A Year of Stories: November

 A Careless Night

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By: Chase L. Currie

(This is the first part of my year-long goal of a story a month. Here is the tale of November and I give it to all of you. It’s a story deep with my past along with some of my friends’ pasts. Although, I'm sure the story carries more weight being so personal, or I hope it does. Either way it has been an idea I have been playing around with for some time but couldn't find a place for it until now. I'm not sure that all my stories this year will be so deep or have some much impact on me (and the reader), but I hope they will be good.

I'm also putting up some poems, just things I have been thinking about lately.

Also I know it's not a very Thanksgiving story but I'm very thankful for my life, my friends, my family and the people who read my stories. I'm thankful to able to walk, talk, and for the smiles with all of you. And this story may not say it, but that is what I feel when I read it. As the angel talks to Jackson, I feel so very thankful to be writing every line . . .

Please by all means tell me what you think. The more feedback, the better . . .

With a handshake,

Chase)

“When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche-

But the abyss isn't a black empty thing, not like you would think it is. The abyss that haunts you, after you stare into, is a raging yellow, that bleeds heat from its life. The flames dance on the flesh of this young boy. A boy named Jackson lies on the ground screaming in a pain few know. His eyes look dead at me, through that wall of fire and right into the very thing I am. I could see it. I could smell the flesh melting away and my hands falling onto him. I saved his life that night and I would do it again, more times than I would like to admit. But now, Jackson, the boy who became a very tortured man is laying at my feet . . . dying.

“Jackson,” I say to him, kneeling over the tall man, “open your eyes.” It only takes a few moments and then his dark brown eyes shot awake, tossing him to his feet.

He takes a deep breath, trying to find the air to speak, “Oh - - - my, God.” He weeps.

“Jackson.”

He turns to me, looking at me like he did all those years ago, a tear running down his left cheek. He doesn't know whether to be happy to see me or to fall to the ground weeping to the Father above. It's a feeling I wish we didn't share. I step closer to him, putting my hand on his shoulder, telling him, “It's alright my friend; I am here to help you.”

“Like you did before?”

“Like I've done, so many times,” I pull him close, throwing both arms around his giant body, “and like I will always do, I will always save you.” He grabs me tighter than I thought he would. He keeps me in his arms, as if we were two lost brothers coming home from a long war and we both can't believe we survived. As if, when we saw each other at the doorstep to our parent's house, we grab one another and rejoice in the warmth of our brotherly love, something we could never share with another soul. So I just held onto him, wondering what more could I do.

Then he lets go of me, saying, “I had a vision of that night again.”

“I know,” I reply, “I can see it in your eyes.” He was crying for hours before I came in. He was falling deep into the abyss . . . again.

“It was so long ago, you know?”

“It's been 21 years.”

“And yet,” he says, looking down at the bottle that once held so many pills inside. “It feels like yesterday.” Then before I could say anything, before my mouth even opened he looked dead at me. Almost smiling with his eyes, and telling me, “I can't believe you’re here.”

“Where else would I go?” I ask him. You never leave an addict alone for too long. If you do, when open the door to their room, be ready to find a body or a very sick person. You never leave them to themselves because that is the real drug. That is the real killer in the room. It’s something I know. I have long ago understood it about Jackson and yet, I had to leave, knowing I would find him lying on the floor.

“I don't know,” he says walking around in the dark room and finally sitting on the bed, “some place better than here.”

I join him at his side, “There is no place better.”

He laughs a little. Maybe it's because he can feel the lie in between my teeth or the fact he knows I couldn't be somewhere else, even if I wanted too.

“Do you love me?”

A question I have never heard him ask me. But the answer was easy and I wasted no time saying it. “Yes, of course I do. I love you like a brother, like family.”

He doesn't look at me, I don't know why. He just looks off into the dark. He always felt safer in the dark. There’s something about the light that reminds him of the fire. So, I never came to him in the light. It wouldn't be right. “Why does your love feel so . . . detached, as if it was a thousand miles away? Why can't I feel it when I am not chasing the edge?”

“That my friend, is a question I don't know how to answer.” I wasn't lying. What do you say when someone says they can’t feel your love? You know, like they know, that you do love them. In fact, you have saved their life so many times before. Like pulling them out of a car after the crash, helping them to shore after they can’t swim anymore or stopping them from taking that last pill that would push them over the edge. And yet, even after all this, they still can’t feel your love.

I found myself a little disheartened at the revelation. I almost stepped from the bed, turned to face him, and told him, “fuck off! How dare he question my love for him?” I had given up so much to keep him going and for what? For him to be ungrateful about it, for him not to believe that I care.

He didn't know what it was like seeing him do this to himself. I watched, night after night, as he pushed, trying to tip over the edge. Knowing that the edge was the very end of him. Once he steps over it there was no coming back. I watched, screaming in silence for him to stop.

