Warm Milk

A man tries to go to bed, but can't. It makes you wonder what he goes through on a rough night.

Nostalgia. The feel of the cold air on his fingertips held a comfy reminder that he still had human feelings, or so we thought. The frigid cold was brisk and acute, yet he continued to stand there, on the front step of his house, in jeans and a t-shirt. Eventually his face became bright red and his ears followed suit. His hands, face, ears, and nose ached, burned and stung. His eyes wandered around the frost infested pitch-black world as if it were that of an alien planet. How he longed for someone to come visit him. WE could feel his loneliness. He was a young man. Recently this house came under his possession. All of his family lived far away, and to make matters worse he never had a chance to make new friends upon the move. We stared at the juxtaposition of him standing in the cold winter night with little to protect from the cold, yet finding comfort in his surroundings. Under the oddest circumstances the human mind always finds itself digging deep into the innermost chasms of thought and dragging out buried meanings that under any other circumstance would never arise to one’s forethought, and might otherwise seem inconsequential.

The cold was too much for him to bear any longer. He turned around to open his screen door, but he stopped frozen with fear. The frost enveloping his face became insignificant to the fear now filling every inch of his mentality. A brief memory arose between him and us, one from our childhood.

We were lying in bed very early one morning before the sun had a chance to rise. We saw a man with radiating skin the color of the bright red October moon in front of us. His stench was that of a rotten bloody corpse. This inhuman creature stood before our bed facing us. We couldn’t help but stare at what we thought were it’s eyes. We were completely frozen with fear. Our body became an unmovable lump of solid stone. Our eyes remained wide while we stared into the face of our fear, deception, and guilt. Every lie, mistruth, or moral transcendence we had ever committed came back to us in the form of physical hallucinations. Maggots began eating away at our body. We could do nothing to shove them off or pick them away from our flesh. They ate slowly and painfully moving from the bottoms of our legs to the tops of our arms. We endured the pain, and eventually the sun rose, granting us our long desired peace. The creature left us just as the light peeked though our window. We were only a boy at the time.

Nostalgia. There must be something on the other side of this door. He knew something was there, starring back at him with inhuman eyes. He knew there was something on the other side of that door, but there was no rhyme or reason for why. It was unexplainable. He just knew he was afraid.

Only a trip into the outermost sections of the galaxy could produce such a vial, disgusting creature whose sheer fear-inducing presence was unfathomable to all on the planet Earth, save one.

In the 1980’s the scientist version of Hunter S. Thompson, whose name shall remain Anon, made a theory. It states:

“The universe and existence itself are governed by certain basic fundamentals. If any sentient being were to discover the underlying principals and truths, which guide the universe, then existence, as we know it, would be subject to an extreme metamorphosis. This abrupt change would cause our universe to become radically more bizarre and far less predictable.”

Another Scientist by the same name made another theory which states the aforementioned has already occurred.

Nostalgia. We saw high thoughts as they formed within his head. He was thinking that his life as a whole is a tiny grain of sand on a beach winder and larger than any human could possibly imagine. He took a long breath and thrust himself through the doorway, ready to confront any demon that decided to be on the other side. His heart pounded as adrenaline rushed through his veins. He decided to confront the source of his fears and fight for his sanity.

The door thudded open. There was nothing in his walkway but silence. We stared with wide eyes and he stood in his dark entryway in desperate need of a new light bulb. He left most of the lights on all the time, and apparently this one had burned out. He hated the dark. It’s a strange fear we’ve had ever since childhood.

He made his way slowly to the respective room that brought him the most comfort, the TV room. His television was broken, but it made no difference to him. The room should have been a family room, but he had no family.

He was the only soul in the house, something he had gotten use to in time. He was completely alone, save the otherworldly creature that followed him everywhere he went. He usually used the television to fight away his boredom, and the unbearable silence that filled his home, but now the only sound audible was the scuffling of his socks on the carpet as he made his way down the hall. Maybe he would grab some warm milk to help him sleep, maybe he would use the restroom. We were not sure of his actions yet.

Nostalgia. Every night he went though the same quagmire. Our sad, fearful, and lonely main character couldn’t possibly fall asleep with the lights on, yet he knew that if the lights were off his irrational fear of the dark would prevent him from getting any sleep at all.

Our bored, yet sleepy, main character sat on the couch shifting and turning from position to position hoping to find comfort, but nothing achieved the level of relaxation he so dearly desired. With the television broken there was nothing to save him from the thoughts that arose in the deep silence that overwhelmed the house. It was difficult for our man character to endure. The dead silence pained us just as much as it did our dear main character.

