Picking Stones Chapters 14, 15, & 16

"Sorry", "Bathroom", & "Life's Too Short"

Oct 03, 2024

Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

Sorry

My body craved sleep. I had sworn off drinking till at least that evening. Down the steps and into the subway until the digital clock hanging over the dirty platform caught my eye. 6:12. There was a giant red X spray painted over the spot where the two stood. Hairs blew into the air, train barreled in. X over the two.

When I got to the office I found out two people quit. Cross out two. Just like the clock in the subway. No, that wasn’t anything. It really was just a coincidence. The X would soon be over a three, then four. Just a chance I’d see it over the two, it wasn’t foreshadowing anything. All it meant was that more work was to be loaded onto my plate. A pain shot in my stomach, or was it my kidneys or liver. I couldn’t take it. Orla still wasn’t back from Maine. I wanted to go to Maine. Beth had loved reminding me of the failure of never going.

Pencil broke as I jotted down a note. The author popped into my head, the one whose book I had seen on display at the bookstore. Shiver down back. Ninety years old and still writing books. How crippling must it have felt to type those last words onto the page, knowing it was likely to be his last? Was it lonely? Did the omnipresent blackness suffocate him as badly as it suffocated me, a kid sixty-two years his junior? It must have been lonely. Had to have been. You’re on your own on that journey; it doesn’t matter who surrounds you as you go.

Vibrate in pocket. Feeling inside, I grab the card, its bone-white surface warm against my cold fingers. Vibrate again. It wasn’t the card, although I could sense something radiating off its being. Pull out phone. The screen blinks on, a photo of Beth I hadn’t changed yet sits trapped behind the glass as my lock screen. A gray bar stretches across the middle of the phone screen, straight through both her eyes.

PICK YOUR OWN MAINE ADVENTURE!

It was the hiking app that Phil had used on our hike the other day. I didn’t remember downloading it, nor had I ever searched anything Maine-related recently. Was the device tuned into my brain? Delete notification.

Stomach rumbled, then turned. Fart escaped. Lucky bastard. Orla would return tomorrow, I was informed, to help me. I wish I could’ve told her to run, but I needed the help. I was selfish like that. We’re all just numbers here.

How lonely must it have been for the writer? To write those words all by himself, all alone. Was it dark? Was he writing now? Sitting somewhere in a mansion far off away from this reality I faced? Could he even stomach writing again?

“Hey, Will,” floated past my desk. I didn’t care to see who dished it out. It didn’t matter, it was just another faceless cog in the machine.

Retreat.

It had been a while since I spoke to my dad. Something told me to call him on my break.

“How are things?”

“Good, Dad. What’s going on with you?”

“Busy. Work.”

“Yep.” Think, Will. Anything. This was a mistake. Nothing to say, nothing in common just ask him a question. Anything would do. Ask him about a friend, he likes his friends.

“Hey, how’s Sal B.?” I asked. Hadn’t thought of that guy in years, since I was a kid. He always seemed like a pretty cool guy.

“Hm.”

“Hm what?”

“Your mother didn’t tell you? He died this morning. Wife found him in bed.”

“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”

“You should go to the wake to show face at least. He always liked you.”

Embarrassment trickled out of my pores and showered me in its filth. Eyes squeezed shut, closed tighter until a blood vessel twitched it open. Tears coated the edges of my eyelids, begging to drop out. Hand wiped them into oblivion. How could I have gone to the owner of that restaurant and told him all of my psychotic problems? What if my friends wanted to eat there? I could never go there again. Not after going back there and showing him the card.

The card. Nim. The game. It wasn’t real. Retreat. Just like the book said. It wasn’t real. This was, this wheel I was on. I was part of the machine, on a never-ending cycle of pain. It was the only real thing I knew.

I typed away and again felt water well into my eyes, blurring the screen. Everything faded to black. Suddenly a little speck of flickering light dissolved the blackness and an image of a caveman appeared. He speared a buffalo, stone arrowhead flying through the reddish fur. At the feet of the caveman was blood-soaked dirt. He smiled at his victory.

The dead buffalo began to sink into the dirt as the scene in my mind started to morph. Its body melted into the ground, the caveman with his spear melted too, all his memory gone as a train blew straight over the ground where the caveman had stood on, forcing dry dirt to cover up the melted pool of body and blood. The mound was stomped flat by men and women clutching lunch sacks lurching on a slow march to a factory.

A dark shadow grew larger and larger until a wrecking ball fell from the sky and crushed the poor workers. The crater the wrecking ball created soon had skyscrapers shooting out from it like weeds growing out of the crack in the sidewalk. The vision zoomed through the concrete jungle at lightspeed, moving through an open window and settling at my desk, staring straight at my back as I sat at that exact moment.

