So its been about a month and a half since this whole crazy blog experiment started. BTW, Thanks for forgetting our month-iversary, but its cool. One of the reason for starting this, outside of, you know, changing the world, was to have a proving ground for my budding writing career. Well, here it is: my first short story. I will come right out and say that prose is not exactly my forte. I am more of an editorial/expository kind of writer, but hey, that never stopped chris webber from rapping, snoop dogg from acting(he's actually not that bad), etc etc. So, without further preamble...ok a little preamble So this will be like a 4 parter(b/c of space constraints and I havent finished writing the damn thing) and at the end ill tell you what I was going for and will see if it matches up. Ok here we go:
Anesthesia part 1
“Where am I,” the man asks himself after sitting bolt upright in a pool of indiscernible liquid. The heat is unbearable there. It sits upon his skin like a sweater, thick and encompassing. The ground around him is soft and caresses his back and legs gently. The man looks around and sees a vast expanse of nothingness. No buildings. No people. No one at all. Solitude is a bitter pill when expected but when one wakes up to it suddenly, it is terrifying. Accordingly, the man’s hands shake. He looks down at his chest and sees 4 holes in his abdomen. These holes do not spill blood rather pulse in a reddish hue. “Where the HELL am I,” he speaks aloud. No one answers. The man disregards the light emanating from his chest, again looks at his surroundings, and decides he must set off. He stands with the awkwardness of a fawn attempting to walk for the first time, warily. As he is in the crouch position, calves flexing with the effort to stand, the glow from his chest gets brighter as if unknown energy was flowing into his chest cavity. “AAAAAAAHHH, the man exclaims as rivulets of pain cascade through his nerves. There was no echo only expansive abyss.
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“Baby, you gotta get up. I know it’s hard but you gotta get up and get ready,” a middle aged woman yells from the kitchen towards the back of the apartment. She stands in the middle of the 
kitchen holding a plate filled with sausages slick with animal fat. Already on the table: a serving dish piled with scrambled eggs, three large bowls of grits, an ovular dish of bacon, and a box of cereal. Normally, the family would fend for themselves for breakfast, but this is a special occasion. Today is the funeral for the patriarch of this nuclear family. A sad story as any death would appear to be.
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The father, a supervisor at a local manufacturing plant, after years and years of surviving unsafe work conditions, high blood pressure, and just being a black man in America, fell to the ground suddenly outside the local corner store. Dead: aneurysm, they say. “They” never speak of the “why” part of death just the “what” and the confirmation of its occurrence. “They” is the omnipresent group of somebodys that convene to regulate and monitor all colloquialisms, gossip, crimes perpetrated on the public, and etc.
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“I WAS BORN BY THE RIV-AH...IN A LITTLE TENT...,” Mr. Sam Cooke sings. Mr. Cooke emanates from a small radio in the corner of the bedroom. However, he is singing for an audience of one. Johnny sits in his bedroom in a rather melancholy and inebriated state. Like his mother, he is now getting ready for his father’s funeral. Or should be. He put on his pants about 15 minutes ago and was in the process of buttoning his starched, white shirt until he saw his countenance in the dresser mirror. His eyes, bloodshot and twitching, were of a watery sort but not tearful.
After he was ridiculed by his classmates for crying vociferously after a violent asthma attack, he swore at age 8, a sensitive and tender boy by all accounts, that he was never going to cry again. EVER. He was gonna get strong and never have to deal with being weak again. He was upholding his promise sustained only with the assistance of one of his father's whiskey bottles. He stared at the man staring back at him, his eyes twitched harder.
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“Hellooooooooo,” the man calls in futile effort to find Life. He has calmed down in the last 15 minutes. Or at least it had seemed like 15 minutes. It could have been 15 seconds or 15 days. The ground, soft and sponge-like, sinks in with each new step. The holes in his chest still glow with an ethereal intensity. “Helloooo,” he calls. The thought should have occurred to him that in a place as empty and vast as this, there should be some sort of echo, but rational, level-headed thinking was never his forte. Maybe it’s for the best this time though. He counts his steps. He has been 100 steps since he decided to start counting his steps. “one-oh-one, one-oh-two, 1-oh-ahh---” The extreme heat is taking its toll as he tries to breathe normally. He wheezes. He coughs. He vomits.
