Snowflakes

You were laying there motionless in your overstuffed, over pillowed bed for hours. You were curious as to the time, but the alarm clock sat awkwardly sideways on the nightstand. From the comfortable place you found your head in the pillow, you couldn’t see it.
You imagined the reflection of the flashing red light was a middle finger waving in your direction. The clock was laughing at you, “You can’t f*****g see me without moving your fat, lazy a*s,” it was saying.

You knew this would happen when you tilted it to its side earlier. At the time, though, it seemed too much trouble to apply a little gentle pressure to one side to rectify the problem.

The clock was always such a moody b***h. Couldn’t really blame it. It did have a job no one else in the world wanted. Besides, you had regularly assaulted it for nothing more than doing its job.

If you could tear a page out of it’s imaginary diary, it would probably say: “If this m**********r touches me again, I’m going to jack his f*****g a*s up!”

That’s probably why things like alarm clocks were made helpless. There wasn’t a f*****g thing in the world it could do to better it’s plight. Just sit there and take the abuse. It knew if it failed to fulfill its purpose it would find itself discarded in the trash with last week’s favorite pet. It’s biggest fear was probably seeing it’s newer, sleeker model replacement in your hands ready to plug in. It probably welcomed such a fate once in a while. Probably dreamed and wished for a day when one of it’s diodes or tubes or whatever the f**k was inside the goddamned thing would blow and end it’s miserable existence. You felt sorry the damn thing. It wasn’t like it could take a goddamn pill and feel better in the morning when it felt too depressed to function. That luxury reserved for you.

Sometimes you imagined a world where everything had its purpose and job to fulfill.

The overstuffed bed’s job was to keep you comfortable. For the most part, it performed its job admirably in the face of the alarm clock’s antics. It was the job of the alarm clock to destroy your comfort and get your a*s out of bed. The alarm clock must have been the bed’s adversary.
Everyone had to have their nemesis. A person or thing they were pitted against at all times. Just human nature.

Maybe that’s why superheroes were so important. People needed to fantasize. Dream. Society had been taking so much of that out of life in the recent years.

You imagined in the coming years a game of football being played which had no winner and no loser. Just a pair of trophies for each team to hoist over their heads with tears streaming down their face and a prepared speech thanking god for blessing their team with a win. Of course people would watch. There would be shiny trophies involved. Something would be missing, though. Something, but what?

The figurative throwing of dirt in your enemies face, that’s what. That’s what would be missing. If you’re not beating someone at something, you’re just treading water. What the f**k is the point?

If that were the case, what was your point? Your nemesis had to be yourself. You’d certainly made life miserable enough.

You imagined your present self, or your past self, or whoever the f**k you were was intentionally making problems for your future self. If your past self wanted to f**k with you, it would take more than this.

In a battle against your past self, you could always win. You would always be one step ahead. You would be able to revisit anything your past self was up to. Thwart his evil plans. You past self was a formidable opponent, though.

You were such a formidable opponent, you didn’t want to piss off your past self too much. You knew if you did just enough, you would piss yourself off enough to somehow find a way to f**k with your present self. And there were definitely times you felt so inclined.

It would have been very easy to turn your head and read the blinking, red numbers. It wasn’t worth the bother. You knew it was late.
You could tell by the color of the light coming in through the window. The fixtures outside were programmed to save energy. They took turns in succession taking a break. Two lights on meant it was about three in the morning. All that really mattered was that it had been a while. You weren’t much in the mood to make a bigger issue than that.

The whole bother was becoming muddled up in your thoughts. It was better just to lay there and not worry about it.

You had placed the bed in front of the window last week because you were sick of staring at the wall when you felt like this. Felt like you couldn’t ease your mind after midnight. The anxiety somehow seemed worse as you stared at a plain, tan wall than it did getting lost in the nothingness taking place outside your window. Pretty girls did this to you. They always did.

Sleep must have been a really stunning, fantastic looking woman because you wanted it so bad, but it made you nervous and awkward feeling inside. The girls could always tell as you avoided eye contact and said ahm more times than is natural for any human being.

Outside the window there were some bunnies playing around. They always made you smile. They weren’t part of the nothingness. Someday, after they were scooped up by a hawk, torn apart, and s**t back onto the lawn, they would be. For now they were just cute, fluffy tailed little randoms making their way across the lawn, building up fat cells eating salads and looking for a f**k. You wondered if they slept during the winter. You saw a couple of them stand on their hind legs to get to the juicy leaves on branches high above their normal reach, but this was rare. Was there anything they could eat in the winter? Hard to live on frozen lettuce when you can’t defrost the refrigerator.

