Sniper

"Sniper"

an excerpt

Gary Baker, September 2014

(part of my Corporal Roi project)

First there was a reaction of particulates followed by a burst of photon energy sent forth from heavenly heat and sent careening out into the deep unending abyss. Then, after moments of hasty nothingness, came the reflection which subsequently hit receptors and a message was transcribed. From there energy was sent out once more coursing along minute pathways of similar individuals until it came to a stop within a tangled mess of a much greater number of somehow different individuals, was changed into another message entirely, and was once again sent out in another direction altogether. Again the message of energy coursed along until it struck a mass which then contracted as one, pulling the metal trigger and setting another series of events into play.

The sliver of smooth metal drew down a jagged rod that held back a sharp slab which then, with the haste of a tightly-wound coil snapping back to its proper shape, brought the spike tip careening into a metal wall. The wall then broke just so slightly enough to cause a burst of energy, igniting packed molecules of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate into an explosive burst of an even greater form of energy. This new form then slammed heavily into a particularly-shaped piece of metal with such force as to send it flying.

The projectile form hit molecules of air hard, forcing itself through and through without regard whilst reaching a velocity of seven-hundred and seventy meters per second, followed by a concussive burst of resounding waves, soaring passed legs stomping through in this way or the other, leaving a wake of empty air through crimson mist and splashed mud, cauterizing newly-made holes in still-living leaves until finally it reached the end of its journey. The first layer burned on contact, baring plates of leather inlaid with thick mail-like wire which are subsequently split by the force of contact alone to allow the projectile deeper access. Then came the thick layer of metal sheets formed in a lab for better displacement and, while the momentum is lessened immensely, they too are breached until after a few more layers of fabric, the projectile hits skin and puckers as it passes into the soft cushion of fat and muscle.

With a hideous cry of alarm, Corporal Roi Anxo went down, barely able to reach safe cover behind a mass of shattered cement braced with steel and iron. In an instant he rolled onto his uninjured hip to peer over and survey the damage. His gloved hand came away matted with fresh blood, as though the throbbing fire in his ass wasn't enough to be sure. Adrenaline coursed through him as he tried to guesstimate how deep the bullet had gone, and was almost certain it had came millimeters from hitting bone. There was no way to tell how bad it was, yet he knew instantly that there was no way he could just get up and get to safety.

So he grabbed a morphine needle from his vest and quickly jabbed it under his armor into his side and released the chemicals. Right now he needed to focus on not dying, for that was the obvious detail. Despite that, he had a mission to complete and so he rolled back against the ledge while the numbness made its way through.

Roi hefted the rifle he'd thrown down just before falling and loaded an armor-piercing round into the bay. Nodding twice to himself for a count, he thrust himself up and over the ledge to drop the scope right in line with the invasion commander, a mass of bulbous purple flesh and teeth all over. The beast had already proven its resilience to bullets, and as far as Roi could tell had armor-like bones. The first round he'd sent earlier, just before being shot, had merely left a fractured crack along the creatures head, now lamenting a beautiful blue fountain of blood that only made the beast that much more intimidating.

This time Roi knew for sure that he could do it. One more bullet and the beast would go down, allowing temporary confusion among the invading forces.

He aligned the crossbars of his scope with the commanders head and clicked to zoom in. With some trepidation, the bars then aligned with the beasts missing eye and the crack in it's skull beneath all that blood. The corporal exhaled slowly as the world ebbed into slow motion. He pulled the trigger just before his inhale began and barely kept himself upright when the force of his shot struck.

For a heartbeat there was nothing after the crack of thunder, only emptiness. Then the bullet hit and the commander went from striding callously through the wreckage of bodies to kneeling with both hands upon its face. Even then the beast didn't fall. Suddenly it looked right at Roi with half it's head hanging by threads of muscle, navy blue blood fountaining everywhere as it rose one arm at the corporal and let loose an ugly bellow.

But it didn't falter. The killing shot gave the beast a slower stride, stumbling now and then, but the way that it picked up a fallen assault rifle and emptied the magazine at Roi with what could only be anger sent shivers down the mans spine. Two bullets to the head, one leaving half the skull hanging out to dry, and still the beast walked on deeper into the fray.

