die.

 

I open the door to find Derek going through my composition notebooks as usual, and then I hear a car door slam and I shift my head to look out my window. I see Lynne, her two kids and an older woman getting out of the car. I assume the older woman is Lynne's mother.

 

Sarah takes something out of David's hands and then David hits her. "Don't hit your sister," the older woman says. I hear them pass through in the hallway, and there is no need to look through that fisheye view because I already know who's passing by.

 

For David and Sarah I can only hope that no one gets in the way of their childhood. That no one separates them and no one causes them to have a less than desirable childhood. That even if they don't have what they want, they have what they need despite all the people around them who may take more than what a single human being actually needs.

 

Chapter 30:

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES

 

I'm walking down Chase street. If you walk down a certain street enough times, it will get so that you remember what cars it parks, what trees it houses and what buildings it erects. I walk into the grocery store and buy what I usually buy, and I notice they hired someone new.

 

I walk back out and there is that car again. The car I saw on my way to the store. I have never seen it before on this street but it's nothing strange. Cars come and go. So do trees, and so do buildings.

 

I'm at the front door of my apartment building now, looking down at the life that Lynne and I had created. These growing flowers, these peace lilies. That's when I see blood on the door handle. I peer inside and it's almost as if I can see silence because the atmosphere looks so dead. I open the door and walk inside slowly, and I see more blood on the ground. Not a lot. There's never a lot.

 

I go up the stairs slowly and when I get to the top, my heart stops. It's Kathleen laying on the ground, no signs of life. I put down the groceries and I go up to her, but the muscle has died. It's stopped pumping, stopped doing its one job, and because of this the entire body suffers. I think to myself, why is there a trail of blood, I start to wonder if she fought off whoever did this. Then I remember that Derek is still here, and the drug war he was telling me about.

 

I go into my apartment and look for him, but he is nowhere to be found. Maybe the blood was his. I think that until I realize my backdoor is wide open, and there is no trail to be followed.

 

I call the police and tell them what has happened, and then I go back to the body. I go back to Kathleen. A woman who I only knew though Joe, and I barely know Joe at best. I told her to stop coming, not because it was for her own safety but because she was bothersome, and being bothersome is what got her murdered by a blade that didn't even have her name on it. These stab wounds.

 

I hear Lynne's door creak, and then I hear her voice. She's calling out my name but in a way that appears as if she's asking me if I am who I am. Then she asks me if the ambulance had come yet. I find out that she had already called the police, but she stayed inside her apartment because she is terrified of dead people and that she didn't want the kids to come out and see it. I look at Joe's door, and all I can think about is why mother's have to die so close to their sons.

 

The police arrive, take over the crime scene, and then ask us questions. They question everyone who was in the building at the time, which wasn't much because it was early. They ask about the blood trail, if anyone was missing, but that question goes unresolved. I figure if Derek is still alive he's long gone anyway, probably looking for his brother.

 

The body is taken, and as I look outside my window to see her being carried away, I see the large group of people who are wondering what had happened. Wondering if someone got hurt, or if someone