A Geometric Ghost of a Murder

 

I can’t remember why exactly she pulled the trigger. Well, considering I’m dead, I suppose it doesn’t matter if I can or not. The story…ah, yes, the story.  Okay, she shot me three times: Once in the head, twice in the chest. What? Oh, okay, I have to start this out correctly. Stories have characters, characters have faces, and bullets have to kill someone. A world to be seen, eh? Okay, here we go, seriously this time.  Well, you see, you have to bear with me. I’m having a bad day. Yeah, bad entirely. Well, you see, my brains are splattered all over a wall; so, it makes this whole…

            I told that joke? The one about being dead? Yeah, shit, the story.  Okay, it started out last week. Well, background info for you. Call it, um, “given circumstances.” I went to school in the city; I’m- I was- a college student, an undergraduate of elitism, the best and the brightest of all that matters least. You see, I worked in the world of Academia and pointless knowledge gathering was my field of expertise.  I despise everyone, excuse me, I despised everyone.  If you had an opinion, it was wrong; if you had a position, I took the opposite. I listened to every band you- of course not you, I mean someone in general- did not. I didn’t necessarily know who or what I was then. I suppose I’m supposed to know now. It’s funny how a bullet spreading your frontal lobe changes so much.

            Well, anyway, off the subject. I was twenty-one when she shot me, twenty-one theologically minded years. I was a rebel with a cause…or at least I thought I was. Yeah, I did the whole punk thing, even painted my finger nails black a couple times. I spoke the words, “You don’t know me,” and, “Forget what you’ve learned.” Well, something along those lines. Funny thing about rebelling is that you can only rebel against something for so long before your realize you’re just fitting in a different group. Okay, that’s vague and poorly written, let me explain more.  You’re a square peg thrown into a world of round circles. Well, eventually all that bumping into those round circles makes a few of ‘em jagged. Few of ‘em jagged edges soon grow to become squares of their own, bumping about and making their own squares pegs. Then you wake up one morning and realize you’re bouncing about a bag of square pegs. You raise your pink, hair-sprayed head from your pillow and realize that you’ve no clue what shape you are, cause all your edges were long ago worn down to smooth stubs; That was me.

            Okay, now insert the other character of the story: she. She was my geometric entity, my heart shaped bane. She was a living, breathing problem and I loved every second of her: every fucking night, every fucking sin, and every fucking inconsistent string.  She was my organs; she beat with crimson pride inside my chest. She had a name, but, for the sake of her beliefs, I’ve forgotten it. You see, I can take a hint. I can forget on command. GOD, I hate pronouns with a passion. If I could do these things, “I” would have.

            Setting, well, there is a setting somewhere. It’s in a diner- That’s where she vented my cranium. Christ, the diner. It was dark, yes, dark. There were wooden stools and wooden tables, and, well, wooden counter tops. Waitress still wore those smock things, aprons if you will, and serve people with a smile. Tips mean “you did a good job” and not, “I know this restaurant doesn’t pay you enough,” so, whatever time that might have been. It wasn’t the setting I was concerning myself with, it was the people starring at me. I was sitting in a booth, across from the bathroom door (my stomach often wretched its contents due to a childhood disease), and it seemed the world watched me.  “What were those fucks looking at? What could they possible want,” their eyes beaming brightly. Okay, I’m not going to lie, I wanted to stab them all out.

            The old guy in the back with the tweed fedora, smoking a pipe, and playing with his beard; the bitch beside me screamin’ at her kids, “you’s bastards!” How dare they spill their drinks. (yeah, I’m sure they did it just to piss you off); the pretty girl in the AE shirt with the sunken’, teary eyes. Well, whatever, they were all watchin’ me. This charade they’re playing might as well just give up cause I see- saw- right thought it. I’m an actor on a stage full of sound and fury, but they weren’t gonna be my audience. I pushed my DRAGON tossel hat down over my ears, covering what was left of whatever hair color I had, and pulled my hoody over my pentagram tattoo.

            Yeah, I know, I was defiantly and definitely dressed for the part. Despite the heat from their eyes, I froze my ass off in wait for her. My mother told me once that it was a women’s prerogative to be late; she now rested beneath a tombstone, waiting for me to come and visit. Okay, so, that’s not true. She slept soundly 200 miles away, waiting for a telephone call from her writer son (She was proud of that at least, “Hair dye doesn’t depict intelligence, but it matches his eyes none the less”). If only I was half the man my mom thought I was. I’M DEAD NOW! YOU CAN BE PROUD…I died from a lil’ girls rancor and not from the bottle. She loved to say that too, “The bottle is you’re worst friend.” She knew I was the Poe type, all drink, drugs, and depression. It was the fun part of life…drinking away the dreams.  I once believed I did not believe in love. Funny story it seems ‘cause I’m sure love wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

