"No Longer Doing Your Bidding"

NO LONGER DOING YOUR BIDDING

By

Sean Maxwell Garland

                My heart is bitter. Perchance winter is to blame; perhaps the snow and ice are to be accounted for. Maybe my heart is wintry because the last heated woman I gave it to cut a hole out and took what she wanted, leaving me out in the cold to pick up the pieces. Or maybe it’s because of you.

                I once thought that I had found the needle in the hay stack, but after trying to pull through a piece of thread, I began losing sight of her amongst the feed. I cannot recall whether it was then that I met you, but it was then that I was sure of a sudden yearning for you.

                I for one had always found you very attractive in nature, and perhaps the reason for her displeasure towards your aroma is because she scented a threat. She never liked you, but had given you a chance. You were always beautiful and fresh to me. You eased my pain, taught me to laugh and at times you took my breath away. You were well maintained with wavy red hairs and supple skin to which stemmed from the rest of your body and made you a constant sight for sore eyes.

Whenever you weren’t around, I felt alone and too much like myself and low. I’d ask around for you, rummaging for you out of boredom, and you came to me at a cost and a past full of strangers. You promised to make me feel richer, but afterwards when you would disappear out of thin air, I realized by how much you really made me unfortunate.

At times, I drew upon you for inspiration but it was only after a while that I saw how you had erased my motivation. She was committed to me already, fully in love, while you had many suitors. Your popularity was more influential and I found myself on some nights torn in between; she had my love, you had my lust.

Still, I paid the price for your company and for the time you let me sit and waste. Some see to you for comfort while dealing with discomposure, for a sanctuary amidst life’s chaos. But I mostly wanted you to fill the void in my broken heart, but you were only filling my lungs with hot air.

I’ve wanted to stop using you for a while now, yet I haven’t been able to muster up the strength or find a stable willingness to do so. Whereas one’s temptation is difficult to ignore, you became an addiction that could not be silenced; a lingering, hyper active idea that bounced inside the contours of my emptied mind. You gave me the habits of the highly ineffective.

I can no longer deal with you. I can no longer take you places or share you amongst a group of people. I can no longer do your bidding because you are a reason she and I are broken up.

You crumble under pressure by wrapping yourself in layers or become as thin as vapour. You are forever changing, masking your poisonous odour. You stink, and she was right in telling me. She can smell you on me, and I can hear her heart break. Living through those moments, I sadly realize who I am loving more.

It is for this reason, as I break you down and watch your shiny green and red hairs crumble underneath my fingertips, that I can no longer withstand you and flush you for good down a withering drain. You force me to do your bidding, but no more. Why?

Because I don’t love you Mary Jane, or I’d be blowing smoke otherwise.

The first time I ever heard the song....I was....

ZOЁ

By Sean Garland

The first time I ever heard the song “All I Need” by Radiohead, I was in love. She sat in front of me, smiling blissfully while we allowed the romantic music to subdue us to a cuddle. We lay on our backs; our arms outstretched searching for one another amongst the scattered blankets and way too many pillows. She wrapped her legs around mine, entangling our limbs like forming the shape of a heart. I held her close, lifting her leg up to my hip and then clutching her thigh I pressed my body towards her, my nose touching her nose, our lips inches away from locking in an embrace forever. The summer heat pours into her bedroom, glistening through her drawn pink curtains. The usual roar of the downtown traffic is blurred out by the beat of the song, a light tap of chimes amidst the stroking keys of a heavy piano. I stare into her eyes, the glee of happiness shining from inside her pretty little pupil chokes me up. She looks at me with such joy, such emotional passion; I am awestruck. What did I do to deserve such affection? The song plays on, “I’m an animal,” Thom Yorke hymns, “trapped in your hot car.”

                “Sean,” she tells me, tears starting to fill her eyes. I’m worried at first so I sit up to show my concern. She immediately puts a hand to my face, she’s cool to the touch and chills me to the bone. “I really love you.” Now she’s made me all warm and tingly inside.

                “I love you too,” I say while leaning in for a kiss. She perks her lips together and meets me half way.

                Thom breaks into the chorus. She sings along while propping herself on top of me. “You’re all I need....” she whispers in my ear while kissing my neck slowly, “You’re all I need....”

