Anthology Complex (22 page)

Tao leaves and then comes back about twenty minutes later. He comes back
to my fucking apartment with some cereal, and I'm wondering why he doesn't just
move in with me instead of blowing money on an apartment he doesn't stay in.
Sarcasm.

As soon as he walks in, he starts to whisper to me, "Have you seen
Mary lately?" I say no, and he continues to whisper, "I just ran into
her outside, we were talking about how we haven't seen each other in a
while." I tell him that that sounds cool, and he gives me that stupid
look. "Anyway, have you noticed she put on a little weight?" No, I
didn't.

Tao goes into my kitchen, takes out a spoon and a bowl and some milk,
and makes himself some cereal, and then sits down to eat it. He stops talking.
You notice when a person like Tao stops talking. For a second he reminds me of
Kathleen, not because he has finally shut his mouth, but because I can tell he
is here simply because he doesn't want to be alone in his own apartment.

A few years ago I had a dream. I'm sitting in the back area of a vehicle
with a few other soldiers, playing a game of cards. I'm not sure what game
we're playing, but what I know is that you either win or lose depending on
which card you put down. One soldier puts down a card called a jack of spades,
another puts down a card called a queen of clubs. After everyone has shown
their card, I put down my card, called a two of hearts. The soldier to my right
looks at me, and he tells me that I don't have any kind of luck. I guess I
lost.

We play a few more rounds, I get a few more less than desirable cards,
and then the vehicle comes to a stop. The back door is open, and we all get
out. The Sun is bright and the grass is green. I notice that I'm in a village,
and from the looks of the people walking around, maybe somewhere in Vietnam.

I have never been to war, and why I would dream about being in the
Vietnam war, I don't know, but what I know is that being in this place calms my
nerves. A village where there is silence and the people walk slowly because
they know that they will eventually get to where they are going, and when they
do finally get there, there will be others just like them.

Maybe I wasn't lucky at card games, but I was lucky enough to make
decisions that would lead me up to that point to see a place that many people
may never have the good fortune of seeing. What plagues me is that I know when
I have this dream where I'm in the military again, things might not be the
same. Thinking of things like this makes me realize that even the wildest tales
of fiction have some truth to them.

Tao is now yelling out my name, and it takes a few yells for me to
realize. What? "You're always stuck inside your head." I know. Tao
was calling me to tell me he was going to go to work, so I tell him I'll see
him later and he leaves. Always stuck inside my head. Can't find a way out of
this mess.

A few hours pass, and I'm wondering what Lynne is up to. Wondering what
she meant by she has work to do. Before I know it, Tao is back from work,
knocking on my door. I have to let him in. As soon as he walks in he starts
talking about how a black guy has been parked down the street at all hours of
the day for the past few days. I put it in the back of my mind and pay no
attention to it because I know he is going to jump to the next subject soon.

To my surprise, soon after he ends up leaving because he has to work on
something, or be somewhere, one of those two. I can't read in between the
lines. After he leaves, like many other things in the back of my mind, the idea
of the black guy sitting out in a car waiting for so long tries to push itself
to the front and unlike so many other things it succeeds.

My curiosity causes me to go out my back door, walk across the alley and
attempt to find this man. I eventually find him, and I am surprised for the
second time today. That's not true, earlier today I was surprised when I
realized that the superficial cut on my right thumb was getting worse. I'm
surprised because the man in the car is the same man that came to pick up
Derek. The same man who told me that Jamal had died, but in only so many words.

I begin to ask myself why he would still be around here, in this
neighborhood. I question my safety. I question Lynne's safety. For some reason,
even Tao's. After I come to my senses, and logic finally prevails, I assume
that if he were going to do any harmful acts to me, they would have been done
already. I also helped out one of his associates, why would he do me harm? We
all know life doesn't work that way, though. You help someone out and they
still find some way to justify screwing you over.

The only other conclusion I could come to is that the people Jamal and
Derek were hiding from found out they were staying with me and now this man is
sitting on my apartment so he can be there when they decide to do me harm, if
they ever do decide to. The question is though, who dedicates this much time to
help protect someone you hardly know? My guess is Jamal was well-connected and
the leader of his organization has sent this man out to help me out for helping
out Jamal. Back when I first met Jamal, he made it so obvious that he was part
of something big. Something illegal.

Or maybe it's as simple as something like Jamal's people are waiting for
their enemies to attack me so they can attack them unexpectedly and kill a few
of their people. Appear to be resting. I would just be a casualty of war.

After a while I find that I am not taking this situation seriously
enough, because my life may actually be in danger. I knew it was a bad idea to
take them in.

I go back home and go to the room that houses the composition notebooks
and pick a random notebook. Which one is going to be lucky enough to be chosen.
I end up looking through about twenty of them in the span of two hours trying
to forget that I could die soon. I guess it was just my luck that they knocked
on my door. Maybe I'm overreacting now. Never could seem to find that balance.

