---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v078) (the January 2010 Issue) This is also available from our printer as a a $7.47 paperback book (5.5" x 8.5") perfect-bound w/ b&w pages

Order this writing in the book (bound) Down in the Dirt prose edition		order the 5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book order the 8.5" x 11" ISBN# book

Inheritance

David Shreve, Jr.

    “The clearest sign that your soul is dying comes in your sleep,” you remember him saying a few times. “When you stop dreaming in possibilities and start dreaming in memories, that’s when you know you have an old spirit.”
    You used to overlook his ideas. You used to discard the knowledge carried in his guidance. You’d nod with your head and shrug it off in your mind. But now you wish you could ask for more. You want some sort of elaboration. You want to know why you’re only dreaming about losing loved ones and committing crimes.
    Because it turns out, he was right about pretty much everything. You’ve come to find that his perceptions and predictions are as accurate as humanly possible. All these years later, it’s clear to you that true genius is best on display when one speaks only what one knows, which is never really much, and his wisdom never relied on outward assumption. He never let his thoughts step outside of his existence and that made him more intelligent than anyone gives either of his parents credit for in the early years.
    It seems he had you pegged from the start and you wasted any advantage that might have offered.
    He was not clairvoyant or anything. He only knows about you because the only thing that separates the two of you is twenty-seven years. He was you before you were even born. The days of denying it are long gone. There’s proof in every inch of your being.
    You have his shaky hands and his weak knees.
    You have his wild hair and his sharp stubble beard.
    You have his fascination with death and his passion for storytelling.
    You have his sad eyes and nervous laugh.
    You have his social anxiety— his knack for being as far away as possible from everyone. In every sense.
    But tonight, that last part is failing you. Tonight you have company. The kind of company that fills ashtrays and empties bottles. The kind of company that keeps burning into you with a staring promise of an all night stay. The kind with modest looks but eyes that work well enough to make you consider forbidden terms and lips wet enough to make you breathe like you hate the air in your lungs and skin so fucking warm you can’t figure out why you still prefer an empty bed.
    You’ve dealt with the talking part that you and he both hate. Now you have to deal with the even more painful part, the one he knows nothing about. That jittery wait as she leafs through the pages she’s begged you to let her read. The pages you’ve composed against his better advice to drop your delusional hobby and pick a more promising career path. Five months of poverty, a minimal diet complete with regular hunger cramps, a series of meaningless part time jobs, an overwhelming sense of worthlessness, and an ongoing lack of ideas has proven him right on that front as well.
    And now she’s so focused she hasn’t brushed the hair that’s come loose from her ponytail away from her face in minutes. She’s wrinkling her forehead and letting her mouth hang slightly ajar. You can’t help but wonder if she’s concentrating on the words or on counting how many seconds it would take for her to finish each page of this boring, boring, boring story before she flips to the next one without really reading. Jesus, you even have his self doubt.
    As you put your lips to the glass and tilt it back, the ice sings a mocking song at you. You let what is left of the liquid contents swim down your open throat. The burn is deep in your belly and for a moment, in some inexplicable way, that discomfort screams at you loud enough to drown out the rest of them. It occurs to you that, most likely, she will be tasting the dull punch of Scotch when your mouths press together open for one another, but then you realize that her tongue promises to be like a vodka tinged bullet, so you’re okay with that. As long as it provides that muting of the mind that you usually require for nights like these.
    Yet another aspect of life that he had correctly warned you about. “Don’t start drinking. With your blood, the only drink you’ll ever turn down is your first one.” This one had always been more than just a precautionary instruction, it was the silently desperate plea of fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years of sobriety trying to save you from a similar trap.
    Your loss again. Now, if you make it to a Friday without a drink, you’re shaking a little more, hating your life a little harder, and mumbling vicious words to yourself in that state between consciousness and sleep. Scotch. It was his drink before it was your drink and like a small portion of the other things you’ve inherited, you wish he would have kept it for himself.
    The greater portion of your short story is behind the index finger she is using as a separator and it looks like she only has about three pages left. Shit. Now it’s hitting you hard. That cold blanket of realization that smothers you in the useless wish that you could take back the entire day and just not dial her number, that you could flip these dim lights completely off and she would disappear. That worst kind of loneliness. The sort that’s only intensified in the presence of a yearning other. When a second party only highlights that aimless sense of floating that has bludgeoned your spirit to submission over the last few years. You’ve hid those thoughts so successfully on your own. You’ve taken those notions that every relationship we have is an illusion constructed from loneliness— that all affection is fear of death— and you’ve trapped them in the dungeons of your mind. But with her right next to you, these notions have realized that your guard was down and they’ve escaped. Now they are attacking you with the violence of a prisoner fighting for freedom.
    It’s a reality that, from your experience, applies only to two lives. Yours and his. With every purchase of love, there comes a free gift of hate. One hand might beckon her closer, but the other will push her back after her initial step. During your youth, it was the awkwardness of the quiet living room and loud implosion of two voices in the kitchen that you woke up hearing at night time. It was your mother trying hard not to cry in front of you and him finding ways around apologies. And yet it was the way that theirs was a strong love. And now it’s your fight to find that balance.
    Recently, you keep hearing his voice and those words of solace he offers to you all the time. “As long as I’m alive, you have a home, bud. If you need to stay somewhere while you figure things out, then it should be here.” It hurts you to know that you’re making him leave his comfort zone, begging him to be more open than he really wants. But, every day it seems more likely that if this pretty plan doesn’t work out, you might have to take him up on it.
    She’s finished the story now and placed it on the coffee table.
    “There’s something about the way you write...” she speaks a sentence fragment and catches the rest by biting her bottom lip. Meanwhile, her fingernails are pressing tiny crescent moon indentations into the top of your thighs and your heart is whispering to you a painful promise that you’ll be a little more dead in the morning when you wake up next to her. But you don’t know what to say back because he never taught you anything about where this is supposed to go or how it’s supposed to get there.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...