                I close my eyes, trying to picture anything more beautiful than the moment I am in. I can’t think of anything. Suddenly now, the song is in its climax and I’m making love to her. When the song ends, we hold each other tightly, our sweat mingling with each other, our bodies meshing into one being. This is love, I remind myself, the feeling you get when you know you’re meant to be with someone.

                The song becomes intoxicating. I listen to it while falling asleep with her in my arms; I hear it when I’m spending every waking second with her. Still, I cannot fulfill my appetite.

                Eventually, the summer winds die down and the cold autumn breeze begins to howl in the distance. I’m standing with her at the train station, the song playing louder and louder in my head as we’re holding one another tight, not wanting to let go. “You’ll come and visit me?” she asks, tears pouring down her face, “I ought to stick with you....” Thom says, “because there are no others....”

                I hesitate for a moment, and then reassuringly tell her that I will come to Toronto as soon as possible.  I tell her I will visit every weekend. I’m full of shit.

                Months go by, the song still playing in my head. I’m thinking of her, but she’s miles away. I begin to question our love, thinking god knows what she’s up to in a city like Toronto.

                She visits me more often than not. We make love to the song each visit. She stays for the weekend, and then heads back. When she leaves, I’m still hungry. I’m cold. I’m lonely. I’m a disgusting pig.

                She hates me, but I had to tell her. It was the right thing to do, other than being a terrible decision that I’ll regret for all the wrong reasons.  She looks at me now with such distain, such hatred for the man I’ve become. She stares at me, perhaps looking right through me. I search her big brown eyes for any last signs of hope. I don’t want to let her go. She insists I do. Her pupils no longer hold a luster, but carry a darkness in which I have instilled within her heart. She hates me for my mistake, she says she always will. Her face is haunting in the moonlight, she yells at me with such angst. She fades into the shadows of the night, the last time I’ll ever see her. “You were all I need,” I call out to her. My voice trails off in the night. I’m listening to myself sing, a scratchy voice from on an old broken record.

I fucking hate that song.

"Guilt Subletting Shame" - STORY JUMPSTART

Guilt Subletting Shame

By Sean Garland

He hears a metallic ping. The sound of a bottle cap spinning around on his living room floor abruptly wakes him up from another hazy dream.  The loud noise rings in his ears along with the unpleasant screeching voice of a drunken woman being too obnoxious for her own good. She should know her place, he thought, she should know that her presence is unwanted. He wakes up regretfully dreading the day when he allowed such trash into his home.

He thumps his long legs out of bed and causes the floor and walls of his room to shudder. A bunch of dust bunnies scatter along the hardwood floor in fright. He pretends he is a creature, rising from sleeping through winter with disdain for what frost lurks down the cold walls of the hallway. The creature has been stirred into a test of its patience and a test of its might, but this creature would put up a fight. After all, these people had somehow crawled into his living space as if through a hole in the wall or a crack in the floor. He threw on some layers to have a larger impression before opening his door to the shouting of the troubling couple.

He staggers out towards the coffee pot and sees the lateness of the afternoon. The voices continue to disturb him. From down the hall, she sounds like they were hanging outside of the creature’s bedroom. The woman’s screeching, drunkenly and aggressively shouting and trying to woo the other voice of the stranger, the man who convinced the creature to sublet the spare bedroom. The stranger had been nested within the creature’s walls for weeks, having agreed to fly the coop come the end of summer. The stranger had caused creature’s suspicion, having been in a relationship with a woman in the earliest of her twenties who already came bearing the responsibilities of a child. While there had been no signs of the infestation, which had been creature’s main worry, this woman was a pest.

The creature tried to ignore their rambunctiousness from down the corridor and mind his own business; the first of which was preparing some grub. He burrowed through the kitchen cupboards and pulled out the frying pan, a cutting board and set them down on the counter. The woman cackles and the creature waits for his anger to subdue before withdrawing a knife and beginning to prepare.

While the breakfast heated on the pan and waited to be eaten, the creature was back within its room collecting dust. He did not hear the soft but thundering footsteps of the woman as she approached his bedroom door while heading for the washroom, but once he had turned holding his vacuum of dirt she was staring at him, sweetly.

