Category: Words

Mara sat slumped at the edge of the bed, her hair in her eyes and a cigarette in her mouth. For two weeks, she had been having sexual dreams so vivid they left her more physically sore than actual sex. She joked with her friends at first about the astounding dreams, referring to them as her off-premise orgasms. Weeks later though, she was physically a wreck, close to losing her job because her mental focus was so bad, and emotionally scrambled from the lack of sleep.

“Incubus, dude. I need a rest. No one can fuck this much” she mumbled between drags on her cigarette.

A guttural but somehow cultured, lightly accented voice, distinctly male, responded from the foot of her bed:
“I haven’t enjoyed a human so much since the Renaissance. You disappoint me.
I am not an incubus, however, my treasure. I believe your word for me would be angel, although your Judeo-Christian tradition doesn’t represent us accurately. We are far less ethereal than your present day traditions might suggest.”

Mara, quite certain that she was still asleep in spite go all evidence to the contrary, was not alarmed that there was an angel in her bedroom. A large, very aroused angel. After all, she’d been seeing quite a lot of him. She just didn’t know that he was real. She was also completely unfit to respond to the situation with the decorum required when visited by an angel.
“Angel my ass. Just give me a fucking break, OK stud? You’re an amazing fuck, really, but you can’t just pop into a woman’s room any time you want. And who else would you be fucking, if not humans? That’s creepy.”

The creature at the foot of the bed made a…sound…a frightening, inhuman sound…a displeased sound. Something like a growl, but with more Hellfire. Mara found herself suddenly and completely immobilized as the angel nuzzled her neck with a very hungry sort of snarl.

“Just because I enjoy playing with you, do not think that I won’t dispose of you if you make me angry. I have been prone to..well..no need to go into all of that now. I was entirely uninvolved in the slaughter of those Assyrians you know. I’ve been positively benevolent for decades! Do be civil. An angel must be respected. Now, get up and have a wash. I have things to attend to.”

Mara nodded, now more or less convinced that there was some sort of actual physical being in her room. Perhaps it was her achy pelvis, or maybe the subtle aroma of sandalwood, smoke and sex that lingered behind him. Fuck. He must be ten feet tall, but he smelled amazing.
“What should I call you?”

The angel released her, and stood up.

“Call me Ishmael.”

Mara blinked.

“No one thinks an angel can make a joke. Relax, we do read, you know.
Humans do not have the proper sort of vocal cords to pronounce my name. Perhaps you should call me Samael, or Samuel. I will be away for several days. It would please me to find you here upon my return.

I am only seven feet tall. You must be very tired indeed.”

And he was gone. No puff of smoke. No blaze of flames. No wind. Just gone.

“Fucker. On this planet, it’s considered polite to say goodbye after spending several weeks violating someone in her sleep.”

“I can still hear you, Mara. And you weren’t sleeping. Good-bye, my treasure.”

“Good-bye Samael. Nice trick.”

Mara lit another cigarette and sighed. No one would ever believe this. She wasn’t sure she believed it entirely herself.

I’ve been talking to the wall and it’s been answering me
Oh darling how I miss you
I’m just the mere shadow of my former selfishness
–Elvis Costello/Human Hands

Oh, don’t worry. My selfishness level is at a perfectly normal operating level.
Sometimes the walls answer me though,
but never tell me anything I want to hear.
Why is that?
I mean, I know that when the walls answer me it’s me talking to myself. I may be a little crazy, but I’m not insane.

The question is: why can’t I manage to say nicer things when I’m the one saying them to myself?
I’d never talk to other people the way I do to myself.
Hardly ever, anyway.

They say that it’s important to use positive self affirmations in self talk.
I agree, they are kind of pompous.
Why don’t they just say you should be nicer to yourself?
Wouldn’t that be clearer for everyone?
Not that we would listen anyway.
Well, maybe we would listen if someone else told us. We don’t seem to listen to ourselves very well.
Why is that?

Yes, this is kind of what it sounds like in my head a lot of the time only with more profanity.
That’s why I call myself a dumbass so often.
If you sounded like this, you might call yourself names too.

Maybe you do sound like this, how would I know?

So let’s make a deal:
Let’s try to be nicer to ourselves a little bit more.
Let’s not go overboard about it. I mean, sometimes you have to kick yourself in the ass. You just do.
I’m not saying we should wake up in the morning and get all Stuart Smalley, but would it kill us to treat ourselves as civilly as we would treat a stranger? Or with as much compassion as we treat our friends?

It probably won’t kill us.

If I die tomorrow, please stop being nice to yourselves because it might turn out it actually is lethal.

If I don’t die tomorrow, either I’ve failed to be kind to myself or it isn’t lethal.
Either way, it’s a win for me.

Wait, what?

When she walks in the front door, there is nobody there.

At first, that was a relief. He wasn’t there anymore, and she didn’t have to pretend that she was glad to see him. She didn’t have to pretend that she was the cheerful person he married. After a year, though, her apartment, tiny, started to feel huge. She felt like she could never be enough of anything to fill the space. She felt even more empty than the apartment.

Maybe, she thought, there is still nobody here now, and closed the door behind her.

It’s pretty easy to pretend to be someone while she is at work. She is busy and useful. She can make herself smile because so many of the people there have so much more to be sad about than she does. They are really there, in their lives, hanging on. If she feels anything at all, she feels bad that she wants to let go of her life when they are all fighting for theirs.

Each night leaving work, she asks herself how many days she would be dead before anyone noticed. She knows what the answer is, but she still asks the question. It’s the number of days before she has to go back to work. Someone would miss her on that day at 07:05. Not before. When she is not working, she does not exist for anyone.

She does exist, of course, but she has lost touch with the place inside of herself where she can feel it.

She drives home each night, somehow, without driving her car into a wall. Off an overpass. She doesn’t know how many more nights she can keep her car on the road. The only thing she really wants to do is hit a wall. Crash into a tunnel and explode. She reads about people who die, and she thinks it must be peaceful not to have to pretend to be someone. Then she thinks of her mother, and decides to stay for another day.

One more day.

She stops pretending she is OK. She isn’t sad anymore. She isn’t lonely anymore. She isn’t anything anymore. She isn’t anyone.

Her friends and colleagues worry about the missing smile. The missing laughter. The empty eyes. They try to talk to her but she isn’t there so she can’t hear them.

She floats back and forth between work and her empty apartment over 300 acres of lonely. Resisting the call of the overpasses and concrete walls. Picking up a bottle of pills and putting it back down.

Every day.

One at a time.