Eventually our main character’s fear subsided. His arbitrary conscious thoughts drove away his fear and consumed his mind. A mirror on the coffee table gave our thoughtful main character a window into the perspective of a stranger, someone looking upon his face for the first time. Our main character sat thinking long and hard over his existence, and what it meant to be alive. His thoughts meandered and spiraled around for quite some time as sleep continued to elude him. Eventually he came to an idea. We oved it. It was “Why does my name carry such weight? Can my whole life, and every emotion I’ve ever felt really fit into such a tiny word as Saul?” he pondered. It was true, we thought to ourselves, why does this one word, Saul, define our existence? Is our name the proper appropriation that should be used to answer all questions referring to his state of being? We had to check it out, so we crept up beside Saul in his mind and posed the question to him out of pure curiosity.

“How’s it been?” we asked him.

“Saul, it’s been like Saul,” he answered respectively.

Saul is many. He changes constantly. Whenever Saul makes an observation or realization he changes slightly, become something new, leaving someone else behind. We compose all of Saul, save the person he is currently. As soon as an experience is had by Saul, we gain one more. We compose all of Saul’s memories, and all the people Saul ever was. We are always here to counsel Saul through the bad times, yet sometimes to deaf ears.

The otherworldly creature was spying on Saul’s every waking moment and decided to jump in. With a swift action of precision and defiance the creature changed itself into a horribly embarrassing moment from Saul’s childhood. The creature hoped that he would break down, but to no avail. We laughed as we reminisced. It was embarrassing, but today we found it humorous. We shared a silent laugh in the warm comfort of Saul’s inner mind. This angered the creature, but he was too weak to counter.

Nostalgia. We’re embarrassed, we’re embarrassing, and we’re an embarrassment to society. Saul knew this, yet so was Johnny Appleseed as the birds and worms mocked him for trying to make a difference, even going so far as to label him a biological terrorist.

Saul rose and raised the blinds on his window. Society was but a small system of the living being called Earth. The Earth is living, Saul thought, and we agreed with him. Each individual creature is a piece of Earth in the same way that a blood cell is a piece of the human body. The Earth can think. Its thought is composed of the network of conscious thought that exists between all humans and animals. Each and every one of us is but a single cell of the Earth. The Earth is the only being which truly holds the power to take a person’s life, if all was as it should be.

Saul found a new height in his train of thought tonight. He saw intellect higher then he had ever seen before, we think. The sun peeked over the horizon as Saul’s eyes glided shut. His breath grew heavy, and all of the realizations and observations he had made on this night began to slip away from him like water in a pair of cupped hands. It was okay though, we thought, he could do it all again the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. We began to disperse into this man’s dreams, as is our respective place while the man sleeps, however his lies, deceptions, and guilt lingered behind for a bit. The disgusting disfigured creature stood above the man as he rested silently. It was a cold winter morning, so the creature reached out one of it’s many grotesque appendages to pull a blanket over him. He covered the man with an otherworldly ease. Such an obvious breach of the world of the physical and the world of the psychological would surely be noticed, we thought, however all was well. The creature then dispersed back into the mind from whence it came. We knew that this one’s dreams would be good ones tonight. He earned it. The man was like a baby now. He gripped the covers tight with his hand as his breathing grew even heavier. The sun was up, but this man’s night was just beginning. The feeling of nostalgia overcame us as we remembered all the fun to be had in a good dream. This man had nightmares for so many days straight. We think the good dreams are the best part of existence.

The End

Author's Note

This story is open to your own interpretation. There is no wrong answer as to just what something from this story means. There are a lot of purposeful grammatical errors that I�d like to touch on in order to justify any discrepancies that you, the reader, may have concerning grammar.
Note to all discrepancies:
-This story is written from the perspective of the main character�s (for lack of a better term) memories.
- As the main character progresses in finding new levels of insight when addressing his existence, his image changes in the eyes of his inner mind (memories). This causes him to be addressed differently as the story moves forward. It goes as follows:
- He/him � He is too preoccupied with fear to begin thinking of just who he is, or why he is here.
- Our dear main character � He begins to achieve a better grasp on just who he is, as well as the emotions he�s feeling.
- Saul � He starts not just pondering his existence, but also justifying it. His memories refer to him as a good friend.
- The man � Saul and his memories are at the moment the same being, in essence. Conscious thought (he/Saul) joins the presence of his memories (we/us). His body is regarded as �the man� because it is just a man. It is looked at as the physical apparatus, or tool, by which the oasis of thought that defines Saul�s existence can operate in the real world.
- Do not forget, this is simply the story of a slightly paranoid man with chronic insomnia going through his nightly rituals.
- There are many other things, such as Saul�s guilt/fear/lies which are open completely to your own interpretation. If you have any questions on what I was initially going for on my abundance of symbolism; don�t be afraid to ask. There is nothing I won�t answer.
Hope you enjoyed the story.

Reviews

[Lex]

Powerful write.