Past the point of being a liability. Although with the way the conversation was going, the likelihood I’d retain that status kept decreasing. The liability. That ever-present haunting liability. There’s nothing anyone can do to avoid it. Every choice. Every action contributes to liability. Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie. You can avoid the ever-present liability in many ways. Countless ways. You can subvert it. Tell bald-faced lies. But it always comes creeping up again. Maybe because of that time I hunted my brother through the woods with a .38 special while under a chaotic combination of cheap liquor, sundry narcotics, and death burnout. Because he stole my tools for directly contemplating expiration.
I had landed the job a few months ago. The kind of job you’d think would require a degree. Experience. The title was Agent of the Office of the Medical Inspector. I guess I’m good at writing compelling resumes. Knowing how to pad them with barely true truths that can be backed up by people who have nothing to lose. Or maybe no one else wanted this job in northern [REDACTED].
The training was like something out of a B-grade horror movie. I was put up in a pretty decent hotel in [REDACTED], near the medical apparatus of the university. For a few days I attended autopsies, taking notes on the sort of suspicions that solicit this particular desecration of the dead. I remember talking to the cute, young autopsy technician while I was accompanying her in the dissection of a withered old man who had been discovered on some street corner. A kinless object for experimentation. I made strange requests, like if it was okay if I talked to this guy. Called him by name. She said that some people did that. In retrospect, I think she may have been lying. I patted Joseph on the shoulder with my gloved hand as the bonesaw split his chest apart. We were confronted with the bloody, diseased organs housed inside of him. Organs that are hopefully housed inside each and every one of us. Although for your sake, I hope those organs don’t resemble dearly departed Joseph’s.
I hadn’t slept in nearly three days by the end of this educational odyssey. A lifelong degenerate friend, a fellow who had spent his youth traveling across the country on trains, had appeared at the start out of thin air. Degenerate genie of the malcontent. An individual who claimed that the golden time of his life was when he lived off the trash of the rich out in Santa Barbara. This friend, who had now settled in [REDACTED] for some reason or another, had without fail, materialized in my subsidized motel room at the end of each day. He somehow convinced me that it would be a good idea to spend my medical examiner training flying high on methamphetamine. Wicked spirit, always offering objectively bad experiences, free and easy gifts. Consequences be damned. For some reason, I had yet to vanquish this living ghost. He just kept showing up in my life. Probably because I let him. I ended up totally zooted for my minimal training exercises with the university. I believe that the self-imposed chemical imbalance caused the imprints of everything I saw during those days to be pinned to my brain tissue in some strange way, vacant euphoria coated spirits.
The next two days were a twisted and barely coherent vision. Days that consisted of going around the city on call-outs with seasoned agents in the service of the dearly departed. I saw a man with a leg that was rotting off his body, crawling with bugs, forever dead in a hoarder's apartment packed to the brim with a useless collection of imaginary treasure. Maybe there was something of worth buried in the depths of that grimy habitat.
I saw a gunshot victim with a fist sized hole blown in his stomach, face up, dead in the street like some outlaw victim of yesteryear. That kind of situation elicits an automatic autopsy report. Very suspicious death, as far as such things go. Mortality works in infinitely mysterious ways. The documentation process becomes quite important in cases like this, in the event the assailant is ever apprehended. The judicial system salivates at the prospect of proper medical paperwork, all filled out proficiently and accompanied by compelling photographs. Those photographs go a long way with a jury.
I saw a corpse propped up against a brick wall, wrapped in filthy blankets. Still crawling with lice even though the body’s warmth had faded. Suspicious, sure. And there was definitely a victim in this case. But I seriously doubt that there’s going to be a lawsuit against the infrastructure that led to this particular undignified departure from our sun-stroked globe. No autopsy for this fellow, I thought. But I was wrong, the seasoned solicitors of the deceased informed me of this. The indigent go to the [REDACTED] medical school so that technicians in training can hone their skills with the bone saw. Then, the sliced and diced are cremated and placed in paupers’ graves. Or pauper's fields.
I experienced an abundance of death during those three sleepless days and nights. Going deep into ghetto habitats worse than anything I’d experienced when slipping into sketchy parts of towns across the country to score myself drugs. But that’s just it. I had always been on the outside looking in. I had never seen this side of the coin.