My Lurid Escape

“My Lurid Escape”

a short story

Gary Baker, August 2014

I remember the sun as it drew across the room, and how I wanted it to stop for one goddamn moment and how I needed the light. I remember the sweetly wafting tendrils of the whiskey beneath my nose, and the way it stung while it enticed. Then came the taste as I lifted the glass and brought some in for further inspection, and the way it was so wonderfully opposite to the scent. In this case, I needed the numbness.

Holding my arm tight, I brought the knife from the jar of rubbing alcohol and set down the tip on an incongruous point of my arm.  I put it where I would have no fear of arteries or the like, no fear of tendons that could be sawn in half, just muscle and a bit of fat with skin in the way. I had to hold a small tasting bottle of scotch with my arm just so it wouldn't twitch on me like a mad soldier under the knife back in the twenties, doing so also kept me focused on my task. I wasn't leaving this be until I'd seen blood.

One drop, I told myself. One drop and I'm done. No more.

So it began.

I pushed in and felt the electric sting, which prevented me from pushing further when it became strong enough to bring stars to my eyes. So I swashed the knife in the clear liquid again and brought it to the pinprick once more. This time I would do it. This time for sure.

Again I felt the sting, the jolt of helpless denial that my body seemed intent on screaming, as though it thought I were some killer from the movies all but unstoppably drawn by the busty blonde with the dagger in hand as he came for her. It seemed to think I could be stopped, though, just like how in those movies the killer can always be talked out of it, perhaps even delayed until some force of nature or police or something could intervene. But not me. Not this time.

I was only here for a drop, after all. No more.

What was the worst that could happen, I asked myself.

I pushed harder and was immobilized by pain, so instead chose to draw rather than push. I laid the blade down lengthwise along the point I'd made, and pulled ever so slightly. While this didn't bring the pain, it also didn't bring the desired gleam of crimson. So I did it again, pushing harder, drawing more forcefully, watching as hairs atop the skin were sliced and the skin broke free layer after layer.

For a moment there I became frustrated enough to saw at my arm. The drawing wasn't doing anything, and this was the sharpest blade I had in the house, sharper than any of the steak knives or such like that, and although they weren't exactly sharpened by a professional they could more than handle the tasks they were made for. Unlike me. Unlike this knife at that moment.

I cleaned the knife again in the alcohol and took a serious swig of the eighty-proof off to the side, downing it like floor cleaner. Delicious cinnamon burned from all angles, evaporating even as I swallowed, or so it felt like. What liquid made it down my throat was dry and searingly wonderful, and my soonest exhale brought gasps of intake as though I'd just swallowed a real fireball. My lips stung with the sweet burn and I allowed my arm the moment to relax as I enjoyed the taste once more, licking it off like a psychotic cannibal tasting flesh after years without.

Then, determined as the numbness moved across my cheeks and into my scalp, I retook the knife and shook the alcohol from it. I brought it to my arm again where that last drop splished on the skin. It was like a magnifying glass. Suddenly I could see into the wound I had made. And I could see quite easily how I still had yet to break the skin. My arm wasn't numb enough yet, I learned then. Haltingly, I retried the piercing method. This time it went in further, but felt no more like cutting a steak than it did like cutting sailcloth. I saw the tip pushed down into my arm, but there was no blood.

This angered me more than I can say. I became overwhelmed by this urge to push it in all the way, all three inches of steel, just to find out if I were even human. Already I had pushed it it more than a millimeter and I could see just where the skin ended, or so I thought, but still nothing so pink as the pastel blossom of a 'naked lady' could be seen. Instead all I was given was an ugly white-ish tone and the jawbreaker-like layers of my skin.

Another swig of whiskey, then.

This next time I knew I had already broken skin, so I chose not to redo the annoyingly tedious task, and instead began sawing at the end of the fissure already made. It worked for a moment, and then I hit something, something threadlike and tight which wouldn't let me cut further no matter how much I sawed at it. So, decidedly believing it to be a small capillary of sorts, I turned the knife around and pulled at the string from the other end. It took a moment to get down that far again, but when I did I knew I had something.

So I slid the blade along behind the thread from the more shallow of wounds and pushed away from myself with hardly enough force to cut into a fly. I wanted the blade to do the work for me, not the other way around. If I had to use brute tactics for this I may as well have tried doing so with a pencil or a pen, perhaps.

For some time the two objects just wouldn't part ways. I had the thread peeking close to the skin layer, stretched from it's depths in my fattier layers one millimeter deeper, with the alarmingly not-as-sharp-as-Id-thought blade tip. Then, as I pondered taking another swig big enough to fill my mouth, I felt a release, and my knife flew free with only enough momentum to jolt my hand.

