Reasons Only Time Allows Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  To the ineffable weird.

  CHAPTER ONE

  2020, EVERYTHING ENDS.

  This was his mantra since 2017.

  Not that it meant anything. Incoherent dread. Anticipation of something horrible. Could have been the end of the world or just his own death—grim awfulness on the horizon. Still, January first, 2020 came and went and nothing changed. Life went on, but so did the terrible feeling.

  That summer, he took a ride to the suburbs. Pressure built behind his eyes. The driver talked. He didn’t reply, though it would hurt his passenger score on the ride-share app. The end of everything was coming, and fast. He wanted to get home before it arrived because he’d be confused.

  Though the feeling continued to sit on him, he made it through an entire day, white knuckled and waiting for the end.

  He’d warned himself that this would happen, but he’d failed to mention the extreme disorder descending on his mind. He gripped the arms of the chair and let the trip take him away.

  ~

  THIS IS THE end of everything.

  Do me a favor

  who's your ghost?

  when the music comes over the line,

  heart throbbing the way it does when its good,

  lump throated and tear choking,

  opium languor crooners,

  codeine coated cough-drops,

  tell me about it.

  Tell me about it.

  Tell me.

  I didn't do anything on my day off.

  Sure, my phone rang off the hook, but you didn't call.

  how many shouldn'ts won'ts can'ts?

  Sometimes I want to live on the Moon.

  It’s just the laugh track sucking me in again.

  Rolling out and in, crashing, smooth exhale, the sea somewhere is calling me. Right over the edge, this flat world weak in the knees, tipping so slightly.

  Capture the arc.

  Subplot never reconnects.

  I'm not too happy to say so.

  There's something more than crashing cars?

  Don't remember anything at all about the night.

  It’s all cold out here.

  And its haunted. And dead. But ever and ever. The fatigued eye.

  The shallow grave in your mind.

  Cold hand and red hot jealousy, long fingers running like the naked trees inking towards the center, the surface.

  And if you can't remember your name and all that it means,

  who's standing at the foot of your bed when you sleep?

  The eye behind the eye. Behind the I.

  There are bodies of water between us, between what you think you know about me. Though this is true of everyone to everyone.

  You'll just never get it right about me.

  The hollow men rake my coals and stoke my guts because they have none.

  The high point, it comes with a bang.

  The things you see

  those who see you back

  the world is tentacle porn.

  Demon penis with a thousand hydra spewing demon death.

  It’s not just the news. It’s not just television. It might be real. It might touch you back. And if it has—and it has—I can't imagine a better world. I can't imagine you happy outside of the maze.

  Attention eating sales and wasting disease, over heated anal intake, breathing gin fumes, and I can't stop smelling the shit tip hanging from your mouth, and I sign on and on and it’s all entered inter enter penetrated representation. Represent.

  I represent the imagined me. My imagined me. The inner me? Apology? I don't think so. I have a past and it makes me. It marks me. And the password isn't in a handshake. It’s in my eyes.

  I want you to be my friend. Tell me something other than to come. I don't always find the time to be there or anywhere—even here.

  You can't expect me to read all that.

  Let’s go see a movie and get out of our heads for a few hours. Just let me know when.

  Swift moving currents carry particles along the paths of least resistance.

  Unaware, pixelated, spread across pieces, I slip into diaspora.

  Spaces in between. Alongside the barriers. I trickle until pressure outside forces me back together and down a long narrow tunnel.

  Two years ended then.

  Windows, but not windows. I looked through eyes.

  ~

  THIRSTY.

  THELON SNAPPED into the body.

  He sat.

  He saw the living room.

  He saw his mother.

  He saw the television.

  Mental blisters oozed memory thoughts. Glops. Pops. Under everything. Apropos of nothing. The nothing only cared for nothing and knowing fell flat, face-first into waking.

  Too much hair on his face. Cat shit breath. Chapped lips. Corpse motion. The dead returned to his home.

  I knew everything. I was at one with everything. Where am I? Who am?

  Home claimed him. Reality insisted itself upon him. The world ended. He died. Then, he woke.

  Time had passed—of that, he was certain. Years had moved along somewhere. The body needed to piss. To fart. Gut rumbled. Back and neck ached. Though he had died, he lived.

  Home. Home. Home.

  Slow horror as his eyes absorbed the room.

  A story manifested in his mind. A parable or fairytale or fevered dream.

  Space. Dark and cold. A spike of light and fire. A trinity of two men and fire demon descended the atmosphere and consumed the earth.

  He died, cut off from the trinity at the last moment.

  Time lapsed. Then he woke here.

  Dead.

  Alive.

  A man sent him to prison on the orders of a God. They broke him with drugs. The trinity formed and threw itself against the inevitable horrors mounting an attack.

  Coffee. Pancakes or waffles. Smells of a home. Sounds of home. Familiar voices. TV noises.

  Disconnection. The right way to get home through the void took him across the Plutonian shore of death.

  His family moved around him as though he’d only yawned and not been reborn. No grand appreciation for the impossible. No shock and awe for the newly risen. Banality and expectation. This representation of normalcy failed but pressed on him.