When the training ended, the powers that be presented me with a badge. I look wily and a little excited in the photo. It was my first badge, after all. The fact that I was now a part of a government apparatus gave me quite the thrill. Turns out, one of the job perks is that you get to boss cops around. To a degree. They respect you, at least a little, because you are part of the machine that they, too, are a part of.
I bid adieu to my degenerate friend, told him my pursuit of the death arts was no longer subsidizing the excellent and fortunately undamaged hotel room. He departed, returning to the streets he walked so endlessly. I left town to begin my new career. My territory covered the entire northern half of the state. On call twenty-four hours a day, followed by one day of rest. Rest that quickly proved to be inadequate. I had been awake for seventy-five hours at this point. I did a little more speed for the ride home and then drove back to the ranch in northern [REDACTED] that I still called home.
I showed my laminated badge to my mother. She was proud in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Probably the last time she had been so proud was when I made it to the spelling bee in 1st grade. I got kicked out in the second round for spelling I-D-L-E, I-D-O-L. I was so confident I had gotten it right. Such an easy word, my little brain thought. Crestfallen is putting it mildly for how I felt when informed I had erred. Clearly, the catholic sticklers had no respect for my man Billy.
My uncle had been involved in the career I was now pursuing. He had participated in Ted Bundy’s autopsy. That A-list serial killer all-star. My uncle had also been an EOD technician, and for those who aren’t aware, that’s the sort of wild man who dismantles inherently unstable explosive devices. Ironically, explosives were not how my legendary uncle met his untimely end. He met his end at the hands of a terminal drunk driver while on his way to work one fateful morning. If only he had stopped a bit longer to look at himself in the mirror. I don’t know if he was a particularly vain man. Anything, really, maybe a cut while shaving that required extra attention, and most importantly, TIME. The only thing that matters is that he was dead after that little trick fate pulled on him. The autopsy was pretty straightforward in that case. We kept his curved metal belt buckle, reshaped by its punishing impact with the steering wheel of his F-150, as a grotesque family heirloom.
The regulations and infrastructure of my new job required me to go out to the scene of any unattended death. Any death outside of the eyes of the state. I studied the terms that I could use in my reports to sound like I had the medical training that I had hinted at in my resume. Terms like livor and algor mortis. Petechiae. Incised wound. Ligature marks. The fascinating vocabulary to describe all the colors of death.
I already had a love for photography. The photos I took for my own personal pleasure were avant-garde black and white shots of treasured visions preserved on film. Over-exposed and purple-soaked snapshots of California deserts. Dangerous nudes of various pale models. Turning this interest of mine into something that required scientific and objective reasoning in the presentation was going to be difficult. It would be nearly impossible not to find myself trying to make the deceased and their surroundings appear aesthetic. So I got to practicing. Becoming colder and more mechanical with my photography. The deceased uncle had left me a lovely Nikon F3 that had been used to photograph all sorts of misanthropy in Miami during the cocaine wars. Unfortunately, the powers that be wanted a fast turnaround. No analog film. Digital shots combined with a report that could be submitted in less than 48 hours.
There was another problem. Restraining my penchant for eloquence in drafting these documents about the deceased. I found the solution for this to be rather simple. Don’t use words that might require a dictionary, and keep the multisyllabic expression to a minimum. They appreciate those reports clean and tight. The reports are filled with acronyms that you need a separate cipher for. LEA PCP NOK FP. It’s like they made these acronyms up just to fuck with those not in the know. Law enforcement agent? Primary care provider? Next of kin? I think I got those right. I’m at a total loss as to what FP meant. Fun partner? Final place? They told us that we could come up with our own acronyms and use them as long as we defined them in a separate sheet attached to the file. I tried to think of some fun ones. DAD. Dead as a doornail. ONE. Old natural expiration. The powers that be did not find this amusing. They told me I should stop coming up with my own acronyms and stick with the ones they came up with.
“Pre-existing conditions: Covid +, Parkinson’s, Heart Issues including but not limited to multiple stents (most recent being [REDACTED]). This information was obtained from the daughter [REDACTED] & the descendant’s wife. The descendant’s PCP, a [REDACTED] based out of [REDACTED], TX, was contacted 0830 [REDACTED]2021. He confirmed the heart issues and agreed to sign a JT death certificate. His information was retained and sent to [REDACTED] Funeral home.”
You get the idea. You don’t have a lot of room for play in these situations. I imagined drafting fantastic reports. The story of death so rich you could taste it. Something like this is what I would have crafted, given full creative control.