“Jackson, what a fool you are!” I yelled inside my head. “You have everything. You could be anything. Your mind is as sharp as a sword. You are smarter than most people alive and yet, all you do is waste your life away. You sit at your house, falling deeper into a darkness that only you can crawl out of, but you can’t do it alone. And you’re too damn stupid to know it. So you take a pill, or a dozen to make the pain go away but the pain never goes away.”

I wanted to say all those things but I didn't. I sit there in silence, waiting for him to say something. And he did, as he asks another hard question, “Why do you keep saving me?”

The first thing that rushed to my mind was to say that it is my duty. After all in being a Guardian Angel saving Jackson's life and many others is what I was created for, but that answer would not work. I would do more damage than good, saying it like that. And to be honestly it wasn't what I wanted to say anyway. He knows I am a Guardian Angel, he knows that is what I do for a living but that is not why I keep saving him. I could let him die, if I wanted to, but I don't.

“Jackson,” I almost whisper pulling his eyes to me, “I keep saving you because I envy you, pity you, and most of all I love you.” He didn't ask me what I meant by my statement, but his eyes, tearing up, wanted to know.

“You are a great man, when you want to be,” I tell him, “you could be something great in this world. You fight every day to keep yourself going. You paint and write when everything around you is telling you that your art will get you nowhere. You do not step away from your faith and you keep your heart open to all that come into your life. I envy you because you are the best person I have ever met or ever will.” He smiles.

“But I pity you,” the smile fades, “because as great and strong as you are, you are still that child burning. I see it every time I find you like this. I see you sitting in the dark, crying like a little boy and no matter what I do . . . it means nothing.”

“You will not let anyone save you from that fire and I don't know why. I fear it's because you don't know how. I fear it's you can’t let go, because that night is a part of who you are. But what I fear the most, my friend, is that you don't want anyone to save you. You somehow, some way, believe that the pain keeps you from hurting, that it keeps you going. When all it does is drag you down. I pity you because you pity yourself.”

He looks away, back into the dark, letting the words find their way into his thoughts. He sits there knowing that everything I am saying is the truth and it is a truth that is more painful than the scars on his legs.

“But my pity is overshadowed by my love for you. I love you so much that I will not give up on you and I will not let you give up on yourself. I have been with you for all your life and I have seen you grow stronger every day. I pray and hope that one day you will step out the darkness, wipe those tears away and become the man that is locked inside of you. I save you because I want to see you be the person I know is somewhere deep in the abyss. I want to see that person finally come out to live.”

He stops the tears from falling off his cheek. He stands up, looking down at his body, lying on the floor and he asks, “What if that never happens?”

I stand beside him, looking down with him, smiling because I know one day it will happen. “It will, my friend, it will.” I tell him, setting my hand back on his shoulder.

 We talked for some hours until the sun came up. After the rays filled the room I put him back into his body. I would save him a couple more times before he stepped out of the abyss. Although, I can’t say that abyss didn't leave its mark on him, for it did. He carries it with him everywhere he goes but he's stronger now. He's a better man because of it all. And I, the angel, still watch over him. For I will always watch over Jackson, always. 

(Poems)  

 Marching North to the Smokey Fort

Tales of Whimpering Oaks

Written by: The Low Bard of Whispering Oak, Thomas Humming-tail

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By: Chase L. Currie

We march and we march

To the bitter cold,

We march and we march,

To the bitter end,

We drink and we drink,

For we don't know . . .if, tomorrow will ever come.

We march and we march,

To the sound of drums,

We march and we march,

To the north where the dead beat their drums,

We drink and we drink,

For we don't know . . .if, tomorrow will ever come.

 Stars Across Her Face

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By: Chase L. Currie

In a flash, we spoke,

In a flash, we parted,

But I . . .wished to know your name.

I wished for you to say my name,

Rip away the masks of the ball we dance in,

To see who is really beneath them,

That is what I wished for.

To see the stars across your face,

But as they say, the words I don't care to believe,

The line we know must come . . .

We don't always get what we wish for.

But I will never stop wishing,

Like I will never stop watching the sky,

For that stars shooting across your face,

Wishing upon it . . .that you will take off this mask.

 The State of Things

Draft_2

A 100 Poems

By: Chase L. Currie

I shake my head,

You said you would come,

At this empty table,

Among these empty plates,

With these empty glasses,

You are not here,

You . . . said you will not change,

You cannot change,

Then how can I?

I shake my head,

For now, I will not taste the sweet wine,

For it is sour,

For now, I will not taste the fresh meat,

For it is rotting,

You . . . said you would come,

But you are not here,

And I shake my head in disbelief.