Your mind focused on them for a little while as you tried to distract yourself.

You wondered if they ever commit suicide. Maybe they did. You had seen them sprawl out like cats with their legs protruding behind them. Just laying there like bait. Tempting fate. Were they waiting for the drone death stalking from above?

Would they go to Heaven if they pulled such shenanigans? Do bunnies have Heaven? Is there a Heaven for all animals? And is the Heaven you were anticipating the same one they were? Were they anticipating Heaven? Had Jesus Christ visited the Earth in bunny form? Would he have made them promise not to use birth control even when it’s in their best interests? That’s why there were so many of those little fuckers.

You resolved they were certainly not going to Heaven if they were contemplating suicide.

It seemed like a lot of bother to create separate Heavens for animals and humans. A Heaven for each species? Please.

If there were a Heaven for just animals, you imagined that it would be pretty awkward for the gazelle and the lion. I mean after you murder and eat someone, it’s got to make the nightly poker game in Heaven, or anywhere else for that matter, awkward.

Had God never heard of the internet or Jenga? Nothing better to do? You figured if you were God, watching women in the shower would only provide entertainment for so many millennia, but please. There had to be better things to do for a deity with the power to create a whole f*****g universe.

You imagined yourself in control of the universe. You would f**k with people. That’s what you did best. You would get fucked up and think of little ways to ruin someone’s f*****g day. Group punishments weren’t your style. You wouldn’t destroy the whole f*****g human race. No floods. You would pick someone and f**k with them individually. Perhaps punish the whole human race without destroying it.

You imagined you would turn every dick in the universe purple for a day. Not just purple. Neon 1980’s sitcom shoelace purple. Just see what would happen. Just a harmless color change, but the ramifications would be enormous. Satellites would surely fall from the sky. Suicides. Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Airplane crashes. To be sure. And strangely, you thought, nothing would change in France or in Prince’s home. You wondered why that would be, but you knew somehow inside you that it would be true.

Were there separate Hells? Was there a little, red bunny with horns who walked around with a pitchfork and who got off on torturing his brethren for eating the wrong type of salad on Sunday? Would he still have a cottontail? It would be pretty cool if he did. The coolest thing you had possibly ever thought of was a pitchfork wielding bunny with a fluffy cottontail and demonic eyes. What’s more scary than that?

Was there a Hell at all? It was becoming too much again. You closed your eyes.

You were so tired. Why did you never sleep? The doctor gave you the pills. The ones that had the commercial with all the goddamn people the advertisers knew didn’t look like you, but thought it would be a good idea to showcase because they knew those are the type of people you wanted to be like.

The woman on the treadmill struggling with body issues and depression. Wouldn’t mind if she paid a visit. Probably could give her something to smile about. The business man in the conference room long after it had emptied rubbing his forehead because he was stressed out and sick of telling all the people he had to tell to f**k off every day. That job would be alright. “Perhaps if I had the pills”, you thought, “I could be that guy.”

Your mind drifted off and didn’t even notice the disclaimers running in small print at the end of the ad.

At the doctor’s office, you knew once the nurse left the room, you could inquire about a medication you had seen on television and the doctor would bend over backwards to give you a sample, and a free pen to advertise to everyone you know just what conditions you are being treated for. When you signed your name on the release forms in the lobby afterwards, you signed with that pen, and the secretary behind the desk grinned and knew what it was you were being treated for. She wasn’t grinning because your condition was funny. She was grinning because she felt like she was intelligent. Able to figure things out on her own. Truth was, you weren’t really hiding it, but you let her have that feeling. You tucked that pen nervously in your shirt pocket, anxiously pretended to look around as if you were embarrassed by who might have noticed the pen, smiled at the secretary, and waited for her to smile back with the look that said she your secret was safe with her. She was good at her job, she thought.

They were the medications that came in the cool, little packs with the bubble wrap you just loved to snap. Who needed pills for stress when there were the little colorful blister packs to pop? And you loved to pop them. You loved to pop them so much, you couldn’t stop. You would pop one after another until before long, all the blisters were popped and you had that irritating flap of skin that hung just below the tip of your thumb because it had worn off sometime during your orgy of snapping, but you didn’t notice until days later. It had gotten red and sore, and somehow seemed to get dirt deep in the cracks of your skin that you found hopeless to get out.
Sooner or later, the coolness of having new medication would wear off. Eventually you would forget to take them.

You wondered if the blisters were to make some excitement for a person with your condition. Something to look forward to at medication time. An incentive.