            Some people find themselves in this perpetual cycle of marriage, coupling, and the vow exchange. I’ve separated the three of them for sometime. Since I met her, the one who shot me, I’ve been shining under some new lights. She had this annoying habit of acting like she had some clue about relationships.  For me, the concept of actually having any fucking clue what you were doing is this egocentric, contemporary, manipulation of Society was an injustice in its own right. Unlike Cosmo, Maxim, and She, I took Dante’s route of thinking: an abstract concept has a hold of my heart so why should I try and fight it, or even think I know why its got its hold on me. For years, people have felt the engulfing weight of “Love.” No longer confined to a mental illness, the disease spread through plays, conversations, and, most of all, infatuations.  People need to be in love, they claim, because it separates them from the primitive cycle of “who can stick it in who the most,” or, for the feminist, “who can get stuck the most.”

            I must apologize for these vulgarities. When you’re dead, no one runs around with a political correctness manual and smacks you whenever you speak from your uncensored mouth. I grow tired of the build up confines of human society as if there was another society to grow tired of. Christ, guess that sounds like I still have the spiked hair. I can’t just throw on an Against All Authority or Operation Ivy cd anymore.

            I’m sorry, self-loathing can be a bastard when you get stuck on it. Okay, back on track. I sat in that damned booth by that damned bathroom for thirty damned minutes. My Beatrice finally rolled in.  I suppose you’re gonna want to know what she looked like. She was a girl, clothes on her body, hair on her head. She smiled at times and blinked in prolonged imagination, and, worse of all, she attracted me. Like a male preying mantis to its doom, I manipulated her into being my bane. I say this in a reserved fashion. Unlike Machiavelli, I never really knew where my strings were attached, but relied on that inter desire for entropy to drive the stake home. Like an Alkaline Trio song, “she bled me raisin dry,” but only because I made her.

            Time lines aside, she sat down in my booth.  I waved to her over the top of Phaedra and other Senecian Stories (Okay, so, I just shoved that in. I was probably reading Guns Magazine, but whatever); she smiled those pursed lips at me, blood red as always. She was pale, tanning beds unheard of, and beautiful. I used to joke that the sun didn’t deserve to set eyes upon her skin. I thought maybe that was cute, and she smiled to let me think so. In her homage, I was…well, I used to set myself up…okay, so maybe I was in love with her. I thought of her at night, and during those interesting test taking times when your mind skips its work cycle. I couldn’t help it. She smelled of bottled aestheticism, her breath a melting permafrost of summer worship.  I just never really told her, I didn’t have the words for it. What are words suppose to do for a girl so build up around herself she can’t understand anyone else has hypocrisies and vices of their own.

            She hated me. I’m pretty sure of it.  Those smiling lips covered fangs filled to the brim with venom. I’d heard her forked tongue lick curse words that would have made the fallen angels orgasm in excitement. Her raven hair became a camouflage for her leathery horns, her sweater a harness for bat wings, and her purse spewed forth legions of demons, who, like demonic homing pigeons, wracked my intestines and took her my soul. While she sat there controlling her powers, I tapped my fingers warmly on the table, cautiously awaiting the problems guaranteed to progress through our dialogue.

            I know now the gun was in her bag. Gun. She didn’t do it right away. Maybe she hesitated in fear, or just maybe that was the few heartbeats when I was suppose to say what I felt. She waited, I waited, and she waited some more. I spoke, “Um,” and continued to tap my fingers subconsciously on the table. Seneca dropped lightly too the table. Inspired by the sound, I blinked in contemplation.

            “Why?” she asked.

            “I’m fucked,” I thought in tired recognition of this train of thought. She knew I was too stupid to get anything she said. She asked “why” and I’d say, “I don’t know. Why?” and she would say again, “why” only after this repetition it would be followed by a dramatic pause.

            “I don’t know, why?” I stated/questioned.

            “Why?” she reached in her bag. What’s she reaching for?

 

            Kelly caressed the rigid grip hesitantly, caressing the chrome handle in her hand.  “Father’s gun,” she thought to herself. “What a joke this whole thing was. He knew I loved him, knew I wanted and respected his decisions. Christ, he knew nothing about anything,” the gun snagged on her purse. The heavy, stainless-steel snub nose .44 weighed too much for the small bag. The handbag sagged under the weight of its cross, the sins it carried and would carry. “You can’t blame the sword for the arms actions,” her father had always said that, said it till the day he died.