  Without feeling shocked at a noticed absence within himself, he sat and watched TV, suspended in the question of whether the dead world had ever existed.

  “You were saying?” Mom prompted.

  “I was?” Thelon replied.

  “Child, you don’t look right.”

  “I need minute,” he said and walked in a daze down the hall to his room.

  “Hurry back. The show is about to start.”

  ~

  ALONE IN HIS room.

  The last thing Thelon remembered.

  The last thought he’d had while alive.

  Everything ends.

  A death trip.

  A one-way death trip to save humanity.

  Barreling through space, a tightly wound bundle of energy that comprised him, his memories, and vitality of being a living thing. He channeled a significant destructive force into the earth.

  The memory remained fresh as though the events occurred only moments ago, and he could relax because he was dead.

  But that’s wasn’t right. This place? That place?

  The dead don’t need to piss, and he had the distinct physi
cal pressure of a full bladder.

  I need to pee. He saw his room. He blinked over and over, then sat. His mouth tasted foul and his lips felt dry and nasty against each other and his tongue.

  Groggy but in shock. Alive. I’m alive.

  He knew the room. Not possible.

  He touched the bedsheets. Ran his fingertips along the scratched desk by the bed. I pressed too hard when I learned to write.

  Each breath he took imparted an unquestionable reality. Despite cosmetic changes, he’d died and been reborn into his childhood home. Holy fucking shit.

  Thelon sat on the bed then stood. Then sat again. His chest tightened and breathing required effort. I’m going insane. He looked at his bare brown legs and flexed his thighs, letting his feet kick out like a reflex test. Strong. I’m strong…and wearing boxers. A small thing, but baffling. I like briefs, but I’ve got on boxers.

  “What is happening?” he said to himself.

  Spots formed over his vision.

  His mouth hung open as he sucked in air and attempted to slow down. He rubbed his eyes. Upon touching his face, he found a beard. Naw, naw, naw. I keep it clean. I don’t belong here. I’m dead. That was the plan…

  What plan?

  He hugged himself and looked for clothes. A spike of pain pierced his right eye and he clutched at it, seeing a ferocious yellow brightness there. He fell and steadied himself on the edge of the bed. Stuck there, an alien, intrusive thought made itself known: We failed.

  The pain subsided. The confusion remained.

  A picture drew itself in his mind.

  I’m supposed to be here.

  He’d taken an Uber here to his parent’s. He sucked in air as another picture etched into his mind, exiling meandering thoughts of space: I’m here to fix the roof. Dad called me. He called and asked his son to come for the weekend. That’s me.

  Thelon paced back and forth, feeling the loose floorboard which had betrayed his attempts to sneak out of his room at night. The house seemed real. He was home. This body. His. He was alive.

  There had been a plan with someone. The plan worked. He died. No. No. Yeah, no. He pulled on sweats he found on the floor and tiptoed to the bathroom to satisfy his bladder. The toilet flushed loud, and the water ran until he jiggled the handle. What am I doing here?

  He walked towards the living room with cautious steps. Woo, boy. His confusion grew as he pressed the thick carpet under his toes. The texture assured him. No. I’m not dreaming. Dreams don’t have details like this.

  He glanced through the doorway to his right. Dad’s den. Rust red shag carpet. The forbidden office where Dad did his work. Desk gone. That’s where I found my first Playboy. My first erection, terrified Dad—or worse, Mom—would catch me. It was a storage room now. Boxes. A day bed pressed against the window. Only the carpet remained unchanged. Oh, shit.

  The TV chattered.

  Thelon walked on down the hall. Mom smiled up at him from the couch as he entered the room.

  Dad leaned in from the kitchen. “Just in time. I’ve got waffles cooking and they are going to make the announcement. You want blueberries or chocolate chips?”

  Thelon’s body shook. I’m hungover. That’s it. I got black out drunk or something.

  Mom reached for his hand as he stood behind the couch. Her touch catapulted his heart into sadness.

  He let out slow breath and had a terrible thought: This is a dream and it’s fragile and will break apart if I fuck up.

  He pulled away from Mom’s warm hand and slumped in Dad’s comfy chair, the one he’d have to evacuate if Dad caught him because Dad wouldn’t want his butt groove altered. Chill, baby boy. Take it in...

  Mom didn’t appear to mind him being in Dad’s chair. She intently watched the news on the TV. Distracted, she asked, “You sleep all right? Not getting sick?”

  “Yeah, no, Mom. I love you.” Though he said this in a quiet voice, a difficult to identify emotion insisted against him. When was I here last?

  A narrative problem unraveled. Before I ran away to Eden. I ran away and never saw them again. His mouth hung open and he struggled with the facts. He was certain he’d run off to Eden when he was 18. Then, how am I here? Truths failed to match up with sense. He sat with his confusion.

  “Oh, I wish they’d just get to it,” Mom said.