“The bloated body of the recently deceased U.S Marshal lay stark naked on a utilitarian bed. He hadn’t exercised in years; you could tell by the generously distributed adipose tissue. He’d undoubtedly been eating that polluted shit they serve up at Micky D’s, or some adjacent simulacra, every chance that he got. That’s probably why his heart gave out. That and the fact that he was eighty-fucking-two years old. Good run. About 13 years over the average American male TOD (that’s time of death). There were colorful splotches of lividity decorating his body. A naked and helpless U.S Marshal. The power switch in this situation thrilled me. I tried to respect the intimacy of the situation, but the temptation was too much to bear. I was going to be the one to arrest him, not the other way around. I’m sure if he were alive and knew the true roots of my nature, he would drop dead again from a hemorrhagic stroke. The meaty and once impressive cock was covered with some white substance absent from the rest of the corpse. Perhaps this long-serving civil servant died in the throes of some strange ecstasies we will never be made aware of. If his crying wife had any Polaroids showing the hidden nature of this man's proclivities, I don’t think there is anything I could do or say to convince her to let me put them into my file. Besides, it would be rude to ask for that sort of material given the circumstances. I turned the Marshal over, onto his side. Flash on, I took a full body portrait that included the death shit dribbling out between his surprisingly attractive ass. Necrophiliac fantasies left as dead as the man lying in that impossibly boring bed.”
Pulp visions like these are what I could have turned out for the office. I mean, the autopsy technicians would have gotten the general idea of what was going on. They were already going to see the body before they sliced and diced to discover the indubitable heart failure, a direct result of reckless participation in the American dream. The family wasn’t present while I took my precious photographs and haphazard notes. I unfolded the plastic body bag I had brought in with me on the bed. Then, I rolled the Marshal into the bag. Before I zipped him in for his final journey to the funeral home, I punched the dead lawman lightly on his hairy chest and declared, “You punched your last ticket, bud,” trying to channel John Wayne or whoever the fuck. The personal satisfaction that came from the fact that I was zipping up this man responsible for the untimely ends and incarcerations of countless outlaws flowed electric through my body. Even though I had to do a total hazmat scrub down afterwards because of the Covid contagion present at the scene, that one felt good. This was one of the good ones. The last good one, really.
A morbidly obese man on the mesa who was in his trailer for a week before anyone realized he was probably not coming out again. I opened the door and puked strings of thin yellow bile all over the red earth outside. The man’s skin had sloughed off almost completely as he had decomposed unattended in his La-Z-Boy. Maggots reigned supreme in that trailer. He died a natural death. Or did he? I mean perhaps there was some foul play. Someone could have poisoned this lonely man's final bucket of fried chicken. In these cases, it was best to check the box that indicated no autopsy was required. Hazmat had to be called. I like to imagine they just burned the trailer, a white trash funeral pyre for the ages. But sadly, that’s not how the system works. I did my documentation and called in the fellows whose livelihood revolves around dealing with these sorts of situations. Situations that no one else wants to take part in. These fellows made more money than I did. Still, not enough for the kind of work they were going to have to do.
There was that miscarriage on the Pueblo way out in the middle of nowhere. No running water. No electricity. Conditions I wasn’t supposed to associate with America. I found it inherently fucked up that a white man had to drive out there and catalogue the death of this person who didn’t even exist on paper yet, while the family sat in their ramshackle house, mourning over the tiny little body. They don’t make body bags that small. I had to put the unexpected abortion into a full-size body bag and roll it up like some cannibalistic roulade.
Throughout this entire time, I had begun drinking heavily. It started with a few pony shots of 99-proof liquor after scene surveys to decompress. Then a few before the scenes to steady my rapidly fraying nerves slipped in. Before I knew it, this destructive habit began to creep into my off days as well. I had never had the displeasure of dealing with full-time alcoholism, but I was well on my way. Before I knew it they were gonna be zipping me up in a body bag for EtOH. That’s ethanol alcohol. The shit that gets you drunk. Somewhere way back I had lived under the illusion that I was Billy Badass. That this death and misery would not affect me. I’d seen countless horror films & and a few random snuff flicks on the wild days of the early internet without losing my cool. Reality is infinitely crueler. The most tearing parts of humanity compressed into spaces too small to contain them will burst out in horrible ways.