For a few moments I watched myself work there. Vision forwarded another ten years, I was older, then twenty and a new person sat in my chair with the same hunch forming in their back. In fifty, I was dead. My coffin stood on a patch of orange dirt, I had seen this spot before. It soon melted into the ground where I became fused with the buffalo, the caveman, the workers, and the rest of the forgotten remnants of the past.

In the bathroom I saw another matchbook on the floor, face down. I didn’t pick it up; best not to know. Its body was black. Phone vibrated. Another notification from the hiking app. Another chance to PICK. Toilet flushed. Still couldn’t shake the old writer from my mind.

How could he have gotten through writing that novel knocking on death’s doorstep? Did each word conjure an image of nothing? It must have. He must have been so scared. Was he satisfied with his legacy? If he wasn’t, there wasn’t any hope for me and my own.

Well, good for him. Why keep talking about his death? He was doing fine without me putting all that bad energy out into the universe. Maybe the man was writing another last novel, and doing a hell of a lot better than I was.

I couldn’t take work. Still a half hour before the day was through, a little internet browsing wouldn’t hurt anyone. Mouse over browser. News hit, eyes roll over screen, jump, head snap back in shock. I read the article’s title again and again and again and still couldn’t fathom the reality of the words.

Acclaimed author dead at 89.

Bathroom

I was late to work. The R train was two stations away. My eyes were burning. It was as usual, too early. Rats ran underneath the third rail as the R came into the station. My heart fluttered. An empty bench to the left of the door. There is a God.

The closing doors opened and nose was immediately attacked by the stench of urine. Not a surprise. I sprinted to the empty orange and yellow seats. Both benches on either side across from each other were empty. Just as I was about to plunge onto the seat closest to me, I discovered where the smell of piss had come from. Floating ever so gently across the yellowed seat of the bench was a pool of pee, perfectly blending into the bench in color and even taking its shape. Had it not been for the slight jolt of the train setting off for the next station and causing a little wave cresting over the piss puddle, I would’ve been wearing the puddle on my pants, soaking it into every crevice.

This barely registered as anything more than a blip on my brain’s still sleeping radar. I checked the benches across from this one, saw they were piss free, and sat down to quickly drift back off to a half-sleep for the remainder of my ride into work. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

When we arrived at the next station the doors opened and a man in a blue suit holding a briefcase stepped in. He had a fresh haircut and an Armani tie on (don’t ask me how I knew that). My half-closed eyes tracked the man from his entrance into the train until he walked over to the row of seats across from me.

Another wave ebbed and flowed through the puddle of pee as he approached. It was a shame he wasn’t as observant as I. The man quickly twisted his body around and plopped down into the shallow pool of human bodily fluid.

Three seconds. That was all the time it took for him to board the train, spot his seat, and soak up all the pee his pants could handle. In theory, I had plenty of time to stop him. But I didn’t. I just watched.

I watched his eyes bug out of their sockets as he felt the dampness envelop his pants. It looked like he had been squeezed and comprised of nothing more than whatever a rubber dog toy is made from. He jumped up, spinning around like a top to see what he had sat in. Stench undoubtedly hit his nostrils by now. Hands flew up to his head. I heard screams and words too profane for this story.

My eyes closed as the train doors slid shut and we continued our ride.

Work that morning was much like any other day. Nothing too important. Death remained the champion of my mind. The author dying the day after he returned to my life was strange. So was asking my father about his random friend that had died just that morning. I shivered.

Orla, my coworker, was late. She had come back from Maine last week. Since then I hadn’t thought much about the Nim card or mogwais or any stupid games being played. Listening to the book’s advice to retreat had been for the best. It was better that way. But hearing Orla recount her fantastic trip with her husband made me yearn for something similar. I had the time off; I could’ve taken it whenever I wanted, barring approval. Instead I opted to keep myself confined to the shackles of this office and my route home, unchanged since the minor error I had made last week of going to Greenpoint.

Death. I was petrified of it. As much as I tried to forget, the feeling of being watched, of being followed, had persisted. So did the buzzing in my pocket, where the little card still sat.

“It’s weird, Clark. She usually calls out.” This echoed from a few cubicles down. I raised an eyebrow. What was that supposed to mean? I caught the clock, 11.

“Mogwai.”

It started as a whisper and wrapped itself tightly around my shoulders. Had I actually heard something? The receiver on my desk phone began droning, but the phone hadn’t been taken off the hook. My hand shot for it. “Hello?” I said into the cold plastic as it touched my ear. Immediately the line went flat. Dead. I couldn’t escape it.

