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grahammasurian · 3 years

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Dumping Your Responsibility.

The dumpster outside my apartment building was completely overflowed. The truck missed a couple weeks for some reason and people just kept piling their shit on top regardless.

“My sin will be forgiven, the next sinner will go to hell!”

This came into my head whenever I thought of the garbage situation. I considered myself 99% innocent since I didn’t use the dumpster during these couple weeks. Unfortunately when disaster happens it doesn’t care how much you were involved, all it sees is your darkness.

What I could have done was call up our landlord. Maybe I didn’t add directly to the trash pile but I still could have brought attention to it. Unfortunately my mind gave me a great reason for not calling him, a wonderful why even bother type of belief. These curses will kill you but they provide immense relief.

He lives someplace nicer and keeps his back turned on this building, so if I don’t tell him anything he’ll keep believing whatever fantasy he’s living. Whenever I bring up something for him to look at he puts it off or conveniently forgets about it, can’t say I blame him. I'd love to do the same sometimes and then feel guilty about it for the rest of my life. It’s hard to convince myself that a life of eternal guilt is worse than a life of hard work. Maybe the simple solution is to just disregard the guilt and make everyone despise me, though I can’t say that seems like a good long term strategy.

I guess everyone likes to avoid responsibility too, don’t get me wrong I get it, because man it sure feels good to not take anything seriously, just sit back and relax through life, I’ll lay down in my bed and fold into a quarter circle. Pull my knees up to my chest and gently hold myself, like swinging in the breeze floating along to somewhere better.

Eventually some birds had a war over the trash that was at this point spilling everywhere, old food, old clothes, plastic shit, maybe real shit. It was a disaster but seemed to be an appropriate punishment for us. I watched a seagull pull apart a bag for 30 minutes, something about the completely boring and ordinary scene held a power over me. I imagined this feeling of our civilizations being consumed again by nature, it’s easy to forget that nature is constantly trying to integrate us more effectively. Integration with an ocean with a mysterious intention.

We could have salvaged things there, rescued some of our dignity and just accepted responsibility for what we did by not doing. I sat some nights debating whether or not I should just go out there and clean up everything alone. I didn’t mind the day, but at night I just loved how things seemed to come to life inside me. There was a power that I didn’t have access to during the day.

I decided it wasn’t worth cleaning up, after all I don’t really care what these people think of me, unless they express it to me. Plus I felt like I fit in better with my environment as a lazy drifter. When I run into the people that live here occasionally there is enough willpower on all our parts to say “Hi” and then move on our way. The two people that live under me, man and wife, maybe around late 50’s early 60’s always give me a glimpse into a possible future. The guy looks like his soul has been sucked out and not in a good way. It scares me for a moment and I tell myself I’ll keep it in mind but my actions don’t change.

The next week after the missed pickup and our experiment with apathy, something happened.

It was 12:33 AM, I was laying down in my bed with the window open, listening to the wind and feeling the slight breeze on my skin. Sometimes I’d lay there for hours listening to music or in silence, using drugs of course. The sounds of the night combined with distant sounds of the city created the backdrop for the worlds I explored in my mind. I break away from the atmosphere and write some ideas down in some form then go back to my mind.

I heard a familiar sound, the mother of this girl screaming in that resentful kind of way. Whenever someone talks that way to me my stomach gets sick, I see this person is using me to escape from something. You know instantly that this isn’t about you anymore, it's about them.

I hated the way this mother yelled at her daughter, I didn’t have kids of my own but I didn’t mind them, I generally see children as innocent beings until they gain awareness. When they become aware they turn into wood, hopefully they make it through and become real but many don’t. Some play as the twisted craftsmen, shaping the world with design. Night after night I’d hear this poor girl being molded into something that will make her unhappy for the rest of her life.

Even though it’s hard to feel connected with darkness, you still elicit feelings for things of the night. You react more on principle and not bigger picture at night, this mother was injecting venom deep into the mind of her daughter. Like a jackass I sat there each night it happened and listened to it like music.

Being man enough to walk down there one day and call her out on her shitty behavior was always in the back of my mind, but then I would think some more and figure what difference would it make? Sometimes I snap out of my delusions and wake up, I see who I am from up here.

Just look for the right words.

It didn’t happen every time but sometimes this warped girl would dash outside, slamming doors and shouting behind her. Most times I’d hear her small steps pace around or walk down out of earshot then eventually I’d hear her again coming from the other side of the building, maybe doing two or three laps like that before cooling off and gaining enough strength to go back. She feels like she just wants to give up but chooses to continue to face that fate which shows just how much courage she had.

This night the young girl made her usual escape, something about the scene caught my attention. Normally I just ignored it for the most part, but tonight I felt worried for her and listened to see if she was okay.

The shriek of her screaming scared me sober. That kind of pitch that you can only get when you feel real terror.

Confusion at night amplifies fear to a level that can go beyond anything you’ve ever felt. Sometimes hearing a loud noise randomly in the middle of the night only to realize it was something conspicuous is an interesting moment of tension and release of tension. When you listen to death it creates tension that doesn’t go away unless you force it to release.

I couldn’t see much but the sounds made up for the rest, I looked on in horror as this poor unfortunate girl came running towards the front door to come back inside. She must have forgotten to prop it open a little this time like she usually did. The door was shut, she couldn’t escape through there and it was the only chance she had time to try.

This whole thing happened so fast it was as if my mind refused to think about what I was seeing, this bear that must have smelled some food nearby came across her instead.

Hearing someone produce screams that come from a dangerous place, sends a painful shock through you. It would have been nice if I was one of those people that got off on that kind of thing but unfortunately I had to deal with the feelings of misery, dread, sadness, fear, anger, all at once.

A little bit slower than what should have been immediate there was incredible energy from all around, people coming out and making noise, not too many but enough for me to be impressed.

The general sentiment at the time was:

“Oh My God!” A big fat lady wearing a shaggy blue sweater screeched out. There were many other intense shouts, deflated yelps, sobbing murmurs, all mixing together slowly creating the atmosphere for a tremendously horrific scene.

All these half awake people, semi-disconnected souls felt something deep down within them for once. For the first time in decades some of these hopeless people felt alive, they acted without thought calling back to our primate ancestors. They witnessed a driving force, without realizing the lesson unfortunately.

Some of the people approached the girl to try and attempt some kind of help and others stayed away, accepting the situation or too afraid to know how bad it really was.

Some sobs were heard throughout the night as people came and went, voices that sounded defeated, voices that sounded ready to give up and heavy with guilt.

“Emily! No!” The mother cried. Obviously still drunk. Obviously deluded into thinking her daughter is anywhere close to alive.

“Please baby I’m so sorry! Please wake up baby!”

I had great disdain for this mother, but at that moment I felt bad for her. This woman made mistakes and in the end all it causes is suffering.

They came for her daughter, whisked her away into the abyss forever. Black cloaks riding into the stars on their skeletal horses. I wasn’t sure whether or not the constant beating I was hearing was a drum or my heart. We summoned these demons with our ritual, the choices we made were acts of incantation that brought forth monsters with the power to possess mortals, the possession was the final step in ensuring resurrection lest one of us snap out of the hypnosis and rescue the rest from the gaze of Medusa.

Then some downcast EMT workers took away her body, from the low looks and words after immediately coming upon the scene it was clear that hope didn’t exist anymore. I never saw the aftermath personally, where the actual attack happened was obscured to me by the awning over the door. Sometimes imagination makes things worse.

The mother followed her daughter into the darkness 3 weeks later.

#creative writing #short story #tale #journal #writeblr

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