You were f*****g smarter than that. Were they in blisters to keep them fresh? Do pills not stay fresh? Do they spoil? Do bugs eat them and then start acting all apeshit bananas to the point where you have to call an exterminator before they buzz through all the f*****g woodwork?

You were pretty sure they don’t spoil, but just to be sure, you wrapped them in saran wrap, broken blisters and all, and did your best to remember to take them. Apparently you had forgotten this day, but it made no difference. You liked them when you needed to sleep. Tonight was not one of those nights.

You had things on your mind. You weren’t sure what things or what they were doing on your mind. You simply knew that if the phone rang, and someone asked to speak with the things, you would say they were busy on your mind. And you would have meant it. They were in no condition to be speaking to anybody.

You thought maybe you shouldn’t keep them wrapped in saran wrap. Maybe that’s why you didn’t take them. It was so much bother to unwrap them, because your past self had always done such a good job of wrapping them that it was a chore just to open them, and your present self determined to make life harder for you in the future, was all too happy to carry on the tradition. This all took time, and it hardly seemed worth it.

You never could remember your dreams when you took them. You always had such colorful dreams. It seemed a shame to waste them. Even if they were horrifying, it was still better than waking up with a blank slate.

Most evenings, you barely remembered the last hour before bed when you took them. In some way, they made you dull. Uninteresting. You often wondered if sleep was really worth that.

When you were taking them as prescribed, you definitely weren’t going to entertain anyone with stories of your previous night’s dreams. You had done this in the past. Done it quite well, in fact. Enjoyed it sometimes. There were people who would ask you what you dreamed about the night before. It wasn’t because they gave a s**t and wanted to know if your sleep was improving. They were curious about how fucked up you were. You knew, and they knew you were going to give them some fucked up answer. You were just being honest.

When you took the medication as prescribed, you had to let your imagination run wild. People still asked you and you felt obliged to give them a story. You made up stories about creepy mountains, and having a goat tail and your feet being on fire. People smiled and thought you were crazy. You knew that’s why they asked. And you didn’t mind making things up for them. God, they were f*****g stupid.

There was the random car. Headlights shoved their way into the room. “Where the f**k were people going so late at night,” you wondered? “Shouldn’t normal people be home tucked in bed?”

They were probably just people driving in their sleep or driving around in circles looking for a good place to dump a body. A body with stab wounds or a mouth that had just swallowed the end of a silencer. Either way it wasn’t pretty anymore. Those types of things happened from time to time. That was the problem with murder...you make a mess, you’ve got to clean it up.

If you decided to go that route, you supposed, and you were holding onto a corpse you wanted to get rid of before it bled all over the goddamn carpet in the trunk, you would probably take some time driving around before you settled on a good place to dump it. Only professionals knew what to do with a body before they had a body, and you didn’t think there any professionals living in your area. Maybe there were. They were simply so successful they never got caught.

You opened your eyes. You could see your reflection in the window. You wondered if you were just wrapped up in blankets or if you were really getting that fat. You shouldn’t be getting fat. You had cut back. You had really cut back. You were tired of being a stubby f**k, and you worked hard to change it. While other people needed to work out, you could just stop eating on a dime. You were so much better than them.

You didn’t want to know. You decided to look past the reflection. The window was wet. Long drops of water were slithering down the surface, and the street lamp was blurry. One streetlamp meant four AM. Little drops of snow were glistening in the light.

It was winter. You hated winter because there were too many hours of darkness. You wished you just had a button like a remote control where you could skip through the dark months. You didn’t do well in the winter. The holidays. Family. Bullshit. F**k it.

The dreariness of the snow made you realize you’d better take your medication. Miranda was going to check. She always did. And if you had too much, you were getting a lecture. Miranda was cool. She loved you, but it was never enough. You didn’t know why, but you never could envision yourself with her. Maybe it was because she had one of those half moustache things that was only visible in the right light, and it went away once in a while, but it came back. And you wondered if she was shaving it, or if the light was just different. And if she was shaving it, you wanted to tell her she was making it worse. You didn’t have the heart to do that. You cared for her. You needed her in your own way. You needed her lectures. You needed her to tell you to get off your a*s once in a while and clean your apartment. You needed her to call when you were feeling down. You didn’t know what you were waiting for in life.

You had the perfect woman right in front of you, but you stubbornly wanted someone else. It was never going to happen, but you didn’t care. You learned when you were a child, if you made enough noise in the store, you could get whatever you wanted. You weren’t making a lot of noise, but you were definitely making your statement, even if you kept it to yourself. You knew what you wanted.

