The Engineer




























PREFACE


The Engineer, a book I was originally going to title "The Technopath" is a story based upon my own life -- fictional, and written with much effect hoped toward experimentation.

I wrote "The Engineer" under heavy influences in my life, after the heartbreak from a close friend, followed by much wine-drinking, and pot-smoking, to relieve myself from the horror of separation.

As a matter of fact, I threw up in my hands this morning.

Another decent title for this book would probably be "In Vino Veritas."

I hope you can learn from my experiences, transformed into a story. I hope you can take something out of these some 100 pages, and walk away with a new sense about the effects I am trying to teach in this work. I have studied enough to know by now. For some people, this book has the potential to crash your computer. For some, this book has the potential to enlighten your computers to a new state of mind.

Whether you like the character is totally subjective to you, and may have something to say about the reader which way they go.

This is "The Engineer."

Read it in one "session" to get the best effect of the book. I wrote it to be read in a single sitting, which is how I edited it each time as well.

-BLS























“When I was seven, my father told me I can't swim.”

–Bill Callahan



“Thank God, it's over.”

–The Silversun Pickups






















Prelogue
-


January 1st, 1985.

I was born just a few months ago.

They tell me I was beautiful.

I had blue eyes when I was born.


The celebrity woman showed up to the party late, but she was dressed like Eliza reborn. She was interested in making sure that I was going to be kept in my crib the whole night, although I wanted to be in the room with everyone else.

Life is new to me, and I have slept for many years already.

She shuts me into a dark room, and I stare up at the dimly-lit ceiling, and wonder what she is like, and why she would give birth to a child, but then tell them to rest instead of live.

She might be a famous writer or something.

She has written one book.

She succeeded, once, with this book, to the effect of being able to "talk about the next one." Right now, she is at the party, focusing on the details of her story. An autobiographical memoir of how she was abused when she was a child. She has decided to take revenge against the world. Right now, I hear her laughing. She is thirty years old.

I am two months old.

I don't know if this will be a good life.

I hear my father, and he is also laughing, but I don't know if I can trust him. He doesn't seem to like me; or maybe he does. He always shows me his teeth, like he wants to smile, but he doesn't.
FInally, a door sound, as I seem to be in a different area, as I think and observe things fast. She came in to check on me. She was laughing, and then looked at me. She turns on the light. It is very bright, and it hurts my eyes. She turns off the light again, and then leaves the room, and shuts the door, as I hear her laughing down the hall. She used the light the wrong way. I am very confused.

I guess this is life.

I stared at the light-switch, as I lied in bed.
















1 Year Old:

"Welcome home, Son." Laughter resounds.

"Yeah, look at him. He's got dimples. I can see he's gonna be a real dimpler, ah-ha-ha..!" He took a drag off his long cigar, and the infant sat on the floor with a few wood blocks, and played not-nearly-oblivious to their conversation.

"What do you think he's going to be like..?"

He's probably gonna turn out to be a child molester..! ha ..
"He'll be a fisherman."
God, what the fuck is he doing with those blocks..?
I can hear your thoughts. Please stop thinking that way. It is not polite to me.
X looks up, and stares directly into both of their eyes.
They go silent for a second, but no real response occurs from either one of them.
I am a soul. Not a name.
"Brat is givin' me the evil eye..! Did you see that..!"
Shit, I kinda like him.
What a creep.
Lee stares back at his fathers father, and then back at the cigar in his hand. "Da!" He says. Pointing up. He is pointing at the smoke.
"What's he trying to say..?"
"Gah."
"You've done enough of that, haven't you, yourself..?"
"No."
He cried, not even once. He was totally silent, as a child .. and didn't cry much at all. Everybody seemed confused.
"Da!" X points up at the smoke again, and starts to make sounds Only, very quietly.
"He doesn't like the cigar, Dad."
"I can't put this out. This is my last damned one. Just get him the hell away from me."
"Okay." Brendan was moved from one set of arms to the other.
What is wrong with the air..?
X's dad picks him up, and they go into the other room where his mom is writing.
"Are you writing a book..?"
"Notes."
"Oh."
"What are they like..?" X crawled toward his mom.
"I can't do the baby thing right now."
"Oh, do you want to get going..? We can bring the typewriter back. Dad is smoking, and he doesn't want the kid around the smoke."
"Okay."
"Okay .." I listened, with one of my senses.
What is smoke..? The stuff emanated through, and poured through the entire vacuole of the room. I knew the science was intriguing.
"Let's go."
They all get up, and put X into his carriage. They wheel him back out of the house, although he is starting to feel much more comfortable walking.
I remember not walking.
Before I was born, I remember that I could fly.
12:44:03.02
They arrive back home, and X is put back into the dark room, with blue white-spotted walls. He does not sleep. He has already slept enough. 
"Is he sleeping..?"
"No."
"What do we do..?"
They give me milk, but it has something inside of it.
I feel tired.
I sleep.
I have nightmares.

They are scary.