            Death meant nothing to her family. It happened to everyone. Almost like a machine, humanity meant a progressive cycle of “+set line A 01born-011reproduce-0111die-01born-011reproduce-0111die-01born-011reproduce-0111die’.” It was not that simple for this girl. Her family history might have meant a brief glimpse into humanity, but her concerns had nothing to do with reproduction. The parasite inside her womb, the genetic martini shaken in her stomach, meant financial obscurity.  “Its funny,” she thought, “what the future will do to the present.”

            “Kevin,” she spoke to him. He sat there, those lost dark eyes searching her face. “I love you,” she reached her left hand to grasp his right, pulling it onto her stomach. The baby inside was legally an abort-able mistake, but she wasn’t one for mistakes.  The creature growing inside of her womb made for more of an excuse to hold something within her arms, to breath against the chest of a misguided youth as inappropriately predisposed as she was. Misguided was not the word; intentionally ignorant of guidance seemed to fit better.

            It seemed cliché for her to long for his love, almost as if she should not personify the loathing of her own heart by dumping her quest for love within him. She loved him; so simple in theory, so difficult in practice. One could draw a knife across one’s arm so many times before eventually the tissue grew so scared, it no longer made a difference. “What’s one more mark on a cratered battle field? What exactly happens when sensation ends?” questions laced her eyes.

            Kevin looked confused, holding his hand to her stomach. He knew of the pregnancy, he had too, she had hinted to it enough. He knew nothing of mysterious holes in a diaphragm, nothing of an intentional complication in “Safe sex.” It was not for him to know; she sank those questions of morality herself, knee deep in humanity’s darkness.

            The gun left her purse, crawling slowly level with those confused eyes. Ambiguity of intent registered in the pupils, dilating before the shining chrome.  He didn’t move. She pulled the trigger.

            Dual action revolvers are simplistic guns. Unlike depressing the trigger of a semi-automatic weapon, a revolver used the motion of the trigger to pull back the hammer, and at the same time, rotates the chamber; she lacked the hand strength to manipulate the weapon quickly. Kelly struggled with the trigger, pulling with her index finger until the hammer finally gave in, relinquishing the fury of a controlled explosion. Kevin’s skull rocked backwards, black powder pocking his face. A hole about the size of a fifty-cent piece blew out as a mushroomed hollow point escaped his cranial cavity.

            He slumped dead against the walls, the confusion of his eyes covered in blood. Kelly shot him once more in the chest, again struggling with the trigger. Hesitantly, worried he might still be alive, she carefully eased back the trigger with her thumb, locking it in place before firing the final time. Like the venting moan of air from Kevin’s chest, screams went ignored in the diner. An old man with a fedora stumbled over a young girl; a woman rushed her sons violently from the restaurant, crying “mercy” at the top of her lungs. Waiters and waitress scattered before her fury, spreading like falling tears upon a shirt.

            “My hand hurts,” she sobbed loudly. Falling to her knees, she cried a lament, “my Agamemnon,” tears rolled like the red carpets from Kevin’s skull. Leveling the gun to her head, she again pulled the trigger. “Funny,” she thought, “this thing is pretty heavy,” and an eruption tore her soul from her skull, weighted it with Ophelia’s sins, and sent it to Hell. Like the tied wings of Lucifer’s angels pulling and pushing, soft talons welcomed her and the boiling warmth caressed her spirit.

 

Heaven in such a dull place. People here, they just don’t get any of my jokes. Who would have thought that was possible? It’s a deplorable place. Hell, I’d kill for the pagan god’s who got to keep the Germanic warrior and Philosophical legends. Whatever deity built this pillar of puritan ideology sure sucked at throwing parties. But, hey, what’s a robot to judge its owner, right? Unlike Dante, my Beatrice burned and my Virgil took a union break long ago. Only a pity that I can’t, as Alkaline Trio said, “keep you warm in hell.” I suppose if one’s soul is restless on earth, why wouldn’t it be restless in this cloudy superstructure of a controlled nursing home. I got to get out of here, “I’ll take three shots to go, God, and one for the lady.”

 

Kelly’s Poem

 

Droplets of sun, dripping thought.

Lyrical hatred mixed in at times,
Crimson blood to be wrought
Lick the inside intestinal kinds.

She dug in her thin fingernails,
Wracked my eyes. My face
Spun words, eviscerated tales;
Soft blood ran like velvet lace.

A fire burns bright in a lit room,
She pushed against my waist.
Ecstasy twisted in the loom,
Pressing past corporeal haste.

A weightless orgasm killed her;
Muscles spasms exited her spine.
Light tore from candle to mirror,
Festering flesh opened us to dine.

In the end she called my name,
Her eyes blinked in gentle tact.
It’s her soul I began to hate,
Vile, loving, warm, black.