Anthology Complex (15 page)

He starts to tell me about how there is a huge drug war going on. He
tells me that it started because one of the dealers from one of the
organizations started selling drugs to a family member of one of the top guys
in the other organization.

Someone said the best way to eliminate your competition or to win a war
is by having your enemy destroy itself. Start shipping drugs to your enemies
country and soon they will have a domestic problem. The people will get
addicted and start acting like addicts and that's the only seed you need to
plant. The rest will follow.

Then he tells me that one of the top guys tells one of his own guys to
murder the punk who sold drugs to his younger sister, and the next day that guy
is found dead lying on the ground for everyone to see. That must have been the
man who was intoxicated at the time of his death. The one that the police
officer asked Lynne and I about. Then he tells me that the guy who did the
killing got caught and was ready to bring the whole crew down. I was right. Now
I stop him and ask him how he knows all of this, because he couldn't have been
a major player at his age.

He tells me that his brother is the one who is the major player. That
his brother has murdered people, and now both the police and the friends of the
people he has murdered are looking for him. Jamal, that shithead. He brings his
problems here and endangers my life.

I ask Derek if he knows anything about a building full of dead bodies
but he says no. I'm guessing that Jamal called someone this morning and got the
news that they found thirteen bodies in a building, so he went back out there.
For what reason, I can't figure that out. The building full of bodies reminds
me of a dream I had a long time ago.

I'm in the military walking along a dirt path with other soldiers, and
eventually our journey is halted by a house on the road. It starts to stink,
and one of the officers sends me and another man to check what's in there.
Right before we kick down the door I glance at the man's dog tags, and they
read "Max Harvey."

What we see before us is piles and piles of dead bodies left behind by a
war that will probably end all of mankind, or at the very least destroy this
part of the world. Murder contracts. The smell becomes so strong that it wakes
me up. The dream makes me wonder if the world we live in is as bad as some of
us think it is. After all, the decisions made before our time could have left
behind a world far worse.

The good book says that the first murder was by Cain, done to his
younger brother, Abel. Cain, who is portrayed as a sinful man, murders his
brother after God rejects his offerings but accepts Abel's offerings. What was
probably the cause and effect of a jealousy or anger gene cost a man his life,
and I could only hope that one of Jamal's negative genes didn't turn on and in
turn will cost him his own life.

I can only hope that his anger gene is still switched off, but who am I
kidding. In order for certain species to survive in a certain environment,
sometimes a certain switch has to always be on.

There is a knock at my door, but it's not the pizza-man, it's Joe's mom,
Kathleen. I want to tell her that it's not such a good idea for her to drop by
unexpectedly, but how can I, the more I see her the more senile she appears.
Derek retreats back to his room, so I am left alone with her, and this time the
theme isn't forgiveness, it's salvation.

I'm not a people person, I am exactly the wrong person to talk to about
these things, yet she confides in me. Thank you Joe for sucking me into a world
that I do not belong in. Her problem now is how can Joe get into the kingdom of
Heaven if he doesn't change his sinful ways. How can he be saved if he dwells
with a lifestyle which is not right.

Eventually the pizza gets here and I offer her some, but she doesn't
understand how someone can eat pizza so early in the day, so Derek finally
comes out and he and I end up eating all of it. Derek and Kathleen, Joe's mom,
greet each other but I can tell they both feel weird about it. I guess it's
because they are the exact opposites of each other. Young, old, black, white.

They both come from two very different lifestyles, but I bet if you put
them both in a room together long enough, they will both tell each other their
life stories, and what was so black before starts to get a little color.

There is a story of a woman who forgot the English language after being
hit by a car, and the only words she knew were the words she heard. She
wouldn't remember the word "hypnosis" until you said it to her, and
only then would it be part of her vocabulary again. The philosophical concept
of the story is that we only know and understand what we have experienced.

Chapter 29:

RAINING IN NEW YORK

She looks at him and he can see the sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes.
"I will never forget this night," she says to 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.