At first nothing else happened. I grew angry for a moment, knowing I had snapped some thread within me, yet seeing not a hint of blood. After all the minor pain I had endured, I still hadn't gone deep enough. So I retook the blade after swashing it about again and settled myself to no more drinking until I'd seen a drop. This time it only took a second or two of dragging the tip through the opened crevice before I got something.

Deep, dark and nearly brown, I watched particles stream down from the alcohol filled wound opening. Odd, I thought, and cleared the fissure to allow more. When I did so, I pulled from it a mat of congealed brownness that looked more like mud residue than a scab. So I redipped the blade in the alcohol and once again slid along the bottom of the opening until I got what I was looking for.

Barely a single drop came bubbling out, then nothing, then one more and nothing shortly after. I just stared as it did this little routine until finally it clocked in me that this was from the pulsation of some vein inside my arm, near the surface, that was releasing blood with every beat of my heart.

By then the sun had moved across the table and no longer had me in its sights. I moved things on the table and shifted places then, so I could see, and watched as half-congealed blood was pushed through the cut into the real world little by little despite how deep it was I had dug. The fascination grew. I placed my arm atop a paper towel and rest it there while the blood barely dripped down. Every second or so I had to re-clear the wound so it could drip once more, but each time I did the numbness came and allowed me the act before coming again with the pulsation. By this time my arm had an ugly line moving to the towel, pocked with particulates and dried blood in the path of more coming down little by little.

I cleared the line again and felt the rocky roughness of the bottom, so I dug deeper, seeking more to this flow, and yet each time I pulled the knife away it seemed the wound had pressed itself into closure again and that the only way I could see more blood was by pulling one side from the other. So I did. I placed two fingers upon my arm, one to either side of the line, and pushed the lips of the wound away from the other. Blood would come for a moment, and then I had to clear the drying debris once more.

Finally I sat back, relieved somehow, feeling lighter, more real. Somehow the druggy sluggishness of my life had seeped just slightly further away, enough that I could see what the sluggishness was. I looked upon my act and smiled. This was all for that smile, I knew, for that sense of satisfaction for once and, knowing that it was small enough not to be questioned, I sighed with contentment.

No one would notice. No one would know.

Not even my girlfriend would ask me where I got it from, nor the more problematic questions of why I had done it. For once I had a dark secret to hide, and for some reason this made me giddy. I felt the queer throes of withheld laughter inside, threatening to come forth, and knew that this secret, while dangerous in the eyes of those in my life, may have just given me the escape that I needed. I knew then that this would be a return act, an addiction of my very own, could I only get over the nervous pain.

Perhaps, I thought musingly, next time I might try harder alcohol before digging in.

* * *

[NOTE FROM THE WRITER]

[August 31, 2014; 2:30 AM]

--> So I wanted to put this out there in the realm of the real, that this work is a piece of nonfiction, and that it was written in what I had thought my lowest point in mind.

Turns out that was anything but true.

I'd sworn it was a one-off deal, that that lone drop (or in all truth, that lone dripping run of quickly-dried crimson) would be the last. Yet such isn't so. I have drawn again. I have drawn my skin open again, to the point of several drops, each more red than the last.

They started out as a brownish hue, like dirt had been globbed in my veins and this was somehow releasing mud from within me. While it felt as if this were absolute truth, I know it was all psychological, and altogether with such knowledge I still cannot figure out what this is all for. I cannot say why I do this, nor what has brought me to it.

Sure I can point to the increasing mental stress lately, about the point at work where I simply broke and resigned despite numerous bills to pay and loans to make installments on. I can also point to those very bills for this. I can show many moments of doubt as deep as the neurons carrying these words to the fingers as they type away here for you all. I can convey so many moral wrongdoings in my world done unto others as well as myself, all focused upon this one lone life and how many it meets along the way to the final end. I can tell anyone who asks of the struggles I face each and every day and how anxiety meets stress so thick it drowns, and how when I actually open my fearful eyes I can see nothing to truly be afraid of, and how this then makes me feel so insignificant and small-minded that I just want to die to be over it all.