I found out later that surviving this kind of work depends entirely on how you carry it home. I neglected to pick up that training. It wasn’t an offered course. Anyone going into this kind of work must already know how not to fall apart. Burnout is high in this type of job. That probably has something to do with how I ended up on this employment track so easily. To my credit, I didn’t immediately fall apart. It took countless bodies. Several months. Families outdoing the ancient Greeks in ritual lamentation multiple times a week. Then, there was the one that finally pushed me over the edge of the cliff I’d been inching up to for a long while. Before I even got this job, if we’re being honest here.
The house was a normal enough house. The kind of house that a happy (on the surface) family could live in. Maybe one kid. Maybe two. Two parents, who both have jobs that provide enough money to support this lifestyle. The lifestyle of the rapidly deteriorating American middle class. This particular household held a complicated story inside, as is more often than not the case these days. There was no father. He had left long ago. Gone out for cigarettes, never to return from that never-ending nicotine odyssey. He left behind a striking single mother. There was no collection of children. Only a singular delicate daughter. She was past the cusp of womanhood and on her way toward the world, if she had so chosen. Instead, she chose to experience the instant delights of that much maligned agent of chemical warfare, fentanyl. She lay on a flower-embroidered green blanket, this amateur practitioner of the narcotic arts. And like many before her, she had succumbed to those dangerous and delicate arts instead of reaching the promised impossible heights.
Her mother was beyond consolation. I held her as she sobbed like the very world was shattering. Her own private apocalypse. At this point in my employment, I still on occasion had a veteran inspector tagging along to make sure that I was on the up and up. He saw this tender moment and immediately put an end to it. He pulled me aside and reminded me that we were professionals. We were men. Our job was to catalog, document, and transfer the decedent. The funeral home. Autopsy suite. Wherever. I found this to be a bit fucked. Why the hell could we not share some humanity with these people experiencing what was very likely one of the worst days of their lives? Whatever.
I went back inside to the death room while Mr. Professional stood outside speaking coldly and matter-of-factly to the infinitely bereaved. I stared at that girl for a while. I couldn’t tell you how long. There was drug paraphernalia scattered about. Burnt foil. A straw. She had been smoking those nasty little blue Roxy 30 knock-offs coming in from Mexico by the truckload. After the United States fucked with El Chapo enough, he brought to life some malevolent curse upon our nation, and somewhere along the way, fentanyl turned an entire generation into corpses before they ever had the chance to become anything else.
This icon of lost potential lay there, silenced on her flowered sheets. Dead for less than a few hours. I was getting pretty good at judging that sort of thing. TOD. I’d seen enough corpses in various states of decay to make these calls through sheer intuition. Young intuition was another thing the powers that be weren't too fond of. But this time, there was evidence to back up my intuition. Discarded Narcan containers that had failed in their singular mission to revive her, lying all over the floor. I gazed upon her silenced face full of eradicated possibilities, and something broke inside of me.
I’ve lost countless friends and even enemies to drug use. Jail. Death. Insanity. This single dead girl suddenly embodied those countless losses in a way I still can’t fully comprehend. Drugs today don’t contain the quality highs that the substances of yesteryear did. Sure, those drugs were far from perfect. They’re still searching for that perfect drug. But Fentanyl is a dreadful chemical. There’s barely enough euphoria in it to justify the body count. The line between overdose and temporary reality erasure is so small that the death rate of users is unfathomably high. I don’t have the statistics in my back pocket, even though I should, working this job.
I held back ecstatic tears of sweet release. The irony of the fact that I was deep into my own chemical dependency dealing with the very job I was here was not lost on me. I was surviving the days through heroic doses of research benzodiazepines, grey market stuff from the great research laboratories of China. Exponentially more powerful than the standard Xanax. Active in the microgram range. And I was drinking the solution like angel's tears along with untold ounces of high-proof liquor. It was a miracle I could appear professional enough to get these jobs done. I tried to dose judiciously, and I like to believe that for the most part, I succeeded. Something tells me that wasn’t the case. I was probably due to be fired any day now. Maybe the disinhibition sourced from all of those sketchy tranquilizers had been what caused me to hold the broken woman in the front yard so tightly. I stared at this creature, departed from our sphere far too soon, for what felt like infinity.