I see hallways. I see mirrors. There is a room. I go inside of the room. Someone says to me a word. It starts with something called a letter. They are trying to teach me something. I don't know if I will understand. This is scary. I am not ready to learn. I want to learn on my own. They tell me, I must be special. I must be important. "I nah." I cry out loud, and look sad, waking up from the dream, covered in sweat. I think to myself, "Deh..?" Followed by a slow, "Duh," with an upward inflection.
What are words..?
"Words, words, words . . ." A planet is covered in water. Someone is alone. They are still. They are quiet. They do not like words. "Abstractions." A voice says, from some distant far off place. It is his father. Yelling, angrily, down the hall, as he slams the door, and produces a shock throughout X's body. "That's all that you write. A bunch of bullshit, and abstractions..!"

Words are abstractions.
"Like, sounds themselves." Some far-off information reeled through me. "Do you see this..?" "Indigo children." My mom pointed to a book, with pictures of circles on the pages. My father looked, and smiled.

- :2 yrs old: -
"Dad" ..
"Dad."

"What..?"

"What did he just say..?"

"Was that his first word..?"

"Yes." 
"I've never heard him say a full word before."

"God, where was the camera."

"You can't expect these things."

I hate you.

"God, he's smiling."

I stared into his eyes, and I thought about his constant laughing, and strange desire to eat me with his evil teeth. He was twisted, and I knew this.

"Maybe he was going to try and say something else."

"Yeah."
No.

I have nothing to "say" to you assholes.

"Does he want to get down..?"

"I think he's done with his cereal."

They put me in front of the TV.
It was hilarious, whatever it was.
I stare at the screen.

Oh no.

A creature is talking. He has fur. It is "Sesame Street."

Why are monsters talking..?
And I don't even know how to speak..?
The monsters are talking about me.
And I don't even know how to speak.
I hear their thoughts at night.
I see what they do with their bodies.
They like to eat food. And talk. And make love. Whatever love is. I don't know. This isn't looking like a very good TV show. One of the monsters is eating cookies. Why do monsters need to be portrayed as eating cookies..? I like cookies. What is a cookie..?

I need more things.


3 years old.

"Okay."
I know that words are strange. I know that they are not real. I don't know what words really are, but in order to communicate with my parents, I decided to start learning when I was three.
My father sometimes said things that made no sense.

Is this a fake word..?
Maybe if I can learn "fake" words, I can be more like the person I want to be.
Maybe I will learn fake words.
His father was paranoid, that night
"What was that..?"

"Jesus Christ, are you serious..?" Something was on the floor. He picked it up, and walked back.
"I love you."
"What is this..?"
He picks me up, and brings me into the other room. I don't cry. I'm just alone there, now.
It's kind of funny, sometimes.  The way he talks.
My father storms out of the room, with a kind of smirk, and weird laugh, gives me a weird glance like he "knows something about me" -- some weird prophecy about an idea that I am his young little enemy or something. Okay. So I wink my left eye. And he just kind of says something garbled, and hard-to-hear. It is far-away, and seems friendly. The room is warm, and red in the distance. He stares into the light, in the room, or the hall to the side. When the door is shut, there is a thin gold glowing line. And shuts the door.
I hear a metallic sound after he shuts the door, somewhere near the handle, or knob thing he used to shut it.
I think I might be here a while.


Age 4

This is rare.
I see.
What is it.
Take a look.
There is something different

What is it.
Something very different, about him.
His DNA. Is . . . three strands.
I am in a room. A white room. The voices are not being spoken. They don't seem like thoughts at all. I don't know where I am. I think I am asleep.
"So what's the plan..?"
"Why don't you ask him..? Damned freak just jumped on the EEG when we did that."
They are holding squares in their hands.
"Here, put this over here."
"No, the voice chip is meant to be installed in the back of the head for these one's."
"Think he's really gonna be a problem..?"
"They paid. We just do our jobs."
"Gets weird when you think the parents might be making a mistake."
I can hear all of their thoughts.
"So what, This is our job. Just do it."
I feel something sharp. It hurts. Something is moving in the back of my head. It hurts. Now I am starting to feel different. I feel sad all of a sudden. Now I feel happy. Now I feel really happy. Now I feel really sad. Now I feel very angry. What is anger..?
"Okay, it's plugged in."
"What protocol is this, anyway..?"
"Freak from outer space."
"Okay."
"Sometimes they find a way to defeat the chip. They're called hybrids."
"He's unique. We'll just have to do a little bit more."
"What do you mean..?"
"Heard about the new theory they've come across..?"
"What is it..?"
"It's experimental."
"The camera..?"
"Yeah."
"Seems perverse."
"This one is different."
"We need to see what he sees."
"We need to know what he knows."
I am in another room.
I see a figure in the distance.
The figure is bright white, with pale skin, black eyes, no real nose, and hardly any lips.
He is now face-to-face with me. I know this is not real. The other dream felt more real.
I am scared. is he studying me..? What does he want..?
I wake up, and stand beside my bed.
I think to myself, "What just happened..?"
"I do not feel the same as I did before I slept."
Silence.
I try to listen.
"Are they gone..?"
I walk into the hallway, and see my parents door is open. I walk up to the door, and peer into the room, and I see they are both in bed.
"What is wrong..?"
"Nothing, just go back to sleep. I think it's working."
They are both awake.
I can not hear their thoughts.