Yes, I am a horrible human being. Yes, I take things out on myself that should never have blame set upon anyone and, yes, I know these things to be fallacies in all truth, but that notion doesn't make them any less strong, any less wondrously vivid when push comes to shove. When I see these minuscule things emerge from behind the magnifying glass, like a cartoon bug walking on a scientists desk, instead of acting out against them to rid them of my life I take it out on myself in turn for ever having thought them large in the first place.

So for any out there who understand this... this piece is for you.

I have begun in earnest lately. I started with what turns out to have been a dull knife, that or just way too broad for the task. Now I yearn to distance myself from the razor removed from a box-cutter, cleaned and sanitized with high-grade rubbing alcohol. I found myself doing this even in plain view of Meaghan as she watched a show online earlier. When asked about it, I blame a cat, after having added so many others around the larger ones so as to appear so. Each burns, yes, but each also relieves some tension as I remember how the razor bypassed my sensory objection to pain and alleviated some in its place.

I still am not quite sure why I do this, however, even as I wonder where I should place the next one so its not obvious come daylight. I should admit now, though, that none of these go very deep other than that first time. With the razor in poised delicate-gripped fingertips I fear of going too far and not realizing it until its much too late. Thus I only go, so to speak, skin-deep. I go until I see a neat, crisp line of red, and then stop cutting deeper and focus on letting no scab appear. I scrape it away with the flat of the blade to allow the line to stay longer, to allow it that final course down my forearm and onto the paper towel lain beneath.

Now what was once a dream of mine, a worry without cause but a worry nonetheless, has now become much more tangible and real. I can now truly fear going too deep and doing something I can never do. It really isn't my intention, mind you, to end my life. Instead my intent is to focus on pain in place of mental worries, in place of things I can never truly change. Instead of absolute panic over not having an income just now, I am able to focus on my arm and how much I can take before adding the cleaning liquids and neaten it all up. Instead of fretting over a lack of fuel for a car I currently cannot make payments on, I can focus on how hard I press the blade and when I should begin drawing it along and how long to do this one and which direction and where to make the next one when the time comes and how to make them all look like cat scratches or the like to the untrained eye.

I know it's wrong, but then again this same pain would come from tattoos and a tattoo would last me my entire life... not just a week or so. I guess what I mean to say is that this is real. It doesn't get any more real than this. Yet truth be told too many people dismiss those in my state as small-minded and depressed and mentally unstable and fraught with a disease of the brain and so on, while not many tend to stand aside for a moment and ponder the implications. By cutting I am therefore an outcast among many, and yet by keeping it in and never doing anything physical to release it I slowly become a mass murderer or a depraved psychopath or a true suicidal being. No matter what malcontent it keeps from reaching me, if this act seems horrifying whilst keeping me alive, then I say let the blood come. I say keep this drawing act going...

and let the alcohol clean what ails me one drop at a time, from the internal in the form of drunken charades and from the external in the form of sanitation and fast-healing.

Derelicticus

"Derelicticus"

a prologue

Gary Baker, August 2014

(part of a lingering rage-based satire inspired by works of junkie-fiction)

Enter once, twice, three times, hit 'ctrl' and the letter 'A' as one, font select: scroll to Rosarivo, then hit twelve point size, justify margins, and finally one point five spacing. Done. Now the good stuff.

I see the needle coming and my muscles steel themselves from the stimulus. They know what’s coming; I know what’s coming. Hell, you’d think I’d have just gotten over it by now. But no. I won’t. I can’t. Each time is new and, as they say, improved. The bolt is rearing, the liquid viciously awaiting. Like the fluids in a viper’s maw, gunning for that bite, pining to draw blood, needing that orgasmic release of finality as fluids are shot deep into the flesh of another being.

But this isn't at all what my own body thinks of. As the impending prey all my molecules seem unable to justify it all. They think this the end. They think that death comes next. Does it? I ask myself, with none but an echo of thoughtlessness in response. I’m too fear-stricken to believe what lurks, to believe what comes, to understand in a comprehensive manner that which would soon pierce skin raw and delve into the sacredness of unbroken veins.

Alright thare, Mista Gunna, a voice from beyond my cerebral focus echoes in like the shimmering light seen through meters of ocean water. I feel like I’m drowning, like a songbird captured by an all-too-tall wave that should never have been, my feathers soaked and my scrawny pin-prick toes doing nothing to propel me to the surface. Thas ain’t goanna work, you bein so overwrought an all. Wae need to calm you daown.