Then, I photographed the scene. As is tradition. I was lost in artistic ecstasy, taking photos of her exquisite corpse as creatively as I could. Shattering my attempts at keeping the photography cold and clinical to pieces. That seemed like the kind of action in memoriam that this dead girl would appreciate. Fuck the administrators. They could deal with my sentimentality however they saw fit. This was bigger than them. These were not to become the kind of photographs that were buried and lost in medical files, the kind of photographs that are languishing in file cabinets all across the world. These photographs were to be transcendent. In recognition of something bigger than a single dead girl. Photographs I could be proud of. Something I would never share with anyone but the medical examiner’s office, because it felt like a violation of this delicate dead girl. I could never get her consent. She was gone. She wasn’t coming back.
After I got all of the business taken care of, I called the funeral home. Then I watched them take my muse away on a stretcher. Shrouded in the plastic of the body bag I had zipped her up in back in that quiet room that would never feel normal again. Even to the next owners of the house.
I had a talk with my supervisor before I left. The gist of it was that I was displaying too much empathy. I wasn’t a psychologist. That wasn’t my job. What a jaded, calloused, fuck. I imagine if you see this kinda shit for going on three decades, you eventually start seeing bodies the same way slaughterhouse workers see cattle. Maybe that’s all we are after all. But I couldn’t be that. I couldn’t see it this way. I didn’t have thirty years of dead bodies. I was jaded about many things, but this was not one of them. The world still held some surprises for me. If I even lasted thirty years in this job, I don’t think I could have acted that way. Ice cold. Like Ted Bundy. I didn’t tell Mr. Professional as much, but I was just about done. This was the last one for me.
On my way back home, I picked up double the amount of pony shots that I normally did: 4 ounces of 99% proof liquor. I had finished all but one by the time I arrived back at the ranch.
Something dark was already pulling me back to that compound in the woods where my stepfather had decided would be a good place for him and my mother to retire. There was sentimentality tangled up in it. My uncle, stricken down by that habitual alcoholic, had originally planned to retire to [REDACTED]. So I suppose my mother felt that by going along with that choice, she was honoring his memory. Much like I was trying to honor his memory by becoming a wayward medical inspector.
I arrived at the compound in the woods about one sheet to the wind. Not quite two. Yet. Attempting to numb my mind from the incoming emotional avalanche that was threatening to break me into a billion little pieces. I stumbled into the house. My brother was sitting at the kitchen table. He knew how fucked up I was. He was no stranger to drugs and alcohol, the little festival kid. He was jaded in his own way. Environmental science degree. Trying to save the world and then realizing it’s beyond saving. So all you can do is cultivate your little slice and give it the best you can. My brother preferred drugs that opened the mind instead of shutting it down. So perhaps there was judgment lurking there, even if I was oblivious at the time. There was definitely judgment on the part of his absentee girlfriend. She was not a fan, and was likely responsible for what happened next in some small way. If anyone was responsible though, it was me for the madness that followed. I take full ownership for my actions in the chaos that ensued.
I stumbled up the stairs to my sanctuary, slid a little syrupy grey market benzo soma down my tired throat, and chased it with the remainder of that fourth pony. Then I made the genius decision that I had not acquired enough alcohol to reach the desired state of obliteration. This was a fatal flaw on my part. Thankfully, the reason it was a fatal flaw was not that I killed some road-tripping family on my drive to and from the small liquor store in town. I made it to the liquor store and back all in one piece, drinking on the drive as the calm of the sedative slipped into my anxieties and gently fucked them to a light sleep.
I arrived back at the compound, now officially three sheets to the wind. Somehow, during the trip to and from the liquor store, I had raised two more sheets. I shambled up the stairs to my second-floor sanctuary. No sight of my brother on the journey up those stairs. He could’ve been in the kitchen. He could’ve been on Mars. I was so far removed from the moment in my effort to forget unwanted and unexpected emotional terrors that hardly anything mattered. Except for my firearms. I loved those guns. They gave me a sense of power. Of control. Dealing with life and death every day, frequent thoughts on the frailty of human life dominated my psyche.
One morning, I pointed a Walther PPK to my temple, thinking the chamber was empty. At the last second, I shifted the barrel toward the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The forgotten round punched straight through the plaster instead of my skull, filling the room with a deafening bang and the odor of gunpowder. It’s a lot easier to fix a hole in your roof than a hole in your head.
I loved these guns. The Walther PPK. The twin .357 Colt magnums. Another inheritance from the legendary uncle. Then there was a luger I had bought myself. The little guns the Wehrmacht carried with them during WW2 as they carried out countless atrocities in the name of nationalism. I dug the evil empire vibe that piece gave off.