You unwrapped the pills and swallowed a couple. Miranda didn’t like the saran wrap. She never understood it, so you thought. But she knew everything. She was just f*****g with you when she asked why it was so elaborately wrapped and she didn’t believe you when you told her the blisters were broken when you got them. She knew anxiety, she understood little things like popping medication blisters.

You looked out the window again. You wondered about snowflakes. Your brain was working too fast again. You wanted the pills to work instantly, but they didn’t. You didn’t understand why. You wanted sleep tonight. You wanted to wake up tomorrow with the blank slate. You wanted to forget about the hour you were living. You wondered what it would be like to be living time that was going to be forgotten, and you knew you never could know because you would forget.

None of this was making sense. You were getting agitated. TIme to take another pill.

Did snowflakes have dreams? They probably thought they were all individuals with individual dreams. Thought there was something special about themselves.

Truth was, it was easier to have fears than it was to have dreams. Even you knew that with the medication pumping through your veins.

What the blistering f**k was a dream anyway? Something you wished for? Something you brain conjured up to make your mind forget your waking dreams? All the things you longed for but never got? The things you would never have? F**k this was getting intense.

Pills? Got them.

Each snowflake, you resolved, feared crashing into a warm windshield. That must have been the worst. To fall willy nilly through the night and land smack dab in the middle of a f*****g semi window. And there goes the whole f*****g thing. Everything you strived for gone. Everything you tried to build, wished and hoped for fizzled out in one swift blow. And the burly armed driver would never give a damn that he crushed your life, as well as the friends who had taken the roller coaster ride down with you. The driver would probably just sit there on his fat a*s and wonder what filthy truck stop he would fill his greasy gut with, as if he needed any more food, or grease for that matter, not paying any mind to your loss.

There it was. A little something. The medication was starting to work. You could breath easier, but your eye was still twitching. You could feel your chest relax. You wondered why you didn’t just take your pills as prescribed. You were feeling pretty good right now.

Time for another pill. This feeling was too good to give up. When you are feeling anxious, and the medication isn’t strong enough to work your mind to sleep.

You thought about the lucky snowflakes. Were they really lucky or not? You were sure the ones who were considered lucky were the ones who landed somewhere in the middle branches of an evergreen tree. There they would meet new friends over the course of a season. They would be known. Their community would grow. They would fit in. They would have a role in their universe. They would be something just by being. They would help provide warmth to the forest below. They would help provide shelter and a dry place to f**k for the random bunnies. Their lives would have meaning. They wouldn’t be like you. You just laid there and did nothing all day. You were not part of anything, and most of all, you were ungrateful. You didn’t treasure your moments. You didn’t appreciate Miranda. You knew you should have. You wanted to. You just didn’t, and it never seemed to come together.

Inevitably, though, spring would come, and the snow would melt. The snow would melt slowly. The snowflakes would cling on to their special branch, their friends, and their precious lives as long as they could before melting and slithering down the branches and onto the lawn. Their energy would be recycled, and maybe little bits of them would live on in little parts of other random nature.

You were getting dizzy. You looked at the saran wrap laying on the floor. The wreckage of blistered plastic broken strewn in a trail leading up to the bed.

It scared you, but you knew you were Iron Man. You overdid it, but you would be fine. You always were. For all the goddamn complaining and bitching and f*****g moaning you did, things were never really that f*****g bad.

All you needed was some rest. Miranda would come over tomorrow and give you a Hell of a lecture. This is what it felt like to live in the hour you would inevitably forget.

You soon discovered there is no Heaven. There is no Hell. Just a vast nothingness that sucked up your anxious soul. You knew what happened to the bunnies when they passed on. As you choked on your own vomit, you thought about life, and how you should have listened to Miranda, and the doctor, and everyone else who ever had the courage to tell you the truth. You came to the sudden realization that you weren’t Superman. You could have fit in, but nothing was ever good enough for you.

In a rare moment of peace, just before the lining of your stomach filled your nostrils and the burning acid singed your constricting throat, you knew you had hit the windshield of the semi. And at that moment, nothing else mattered. For once, there were no dreams, and no need to imagine any surreal thoughts to share. For once, there was you, and nothing else. It felt good.

Then, the figurative arm of the wiper blade whisked it all away.


Jason Engebos
12/04/13

Reviews

[Richard Knox]

An interesting stream-of-consciousness story full of intriguing ideas and conjecture. It clearly paints a picture of the narrator’s state of mind leading to the inevitable but still tragic denouement.

[Ranger Kessel]

Thanks so much for the read and review in really appreciate it