Suddenly the dark humid room is gone, all the green walls vaporized by a quick burst of light from my peripherals and I feel weightless in a new sensory darkness. All I can think of is how they must have expelled me from my body somehow. Perhaps they yanked my cords a bit too fast, or maybe they just said ‘to hell with it’ in that godawful accent and slit my throat. But that wouldn't be right; they need me alive for the injection to work, for me to work.

Then a light snaps on ahead and I feel myself moved somehow until my eyes are able to focus through the haze of smoke and steam. What I see, then, stops my heart.

In the light, standing in such a way that it seems I view from a ceiling support beam, is this woman of unseemly features. Her hair is both light straw yellow and yet deep murky black, shifting from one to the other with unrealistic fluidity. Her skin transcending in both sandy pale ales and burnt ocher mahogany. I find myself lost for a moment in just that, in the way her tones ebb and flow and how this hair of hers curls about like waves locked in time as it all cascades upon her shoulders, where the collar of a long coat hides everything beneath her chin, all angled at a three-quarter tilt from above and behind.

Thas goode, naw, aint’t? The voice echoes again, suddenly reprimanded by another just at the cusp of audible range. Naw don’ yoo worry, Mista Gunna, yoo jus’ watch an fo’get about us. Jes relax them bones and we’ll all be best’a buds. I hear the bass of the other again and feel the first move away, though from where I cannot say. Then a muffled echo of a disk being dropped, and the first comes back again with a tap of what would be my own ankle if I had one anymore. Enjoy the show, naw, hear? ‘Specially cause yur in fer’a treat.

Suddenly there is movement ahead and my attention resets, brought back to the girl as she slowly lifts away the coat as though home for the evening. She lets it drop into the darkness by her unseen feet, instantly standing alone in the darkness in nothing but glossy obsidian small clothes over creamy light-latte skin. Her shoulders, now unheeded by the jacket, show a bit of sun damage from some foray outside, her freckles almost invisible through the healing tan, and her covered breasts seem curious as they peek just into visibility with the angle I view from. I try not to, but my eyes then move down, across the pocks in her back where her shoulder blades make shadows and across the indent where her spine recedes inward with it’s curve, and roam across her hips. It’s impossible not to admire whomever brought her into being, in that proportions had been painstakingly thought out, whether by genetics or DNA grafters putting her basest structures together molecule by electron-sized molecule. Her cheeks shift this way and that as she moves her upper body, doing something beyond my attention, and slowly the slight amount of clothing stretched out upon them shimmies into the verge between each side. It isn’t much fabric, to be honest, that moves into that line, that highway roaming deep across places that can only be dreamed of, but the elastic that runs the trail renounces complete coverage and leaves her cheeks all-too-nicely unveiled. In that moment her features stop shifting, her latte skin sinfully silky-smooth and her hair a glimmer of strawberry within a light caramel.  

A sudden gut-wrenching sensation hits my left arm and I try to move, try to shift my awareness, the woman fuzzing like static as I finally grasp my own arm from within and attempt to move it. More numbed slicing ensues into searing pain and I feel tendons snapping like cataclysmic rubber bands.

Well sun’offa gun, he mocks again, am I to baelieve yoo felt that? He chuckles an eerily cheerful laugh and I feel movement from my side again followed by what could only be a hand patting my lower thigh. ‘Is time I thaink we turn up the heat, eh, Mista Gunna? Give yoo summa that good ol’ fashion haspitalitay. On tha house, naw.

In an instant the pain was righteously gone, and my attention came to again with the woman turning my way with an unhooked bra held over her poised breasts by crossed wrists. Her verdant emerald eyes shone with something intangible to me until she dropped her hands to her hips and the bra slipped into the depths with her ankles.

Like before, I try not to look, but it’s just uncanny the way her breasts hang just enough with a youthful pugnacity, how they draw in the eye like the physical embodiment of a black hole in space instead placed mystically on the female form. Freckles span these, too, originating near the collar to dip down near the upper contours of her ribcage through a low valley of temptatious flesh. They seem to hang toward me, her form suddenly gravitating in my direction, and I find myself upon a sofa of sorts, this lioness stalking toward me with all but her vulva left visible. The tantalizing draw, the suppressed desire within then loosens and I feel her stepping closer, the by golly, I thaink’e likes this’n almost drowned out entirely as her lips part and reach to my own.