Once the phone stopped working, I realized I needed to call my boss’s assistant to set up a meeting between the two of us, and now would need to use my cellphone. Last week I had asked Alice, his assistant, for hers like an idiot, but was able to play it off like it was just in case a situation aroused much like this one. I wasn’t sure if she had bought it or not.

“Hey, Will,” Alice answered in a distracted but playful tone.

“Hey, hey,” I said cheerfully. The voice did not match the inside. Did anyone’s? As she jotted down the notes that matched the words that matched my request, she stopped me.

“Hold on. I’m just gonna put you down for a sec, I’m getting a call on my desk phone.”

“Cool,” was my attempt at nonchalance.

“Hello?” I could still hear her clearly through the phone. “Yes, this is Alice. Are you calling regarding Orla? We’ve been wondering if everything was alright with her this morning.”

Fingers tapped on the keyboard. My stomach rumbled. I wondered what was for dinner that night. Alice’s shriek came through the phone and barrelled into my eardrum. I dropped the phone, but still heard her loud cries.

“Oh no no no no no! I’m so sorry. I’m so so so sorry!” A heaviness filled the room and my heart. I felt like a thousand pound weight pushed against my chest. Eyes zoomed into phone as it sat face up with Alice’s name written on the caller ID, the call timer ticking from two minutes to three. Her cries were shrieking so loudly from the phone, it was as if I had it pressed to my ear. After a few moments of frozen time, I made a feeble grab for it and brought it up to my ear. I wanted so badly to cry.

“H-hello?” It barely escaped my throat. More sobs on the other end. “Hello? Alice?” I called out in desperate hopes of getting a reply, but I knew I didn’t deserve one. Please answer, I thought. Tell me nothing is wrong. Tell me everything is fine. Why me? Why would this happen when I was the one calling? Why me? Why me? Why me?

One last “Alice,” escaped my lips before the sobbing ceased and I heard two beeps of the call having ended. I put the phone down and shot up, eyes wild searching for nothing. They found the woman at the cubicle behind me, her name was Kathy. I stepped toward her, ghost white. She looked up at me with a smile. “What’s up, Will?”

“I think something bad happened to Orla.”

Life’s Too Short

It was a heart attack. Happened as she was getting ready for work. Her husband and daughter had both left the house already en route to job and school. Their son had come home from college to surprise the family for the weekend. He found her in the bathroom, hair dryer still clutched in a rigid hand. She had been pronounced dead at 11, just as I had checked the clock as the whispers of her whereabouts scattered to the winds of the office.

If someone had been home when it happened, she probably would be alive today. Instead she died alone on her bathroom floor. Her last week alive had been spent mostly sitting next to me in our lifeless office. Thursday, the night before, we had stayed till almost 9 for a meeting with a client. That was her last night on Earth. She was 53.

The weight of all the meaningless nothings was crushing whatever brain juice I still had in me. The creative energy of the universe was nonexistent, it never was.

In the mirror I saw a stranger. Infinitely wishful, yet infinitely lazy. Stuck in limbo on a plane with too many technical difficulties to take flight. Too many cravings for quick dopamine and adrenaline rushes left me there. Dry. Barren. Used up.

I was losing all sight. Orla died. And for what? Her last day spent next to me, worrying about endless amounts of problems that weren’t truly her own.

I was angry for Orla’s death, and angry for the soon-to-come deaths of my parents and myself. I’m angry for all of us who are stuck in limbo. Oh, the humanity. Oh, Brave New World. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep the yearning for self fulfillment at bay any longer, especially at the whim of unreal problems.

Lately the veil had been lifted, and the real had been purging itself into my life. The only thing I knew to be real is that I was me, and you reading this are you. Can’t shut out the noise any longer. At least Orla went on, from what I had heard, a beautiful trip to Maine with her husband last week. Still, that was a distant memory by the time her last day was consumed by the meaningless of it all.

Don’t let the reaper come for you out of the blue. “What about me?” I’ll scream to try and stop him. “What about you?” he laughs. “You haven’t thought about yourself in years!” You’d stop arguing and fall limp. He was right. You gave your dreams away for a computer and a television.

I think therefore I am, therefore I had ought to start taking care of myself. I needed to take care of myself. I felt a buzzing in my pocket. Was it the Nim card or my phone? It hit me, before I even saw it. Retreat. The book wasn’t telling me to run from the idea. It was telling me to run from here, to go away, to go on a retreat. To become the superior man.

May you rest in peace, Orla. Coincidences or not, it was a sign. Another buzzing in my pocket. The decision was already made. I knew what it was going to say. I was going to retreat. The game was on and I was going to play it, I was going to win.

My phone’s screen displayed a familiar banner streaked across Beth’s eyes. I smirked.

PICK YOUR OWN MAINE ADVENTURE!

“Screw it, Nim. You’re on.”

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Picking Stones