 “Hi Janis,” says a somewhat attractive blonde in her mid-twenties carrying a subtle bent look in her eyes.  Janis wonders how she knows his name and who she is while pouring his eggs into a bowl. She then whispers softly behind him, “Smells good,” as if her soft words stroke against his cheek. He turned abruptly and asks for her name. She seemed familiar, but did not sound similar to the other woman with child, not even close. She seems close to the stranger and enough to cause his heart to skip a beat.

Janis hears them fucking from behind closed doors. She sounds like an animal, wildly wanting to be ravished and raped. Janis thinks about the stranger, how he had disguised himself as a good shepherd only to be the devil himself, filling the place with sin. Eventually, the stranger gives the animal a ride back into the wilderness. Returning to the apartment sometime later, the stranger’s heavy footsteps carry metallic pings while moving up the steps of the metal staircase to the porch where Janis stood smoking.

“Oh, shame,” the stranger carried with him the weight of an invisible burden, “Shame and guilt. That’s all I feel right now.” Janis offers the stranger a smoke while the man confesses his sins and reveals his scars. The animal had scratched up the stranger, as if clawing away at the facade of a decent human being, revealing the two-faced beast who feeds decent people petty bullshit. The stranger, desperate for common ground, asks Janis, “Have you ever cheated on someone before?”

“Yes,” the creature admits, before returning to his cave and hibernating.

"How To Eat Computers" - Postcard Story

How to Eat Computers

By Sean Garland

                Judith walked into her office one morning and had seen enough; for too long her co-workers stared deeply into their computer monitors, unaware to the interworking around them, blinded by bright lights. What her co-workers didn’t know, or were too oblivious to see, is that computers had taken over the office and the digital age had ruined the great minds of many. Judith believed that computers were evil and manufactured to keep human beings from using their pre-technological skills, such as writing on a piece of paper, long division and even spreadsheets. Now, she surveyed the office floor while standing on her computer chair, peering out over all the cubicles surrounding her and realized that all the hard working minds had actually been sucked into the machinery itself. She stood on her office chair, peering over the other desks, alone against the machine.

Maybe it was all the wiring, or typing or exposure to LED lights. Whatever it was, Judith couldn’t take it anymore and suddenly it clicked.

                She picked up her laptop, held it close to her face and then curled her lips in a snarl before sinking her teeth and taking a bite into the machine. She pressed her teeth deep, trying to imagine the taste of metal, mercury and springs as some kind of poultry dish. She held her bite for a moment, her hands holding the laptop in place, her face turning red with anger. How do you eat this thing?

She began to nibble away at the computer’s shell, her teeth scratching and digging against the structure. She was trying to pierce its skin and looked like a Neanderthal crunching into its fire roasted beast.

She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a ruler, then reached her hand inside and dug deep inside to find a pair of scissors buried beneath a clump of paperclips and staplers and pens. She used the ruler to wedge between the spacebar and the metal frame of the machine and began plucking out the keys one by one. She gathered the keys in a pile and left the spacebar separate. “That’ll be dessert,” she muttered to herself, “the spacebar. I’ll eat the rest of the keys alphabetically.”

So she did, and once she had finished swallowing the Z, she dove both of her large hands into the computer’s mainframe and began pulling out the hard drive, the circuit board and any other wires that she deemed edible.

Judith was half way through her lunch when she went to the staff room to look for something to wash it all down with. Her boss leaned against the fridge, holding his “Best Boss in the World” coffee mug, and watched Judith drastically begin to pour water down her throat.

“Better save some for the fishes,” said the boss, hiding his cheeky grin by taking a sip. Judith didn’t laugh. She never laughed at his jokes, and the boss thought it was because she didn’t like him.

Judith ignored him and raced back to her desk to finish eating her laptop. The boss watched Judith hurry back toward her cubicle. Judith was, in his mind, the best and brightest employee and a real whiz with computers and technology. He was very fond of her, her brightness, her can-do attitude, her ability to work with machines, her choice of glasses or how the frames complimented her eyes, but he had no idea how to tell her that he loved her.

Besides, she’d probably find it strange that he liked to eat cars.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - This is a postcard story. I do not own the rights to the photograph, but helps tell my story. I found it here: http://www.sandiegopurplecow.org/2012/07/psychological-stress.html 

As for the story itself, Copyright of Sean Maxwell Garland, 2012. All rights reserved.