While looking through all these notebooks I start to see that the
chapters get longer and longer. When I first started writing down my dreams, my
memory wasn't that great, so I couldn't remember many details which resulted in
a short paraphrasing of the dream. As my memory improved, the chapters got
longer and more detailed. As they got more detailed, the more of a story you
could find in them.

Chapter 38:

30 PIECES OF GOLD

A long time ago, someone had a nightmare. Imagine a dark basement where
the only light that is visible is the light that is coming in from the top of
the stairs because that door up there is cracked open. Now imagine the who are
two people, one man standing in front of another man who is tied to a chair.
The standing man knows there is a man sitting before him, but the sitting man
has no idea there is a man standing before him.

Not until the standing man pulls on a piece of string that causes a
light bulb to turn on. The sitting man's eyes begin to hurt as they adjust to
the light, but they hurt even more when he finally sees the standing man before
him who intends to do him harm.

I'm standing there, watching this man as his nightmares come true. In
some kind of unexplainable narcissistic view I am looking at myself, seeing
only a man who has matured into a being capable of controlling his compulsions.
A man who once could not control his obsessions but now has the confidence to
do so. A man who once could not understand why he was the way he was, but has
now accepted that he was meant to be this way.

I take a dull pocketknife out of the sitting man's pocket, and as his
eyes widen and his attempts to yell fail, I begin to hack away at the top of
his nose and make my way down. These things use to terrify me, but I have gone
through a sort of therapy that allows me to control my fear.

Sometimes I wonder if anything will ever go wrong. Maybe someone will
get the edge on me before I get it on them, maybe someone will find out what I
do, maybe a law enforcement agent will catch me. The thing is I only wonder, I
never fear these things actually happening. I know that since I have chosen to
commit these murders in a state that enforces the death penalty, if I ever do get
caught I'll be killed myself instead of having to live the rest of my life in a
small cage. If you ask me, I believe there are a lot of people who would much
rather die than serve a life-sentence.

Now imagine a bright basement where the door at the top of the stairs is
now shut so that no light is coming in. The who is a man who has been murdered
and left to rot. On the cold floor beside him are two ears, two eyes, two lips,
a nose and some hair. The appearance of the person's head is only something you
can imagine.

Now going through these notebooks under the same category as the one
with a serial killer, I find a few dreams with a detective who is searching for
a serial killer with the same modus operandi. The same M.O., the same mode of
operating. As I read and read I find that at the end of the serial killer and
the detective's speechless discourse, the detective catches him and the serial
killer is put to death. The last words of the serial killer are "Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do." The serial killer who seems
to be suffering from megalomania paraphrases his life in one last sentence to
be compared to that of Jesus Christ's life. He compares how they both are
executed by a body of government.

Thinking of these two men now, the killer and the messiah, I can't help
but remember the dream I had with Satan on the airplane where he told me that
the christ and the antichrist look similar in appearance.

Is it possible that the man on the subway who gave me his shoes wasn't
the christ, but actually the antichrist? Is that why he told me he will be
whoever I decide to call him? I quickly realize that these ideas are trivial
since these are all just dreams, but even the trivial things in life have a way
of making us tick.

Attempting to move on from the subject of murder and personal salvation,
I find the dream where I see a billboard of Maria, and how it is telling me
that she is missing. I guess I must have forgotten it when I woke up, but that
page reminds me that I recently had a dream about Maria. It was maybe a few
weeks ago. In the dream Jesus told me that she had died and was eventually
judged and separated from this place. After I wake up from that dream I start
to think about her, and I wonder where she is. What are the chances that she is
actually dead? Thinking of the people you are no longer in contact with always
bring along a fury of questions.

Is she married. Does she have children. Does she have a good job. Is she
happy. Is she sad. Is she still angry at me?

"One teacher killed." That comes out of the television in the
living room and it grabs my attention. I put the notebooks back in their order
and I go see what this news piece is about this time. Today, in a city school
there was a shooting that has resulted in an unknown amount of deaths. All they
can really confirm is that one teacher had died on the way to the hospital.

What everyone is waiting for is to see if the shooting was motivated by
anything drug related. If the constant decline of the quality of this city
hasn't been noticed yet, it will be noticed now as this story is going to be
reported nationally eventually.

Somewhere in the middle of the report there is a knocking at my door.
It's Kathleen, who is asking me if I can help her move some of Joe's things out
of his apartment. I finally get to see what his possessions are.

Along with her are her two nephews who seem to be about twenty five
even. Kathleen opens the door to his apartment, and for the first time, I walk
in. I've glanced inside maybe two or three times, but I had never had the front
row seat.

After the four of us walk in, and after we've wiped off the confused
looks on our faces, we quickly realized that Joe had stopped living here. It
was completely empty as if someone had just moved out. Kathleen goes into the
bedroom, the only thing there is a bed. In the bathroom there is a bar of soap,
a tooth brush but no tooth paste and a box of cotton swabs. Maybe Joe only
slept and showered here, and was living somewhere else most of the time. So
much for me finding out what type of person he is.