I opened my wardrobe, an antique acquired from an estate sale held at the home of a deceased gay man. I’m not sure if he died from AIDS. I like to believe that he led a long and decadent life. A life filled with happiness. I felt that vibe from his wardrobe. I’m sure he lost a lot of friends to that fucking virus, though. He was the right age. That’s probably where that idea slipped in. Death was everywhere, and it was not letting me go. I opened the teak wood door to the wardrobe and instantly noticed that my prized firearms were curiously absent. Why the fuck did I not have a gun safe? Why was I so cavalier? How was I to continue my contemplations on the fragility of life without these devices of death? How was I to survive without the knowledge that at any given moment I could simply opt out of this raw deal that is life and go to join the army of corpses cooling down at the morgue? The answer, my poisoned brain seemed to conclude, is that I simply couldn’t. Sitting alone with my thoughts was too painful. I could’ve contemplated suicide in countless ways. I could have fixed myself a noose with the bathrobe sash in. Gone down and got some toxic chemicals out from under the sink. Overdosed on the drugs that were suspiciously untouched. But there was something about those guns that resonated in a way unlike the others. Something that I had fixated on. Something that I needed beyond any rationale or reason. This issue that had unexpectedly presented itself was the most important issue in the history of my brief life, at least to my corrupted thought process at that moment.
I lifted my mattress up. Thankfully, whoever had pilfered my firearms had missed the little .38 special I kept under my mattress for easy access. With this remaining firearm, I would be able to retrieve my stolen property. Through whatever means necessary. I was on a mission from God. Some fucked up Deviant God.
First, I would need to hunt down that bastard. Without a doubt, my brother. I’m sure it wasn’t his idea. It was probably his bitchy girlfriend's idea. An absolutely idiotic approach. Have an intervention. A talk. Don’t do something that could result in incendiary actions beyond any rational control, especially if you don’t know where all the weapons are. That’s a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one. But I can’t claim to be the rational one here.
The .38 was locked and loaded. I downed another pony shot. Could’ve been any flavor, my memory doesn’t serve me well regarding what follows. This is mostly pieced together from staggered recollections and the fact that I had a voice recorder in my pocket the entire time, something I had started doing on jobs. Was I documenting evidence? Who knows. I didn’t state any reason for turning the voice recorder on, and I can only guess at what was going through my mind. I staggered down the stairs. Direct confrontation and threats of violence seemed to be the only path forward. The thief wasn’t in the house. I found my way outdoors and spotted him in the garden, watering plants as if he hadn’t a care in the world. And maybe he didn’t. Blooming pink flowers that were absolutely stunning, swarming with delicate little iridescent hummingbirds. A sight of beauty that maybe if I weren’t so obsessed with death, I could have appreciated. Maybe I could have used this idyllic scene to calm down to a more reasonable state. Perhaps I got this whole thing wrong, I momentarily thought. Maybe I had hidden my own guns, and I was about to rain down catastrophe because of my own shady brain.
My brother looked up from watering the flowers and herbs and stared at me. At that moment, I knew. This was a look lacking innocence. This was the look of someone who knows he has just taken a big step in a dangerous direction. I appreciated the resolve I saw behind those eyes. I think I knew at that moment that I was never getting those guns back. But I still had to try. The fixation had gotten its grip on my chemically imbalanced brain. Brothers threatening brothers over inheritance, violence, pride, and self-destruction. The same story repeats itself over and over throughout endless iterations of history. Biblical. I was just playing by the rules of nature now. I kept the .38 tucked in my waistband, covered by my long black shirt. No need to reveal my advantage early.
“Where the fuck are my guns?” I shouted.
“I took them,” my brother answered matter-of-factly.
I didn’t even need to ask why. I’m pretty sure I knew, somewhere deep down, how fucked up I was. I don’t think I was in denial. Today wasn’t a one-off. The drinking and the unhinged consumption of sketchy sedatives was pushing me nearer and nearer the edge of that vicious cliff every. Single. Day. How regularly irresponsible my behavior was becoming. How it was only a matter of time before I accidentally killed myself or someone else or some poor & irreplaceable stained glass window. These contemplations did not mean anything to me at the present moment, because my head was only filled with the singular purpose of obtaining those firearms. I whipped the .38 out of my waistband and pointed it at my kind brother. Or more accurately, at his naked feet.