For a long moment I am lost again. I float in space, drifting, falling. The ground is gone entirely, replaced instead by the weightless awe of the woman’s mysterious purr. She then draws away with my upper lip caught between softly poised teeth leaving an urge I’d not felt for a long time in this society of repressed desires. In that moment I need her. Something within tells me not to, but I reach out and bring her close, cupping a shoulder blade with one hand and a handful of buttocks in the other.

She gasps and an accented chuckle reaches me from somewhere else. The wind of the open window playing tricks with the echoes. I feel her pulse quicken, then, and she pulls away just enough to stare longingly into my eyes, the need in her just as clear as my own. Passion moves into play and replaces the fear I can no longer understand as she traces my chest with faint trails of her fingers, ebbing slowly, tauntingly downward. Straddled, I can do nothing about the smallclothes of hers that remain between us, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.

She bites her lower lip on one side and again I see that need. I see her desire reflecting my own, driving me crazy, acting out the energies bottled up for far too long, now. Then her fingers reach my belt and before I can attempt to help it’s gone, tossed to the side. Lost forever.

Out in space something slices and I feel a release of pressure. A weight shifts in an impossible location. My eyes begin to wander, trailing away as though in extreme exhaustion.

At that moment she chooses to pull me out and press her palm, caressing fingers and all, into a sensation that brings me back.

“Don’t you go leaving me dry, boy,” she mocks while drawing the highway of obsidian elastic to the side. Eyes wide, I wonder what I was thinking. Why would I fall asleep now?

But then the slicing returns, like the vibration of a badly strung bow upon a tightly-wound violin.

Abruptly a hot anger burns in her eyes, those emeralds turn fierce with rage and she slams down over me. For a slight moment she holds there, eyes locked with mine as though demanding my complete arousal for the amount of time she requires. Again I wonder what could possibly distract me from this.

Then slowly, tantalizingly, she lifts away and sends shivers coursing up my spine. My heart kick-starts, gears within switch into drive, and I clench my fingers across her hips to pull her back down. The quivering then moves from me to her and I know it has begun in earnest this time.

The sofa shushes beneath us, drowned out by her pace-less, ragged breathing. Hair paints my nose when she drops her forehead down, her arms like pillars to either side of my neck as I drive onward with repetitive increased pounding. The ribbed sensation in my arm keeps on, but I ignore it now, too drawn into her rippling muscles to care about the curious phantom. When it increases in intensity I know she spots the distraction coming even as I do, and without loosing me from her hips she spins to lay with her back against my chest on the plush cushion. Her cheeks press emphatically over me, and she pulls me close once more to restart our routine.

“There,” she whispers after a few thrusts, and her eyes fight to stay open. When the slicing ensues again I pantingly open my eyes to find her laying over the tingling arm, shifting to the rhythm of my assault. It’s just the sofa. Why would I think it anything else? Then she turns her head to watch me from over her sunburned shoulder with an energetic gleam in her eyes and I wonder if the burn still hurts her or if perhaps the endorphins have numbed it. Again she bites her lip and releases a ragged breath.

This goes on for some time, though I would be lying if I said it went on forever. Ultimately, after some changes in position and pacing, I find myself being hugged between her skyward thighs as I push forth one last time, her hands grasped dangerously upon the contours of my hip bones. She releases a lasting shudder of withheld breath before collapsing into the cushion beneath me.

With my heart still racing I lay down half atop her, still poised between her knees, and bring my eyes to hers. The grin she dons, then, brings an ache to my heart, like warm steel suddenly coursing through my veins. She doesn’t even need to speak it, as I already understand, but she winces and seems saddened as she does so anyway. “You know we can never do this again.” Those emeralds turn bleak by comparison and she looks away, toward the sky. Opposite the direction of my now missing phantom slicing. “Try not to lose this, ‘kay?”

She sounds like a young girl trying to plea to her first love never to leave her, but why would I ever? Even had we not just consummated our passion together, I see no reason why I would ever forget her. Then her eyes turn upon me again and seem to scold, as though having just heard my thoughts.

“They will destroy you, Gunner,” she lectured. For some reason I feel fear building up again and my groin responds by shrinking away in cowardice. The intensity in her voice increases and she rolls her glorious body onto me and bores holes into me with that glare. “Do not let them do this, Gunner. You’re better than that.” She shakes her head angrily and shudders as the living room shifts with sudden static. “What we are, in this moment, should not exist. They think they have you, Gunner, that you have been completely taken over, but they’re wrong.”