  Thelon let go of trying to understand and took in the news. It scrolled on and on in familiar chevrons beneath talking heads, pundits, and hacks. 100 more dead. Domestic terrorist prisons overflowing, detention centers across the country overcrowded. 30,000 prisoners although accelerated executions expected to reduce that number in the coming months. President Trump’s speech came up next. The screen filled with a sneering man ranting like Hitler, froth coming from his mouth as he hugged an American flag.

  Fucking Donald Trump? Reality TV Donald fucking Trump? Again, a memory from 2016 clotted in his mind. President Chissom. That’s the president. Then President Dick when Hakim brought Eden to the people.

  Things failed to make sense. “Mom…?”

  “Shush.”

  Thelon watched as the announcer, a white blonde lady with torpedo breasts and a plastic smile fixed to her huge teeth, finally cut to the chase. “Everyone, remember where you were today. The joint Russian-American research laboratory is rolling out the ultimate renewable resource and the generator will be initiated now, for the first time, on national TV. Doug is live with the Presidents of both countries now. Doug, over to you.”

  Doug was a doughy white guy; republican tie and haircut. He wore a huge double flag of the United States and Russian Confederacy. “Let me tell you, Lisa, this is not more fake news. As you can see, both Presidents are standing in front of the reactor, and…okay, they are ready to turn it on.”

  “Jesus Christ. Shouldn’t they at least be wearing protective gear?” Thelon asked.

  “Hush, baby love,” his mother scolded. “I’ll tan your hide if you keep talking over this and I’ll make you pick your own switch if you take the Lord’s name in vain. This moment is as big as men going to the Moon.”

  The camera shot to a weasel-looking Russian with cold blue eyes. Thelon thought he looked every bit a murderer as he gripped the sack of rotten orange mayonnaise who was the President. They shook hands like they wanted to rip each other’s arms off.

  President Trump said, “Listen, nobody in history has ever done this. I made this miracle possible and I want to see what the haters have to say now. When we push this big red button— and it’s the biggest, reddest button of all time—there’s no going back. We’ll have all the power we ever need to make America and Russia great again.”

  Whatever he said next, Thelon couldn’t hear. The President’s voice grated and confused him, kicking off a dissociation to the moment. The nasal whine punctuated with wet sucking sounds of ill-fitting dentures physically hurt him. Thelon shook his head. It’s like he’s the same guy, but a different guy. Is he drunk and coked out? How did this fuck ever become President? Thelon’s attention was pulled to the machinery behind the politicians. That’s a Goddamn Star Gate. I bet that design choice was on purpose. Movie memories and nostalgia. Thelon’s ears popped and he heard the TV again.

  He slid off the chair and knelt closer, staring hard at the Star Gate machine. Stretching high above the button board and computers where the Presidents stood, the smooth black arch held a spark of light suspended in air. The hair rose on Thelon’s arms and nervous energy made his teeth clatter.

  “Don’t push the button,” he whispered.

  Dad came in and thrust a plate of waffles and bacon into his hands. “Don’t get syrup on my carpet, son.”

  The food odors, familiar and savory, made him feel sick. He pushed the plate away from him on the floor and focused on the television.

  The two Presidents concluded their speeches and made a big show of placing their hands together on the button.

  “Big bucks, no whammy,” Dad said.

  The audio crackled with feedbac
k and Mom turned the volume down as a humming sound rang out loud enough to hurt their ears. The tiny floating speck rapidly expanded to fill the space of the arch in a bright flash.

  “Jesus,” Dad said.

  The pulsing light simmered down to a red and purple neon glow and the camera lens adjusted to the brightness. Everyone on screen cheered and Mom let out a sigh of relief.

  Thelon didn’t relax and stared into the energies of the arch. He got closer until his nose almost touched the screen. He saw a face and fell backwards in shock.

  A name popped into his head followed by a question.

  Henry.

  Who the hell is Henry?

  ~

  DAD CLEARED HIS throat with a snort and said, “Looks like our chance to impeach him went out the window with this. Free energy for the planet? Our grandkids will have to look at statues of him forever.”

  Mom said, “Don’t say that.”

  Thelon closed his eyes and the world spun. Who am I? Memories of a life he hadn’t lived surfaced like a dream. I was born. I had a good childhood. I’d graduated from military academy and went on to get an MBA. I didn’t live here anymore. I live in the city. I have stuff in an apartment. My stuff. He shook his head and the word fell out by accident: “Fuck.”

  Dad turned off the TV, silencing the chatter. “Are you okay, son?”

  Fuck. “No. I’m sorry. I need to lie down.” Thelon squirmed under the feeling of being watched by his parents. He attempted to loosen up; rolled his shoulders, tried to play cool, but to no avail.

  “You just got up. You said you’d go to the hardware store with me and finish fixing the gutters.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m dizzy and I need to lie down.” He gave his father a quick glance to see if he bought it. Whether he could hear the shakiness in his voice.

  “You do that then. Come see us a few times a year and then you sleep all day,” Dad said.

  “I don’t live here?” Thelon asked, but he knew the answer. He swallowed. Excessive saliva formed in his mouth once more. Gross. He coughed several times and swallowed again.

  “Thelon, get some water,” Mom said, then added, “You’d better not be planning on moving back home.”