“Now that’s just nasty,” says a blurred apparition, new to the situation. “I know your mother taught you better than that.”
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“Cut ‘hat mu’ic off and ‘ome on,” the mother yells, hot bacon and eggs spilling out of her mouth. “We gon’ be ‘ate ‘amn it.” She swallows her food hard, reaches for more bacon, and shoves it into her mouth quickly. “Now that would be a sight. The man’s own family late to his funeral. Damn shame that would be. Damn shame,” the mother thinks to herself. She then swallows her food hard, reaches for more grits, and shoves a spoonful of them into her mouth. She looks up to the ceiling languidly assuming that her husband was good enough to get up There or at least slick enough to talk the Big Guy into letting him in. Her husband was always a slick talker, smooth as eggs, but about as tough as burnt bacon. She finally lets her mind guide her. It floats gently to the first time they met:
She worked by day at the neighborhood dry cleaners as the register girl. Every week her future husband would come in and would bring her the same pair of dress pants to clean every time. She said to him finally, “Don’t you got no more dress pants than these. The crotch is wearing thin,” she asks, pointing just below the zipper. “Well, it does have a heavy load to carry day in and day out,” he shot back, “and, besides, these ain’t my pants no way. They are my cousin’s.”
“Huh,” she exclaimed quizzically, “then why you always bringing them in?”
“How else would I see you,” he asked with a hundred watt smile.
During her revelry, the kitchen clock, slave to fastidiousness, chimes melodically. “Bing-Bong, Bing-Bong,” it reports not realizing the musings of wall clocks are not appreciated at the moment. Nonetheless, it’s 8 o’clock. The clock’s chimes throw her back to the present. “Where the hell is that boy,” she thinks to herself. She looks down at the table while a thick fog of loneliness descends on her. “Tic, Tic, Tic,” says the other constant in life beside death.
“They” speak about soul mates in life, a special someone for everyone. The wife never really believed in that mumbo-jumbo. But, she felt a connection with THAT man. She could feel it every time he spoke. His velvety, bass-filled voice would enter her ear, snake down her spine and rattle in the depths of her womanhood. She never liked to be alone for too long. There was always someone around. A mother, a sister, or a friend. If left to her own devices, all her fears, worries, and off-kilter thoughts would consume her; she referred to this internally as the Darkness. There were many nights she opened her balcony window just to let the sounds of civilization envelope her. She confided in her husband about this darkness, this consumer of hapiness. Her husband understood this and he stayed with her, laid on the bed sheets with her even if he wasn’t tired. Not like all the other men she met. Nobody understood her like him. She swallows her food hard, reaches for sausage, and shoves it into her mouth quickly, furiously. The fog thickens. The Darkness is coming.
“Tic, Tic, Tic,” says time. Its screams at her, pounds in her ears. It is now 8:01-too early in the morning to cry; too late to say goodbye. In lieu of this, she slams her hand forcefully on the table. “Bam”, it reports. It shakes; the eggs fall to the floor, the box of cereal topples. “You son of a b***h….You son of a b***h...”
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I love going to Harlem. Its the epitome of free enterprise, a laisse-faire if you will. You want cigarettes. They got 'em. You want some bootleg porn, they got it. Anything you need is up for sale. Its like a swap meet, you know except with a whole bunch of black people. I love that part. Its like I am back in school(went to an HBCU NC A&T BABY!!! dont know what an HBCU is? Go look it up...) So the main drag of Harlem is a befitting title for a post giving free stuff. I wanted to do this off the bat but I wanted to lay low, nah'mean. I think this is a good time. Now, if you have been reading me, you know I am not gonna make this easy. I am going to give you a riddle and if you can figure it out youll know what the download is or you COULD just download it and find out, but you want a challenge, dont you? So...
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