She places a palm onto my chest and heaves herself into a seated position, and again the room buzzes with static snapping. Her eyes dart in every direction at once, fear building in her as well. Without warning her glare is back upon me and I am caught entranced by her severity. “What we are doing is against everything they plan. Yes, they uploaded me into your brain, but Gunner you have to understand that you subconsciously took control.”

The room cracks wildly, then, and she disappears for a brief moment into darkness. The room stutters like a corrupted data file and sounds about the same. Her voice lowers dramatically, awkwardly. Her eyes burst with light and her skin seems abuzz with hues of motion despite my feeling nothing of the sort. “I-” she attempts, “-built a-” again the room shutters viciously, threatening to break down into bleak oblivion, “-pocket-”

Then my world is void of everything.

All I can sense is the quickly-fading echo claiming “-to save you….”

The year back then was Twenty-seven thousand plus change. I haven’t aged a day since. Not really.

Einfach Leben

“Einfach Leben”

a short story

Gary Baker, June 2014

Eleven o’clock and I pop the cap on my first bottle as Charlie plays on the flat screen, cigar still smoldering in the livingroom ashtray. He’s up to no good again, always off on some caper or other doing god knows what or why. I watch as the ginger rebel dons a dress and masquerades as a vegas dancer for the Prime Minister.

I wonder why they call him that; was there some other series of ministers before him? Suddenly it dawns on me that Optimus must have been the same way, otherwise he would just be Optimus, which doesn’t nearly sound as all-powerful. I mean, who in their right mind would allow some mega robot intelligence seven stories tall to roam the earth with the name of “Optimus One” or “Optimus Prototype”? No one, that’s who. The prime must mean by any indication that he is the best, by default. So the Prime Minister must be some sort of dictator for the Europeans. A man who came after a bunch of phonies who couldn’t handle cold, hard leadership.

I smile and start to refer to him as “Optimus Minister” while Charlie pretends to give him a lap dance. But it isn’t a real lap dance; no, Charlie is too good for that. He actually pockets the phone of Mr Optimus and passes it off to a rebel crony of his acting as a bouncer, then scampers off to rejoin the stage. I actually enjoy his little routine, grinning as the hairy dancer fools everyone else. Stupid sexy rebel man.

A knock at the door, frantic and bothersome. My head pounds just as hard, indicative of the hangover in full force. I free up another soot-black sea of greatness and drop it back. Another knock and I grumble without moving. The couch and I have become best friends, there’s no way I’m going to give that up, not now that the cushions have started to form around me. I feel like a rope tied to a tree for decades, the trunk slowly overtaking me until I am simply a piece of the whole.

“Trumer?” A female voice, somewhat sexy, but incredibly irritating once it dawns on me who it is. Rachel knocks again. “Trumer I know you’re in there. Open up.” In hasty annoyance to end her spiel I connect my headphones to the wireless VidBase on my coffee table, ending the audibility of the show. “Are you serious?” She berates. “I just heard you…” she sighs with an angry overtone and I knock another back trying to pry into my own mind for details.

Again with the knocking! Insatiable grumbling as I flip open the laptop and hit the power key. It comes out of sleep and straight to ComeOnMe, my latest tab. I forgo the memory-prying of the night before, now entirely sure that it was a bust after all. So much for the glory of delayed adventures remembered in glimpses over the next few days….

“Dammit, Trumer, that’s it!” I hear a jingling of keys and panic. I almost smash the computer screen when I close it so hard, just in time too as the front door opens with wicked speed and slams against the wall just inside. My first thought is that the neighbors must be vying to kill me right now, or at least those who aren’t at work. My second thought is how the hell she got a key to my apartment. Who did she play to get a key to my place without me knowing?!

Rachel glares at me with wet cheeks, eyes red and makeup dribbling down across her chin. Her hands are on her hips and her painted fingernails dig into her jeans like rounded cactus spines. Then it seems to finally hit her and her eyes go wide in shock. “Seriously?!” She rebukes -- or maybe she refutes, the throbbing pain is too much for me to think clearly and the light of day that enters in behind her from the courtyard attacks me like a million illuminated wasps, seeking the sweet spots of my retinas. She gives me a thrice-over, “where the hell are your clothes?!”