I didn’t have it in me to kill him. The idea disgusted me. I’ve only ever killed one creature in my life. The result of fear. It was a poor possum that was rifling through the garbage in the backyard of a house I once lived in. The creature came out, surprising me. I beat them to death with a golf club shortly after. As the mammal lay there twitching and breathing its last, the white collar striking implement I held in my right hand, dripping with blood, I realized that I was going to feel terrible about what I had just done for a very long, long time. Possibly forever. Even after I died. Throughout eternity. Violence may be universal, but that first exposure hurts. Unless you happen to be a true blue dyed in the wool sociopath.
I aimed the .38 at his feet.
“I want them back. I need them back. You had no right to take those from me,” I pleaded.
“I’m not giving them back,” he answered firmly, with more resolve than I had expected.
I thought about those old westerns. This is one of the memories that slips through. Shooting at a man's feet to make him dance. I contemplated pulling the trigger in rapid succession to see if that little act worked, just like in the movies. The only thing that stopped me was the possibility of accidentally shooting my brother in the leg or foot. There was still some sense present in that fucked up brain. I put the gun back in my waistband, the way that wanna be gangsters do. Then, I gave chase. My brother was skinny and harmless, but he could run like a champion. I chased the bastard around for probably fifteen minutes, stumbling and staggering full of benzodiazepines and liquor, until my wretched lungs gave out. Breathing out fumes that could score me a medal on the BAC testing machine. Then, my mother arrived home to see this biblical scene unfolding in her yard.
After that, even more encompassing chaos unfolded. Chaos so shameful that my psyche buried it too deep for access, even for biographical entertainment purposes. Deep, residual shame for the fragments that I can recall. What unfolded was so terrible that anyone involved has practiced restraint in talking about it to me to this day. Aside from simple accusations, or perhaps I should say facts, because I believe them when they tell me these little bits and pieces, this is what I can gather, pieced together with the garbled language and screams from the voice recorder that was in my pocket.
That I pointed my mother’s father’s .38 at her tiny little head, demanding my firearms be returned.
That they had to wrestle the loaded .38 out of my intoxicated grip.
That members of the volunteer fire department, first responders, and EMTS were called, as the village we lived in did not have a very well-established police department.
That I held off the firemen storming my sanctuary with a rapier I had grabbed off my wall. I had finally been cornered in the last place my inebriated brain still associated with safety. This precious sanctuary that I was unknowingly occupying for the last time.
They finally got me down on the ground. Sometimes I look to the sky and thank St. Whoever for the true miracle that no one got seriously injured, and I don’t really believe in that sort of thing. Miracles. They finally restrained me. Standard handcuffs.
That tragedy was so nearly avoided. For that, I thank whatever mercy still exists in this haunted and cherry-picker of suffering universe we occupy.
That I was placed in an ambulance. Through the grace of my mother, who was in the volunteer fire department and worked closely with the tightly knit EMT group, I was spared county jail, where I would have undoubtedly awaited theoretically infinite assault charges. Instead, I was transported to a psych ward in [REDACTED]. I was highly amused when they gave me quality benzos for the ride down. The real shit. Ativan. This calmed me down to the point that I started to wonder if everything that had just taken place had all been some horrible fever dream and I was going to wake back up in my bed.
The dream did not end, it only got stranger. I arrived at my new digs, the grippy sock jail occupied by so many problematic individuals, and reality began to sink in. My life had taken a turn. One of those turns that doesn’t come around all that often. Maybe a handful of times in your life if you’re lucky enough. And my turn had taken me in a direction that has yielded more than I could have ever hoped for at the time.
I had a feeling that I no longer had that state-sanctioned job with all the trappings of respect and responsibility that accompanied it. Whatever came next would have to be something different entirely. My family temporarily disowned me for my behavior. They had every right to. They probably should’ve disowned me longer. But they are strange people. Familiar with death and the fucked up laws of the universe in ways that I’ve barely scratched here.
The ever-present spirits and all those trickster haints.
All the treasure that preserves this precious fabric full of tears.
All the aching beauty cut short so soon.
I yearn for a world that’s impossibly pure.
-- Marlon Radley writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His work has appeared in Expat Press (Two for the Show), and Shoot! magazine (Ode to Luigi and Chamel). He has also contributed to the indie horror screenplay Witches Curse, currently in production. He was home sick from kindergarten on September 11, 2001, and has been existentially unwell ever since.