I look down over my furry flab that hoists a plate of dried-out lunchmeat like a butler, and discover that I am half-laying with nothing but boxers on. “In the wash,” I lie. “I’m waiting for them to finish so I can shower and put them on.” I purposely ignore the fact that they are still lying haphazardly across the white carpet throughout the room, and similarly I avoid all eye-contact with them as though doing so makes them not even exist.

Her cheeks soften and she perks her lips to one side, relaxing with sympathy. “Look, Trumer, I came by…” she shoots a glance at the window and tosses me a blanket from the cubby system beneath it, then sits down on an ottoman. “I came by to apologize. For last night.” Eyes wide I move the plate to the table and lean forward, covering my sorry self with a thin layer of dyed wool. “Let me guess,” she winces, noting the bottles with an overall eye wander, “you don’t remember?”

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“Ha!” Rachel throws herself back against the cushioned chair next to her, “you’re sorry! Dammit, Trumer, I’m the one who’s sorry!” Her eyes bead up and she feigns a smile. “I shouldn’t have rejected you like that. I was scared. I was pissed. I was-....” She brings her keys into her hands and watches them with what looks like reverence. “When you gave me a key to your place I thought you were asking me to marry you, and there’s no way I was ready for that!” She sighs loudly and wipes away tears with the back of her hand. “And -- wait, is that a stripper with a Hitler mustache?!”

It catches me completely three-sixty and for several moments I just stare in bewilderment. “What?” Then I see where she’s looking and realize she’s referring to Charlie. “Oh. No it’s a Charlie Chaplin mustache.”

She scowls disbelievingly. “On a stripper?”

“No,” I correct, “on an Irish rebel spy acting like a vegas feather-dancer to take down the Optimus Minister.”

“What kind of show is this?”

With a finger held high in lecture, I set down my latest bottle. “It’s the perfect mix of Charlie Chaplin, James Bond and the I - R - A. Though if you think about it, there’s quite a bit of the Stooges laced in as well.”

She shakes her head. “Whatever. Anyways I’ve been thinking about your offer and wanted to tell you that I accept...” her eyes once again take in the whole room, “although only on the condition that this never happens again.”

I sit straighter suddenly. “Are you serious?” Is she serious? What if this turns out to be a joke? A prank set up by my neighbors, or colleagues? I mean, it’s not as if I didn’t want her to say this, but I don’t even remember asking her in the first place.

Rachel’s smile is soft, caring, and totally obviously intentionally ignoring the mess nested around me. “Yes, Trumer, I am one-hundred percent serious.” She shrugs, “truth is I kinda, sorta wanted it all along anyways. I just wasn’t prepared to be asked like that, in front of all of our friends, at the exact same sitting as when Karl proposed to Jenna.” Another nervous shrug. “It sorta felt like you were only doing it because you felt the need to, that you were only asking because we’d been dating for so long.”

Maybe it’s the booze, but I scowl, “we’ve only been dating for six months….”

“Exactly!” Rachel runs her hands through her hair wildly. “And to think I almost told Jenna I hated you for asking me like that!” Then I notice the green and blue smears across her elbows. She’s been painting again. Standing, she pockets her keys and makes her way to the fridge where she concocts some sort of mixture with the rice milk, coconut water, and... was that a lime? Then she turns to me with her solution in hand, a milk mustache set upon her upper lip. “You told me something last night, while pleading your case. You said I needed to…” she glances off to the side, trying to remember, “I needed to ‘einfach leben’. I think I said that right.” She connects with my gaze again with a look of hope as I muse on how she pronounced it wrong. “Was that German?”

“It means to live simply, more or less,” I sit back and rest my hands on my lap. “That or to simply live, whichever, though to be honest I’m not entirely sure I have the grammar correct.”

“Well either way, I choose to ‘leben’ in the moment.” She comes to the couch and sweeps aside the empty bottles and detritus, then hoists her insane white, sweet-smelling mixture. “Starting with a cure for the hangover you gave yourself due to me rejecting you.” As I reach for it she lifts it to her own lips and chugs the damned glass. Grinning, she sets the empty thing down and laughs devilishly while unplugging the headphones from the jack and hits play. Instantly the sound of the rebel ginger slams into my ears as he sneakily chicken-walks off stage to the not-so-mellow jazz music.

I suddenly hate the show, but Rachel sits back and turns up the volume grinning like the Cheshire the whole damned time. Maybe it was a bad idea to give her a key after all.