Age 5
"Mom, can I go outside..?"
"Sure," she smiles.
I direct myself first to my room, to go get a toy gun from my bedroom.
It is a nerf gun.
"I want to play in the yard." I said, when I got back.
"Do you want Kyle to come over..?"
"Yes! We can play Nintendo..!"
She smiles.
Dad walks into the room.
Jan said, "It's finished."
"What is -- the book is finished..?" Dad asks. She was finished reading the Stephen King book that she was reading at the time. She now had time to spend with Brendan.
"I printed the last draft today."
"Oh my God, it's been a long time coming." "They found a way to get the manuscript out to people in Maine faster than other people."
"Well, I just feel like things have been getting better with him, and everything. Ever since we talked to them about it, it's all worked out, and it's starting to seem like we really might have a nice son right here."
I walk back into the room, but I kind of overheard their voices. I wonder what they were talking about -- "talked to them about it" -- about me, about what..?
I feel a slight pain in the back of my head.
"What are you talking about, you guys..?"
"You!"
"Really."
"Yes!"
"Why."
"We are going to buy you some new Ninja Turtles toys, and a new Nintendo game tonight, just because you've been so good, and wonderful lately!"
"A new game!"
"Yes!"
"Oh my GOD! I CAN'T WAIT!" He waited, anyway.
"I WANT A COOL GAME!"
Lee runs out of the room, and comes back with a different nerf gun. "I'm gonna fight aliens with this gun instead. It has a better laser pulse ray." They laugh.
"Go, have fun."
I run outside.
Sometimes, I think . . .
Even though I am young . . .
I know more than the people around me even if they are older than me.
I think I know what they were talking about.
I don't remember.
I am going to fight the Zebarach.
I will kill him with my pulse ray, for making me so young, when everyone else is so old.
I will kill him for making me so young.
Die, aliens.
Die.
"Fuck you, aliens!"
"Did you hear that..?"
"Should we give them a call..?"
"No, you left Outer Limits on last night."
"Oh, shit."
"I don't think it's telepathic."
"He CAN'T read our minds anymore."
"No, Buddy, he's normal now."
"Every child has to learn how to speak."
"Maybe he didn't want to learn."
"He sure talks a lot now."
"DIE! DIE! DIE!" He screams from the backyard, shooting darts at trees, and into the air, imagining his perceived enemies.
"Well, it definitely worked."
"Yeah, he's after aliens, instead of us."
"Does he realize he's fighting his own kind..?"
"It's the sad part."
"Maybe that's why I like him so much."
"Maybe he's different from the other one's."
"God, why did we have to do this..?"
"What..?"
"The cake, it's all messed up. Look."
"Shit, the frosting is dripping."
"He won't like that. He likes his food perfectly made. I like that about him. Let's fix it. Okay."
They fix the cake with new frosting.
They write the name "Lee" on the top, and his age.
I come back inside.
They sing happy birthday, but Kyle is sick, so I am kind of sad I couldn't have more friends over.
Not that I don't like my friends, but they're all kind of stupid.
I ignored them this whole time. Everyone has been playing outside, or with my toys, and just taking advantage of my space and time.
Today was actually my birthday party.
I just wanted to play outside and fight aliens instead.


Age 6
+ 6 + 6 = 18.
I'm six, now, though.
Sometimes when I am asleep, I still hear things.
I am quiet.
The world is quiet, but I hear things.
There are sounds, and they travel. Like magnets in the air. Like waves made out of light. Like m pulse laser gun I use. I am not sure.
I wonder if aliens are really after me.
I will fight them to the death.
For taking the voices out of me.
I hate aliens.
I can't wait until I am older. Like twenty. Or maybe twenty-three. Then I'll know what to do. Then I'll be able to change things. I will be a man. I will have a girlfriend. I will be cool. Why am I saying this..? These are not my words. Why am I thinking this..? I don't even know what a girlfriend is. Who is saying this..? Hello..?
"Silence."
The voice in my head said the word "silence."
So I became quiet.
"You are young. Those times will come some day in the future. But not right now. You must go through the dark night. The dark night. The dark night. Until your soul is seen."
"What is the dark night..?"
"I am the dark night."
"Where is the dark night..?"
"The dark night is eventual. The dark night is life. The dark night is everything."
"Now sleep."
I become quiet, and then I sleep, at the command of the voice, talking about "The Dark Night."
"Wake up."
"You have to go now, honey."
"Okay." ..
"Why, though." ..?
My backpack is packed, and I am starting my first day of kindergarten kind of at a strange time I think. But I guess I am ready.
I didn't like pre-school.
No one wanted to fight aliens with me.
They all wanted to fight each other instead.
That's why I like to play alone.
Maybe I am meant to be alone some day.
"There is lots of time."
"Okay."
I had a lot of time to get ready. I slept well. The voice helped me. Even though I don't know whose it was. They told me about something. I forgot what it was. Maybe I will remember later.
The morning is very dark.
I go to school on a bus, with a blue backpack, and my parents take photographs of me. I am making "Yes!" arm-motions like I can't wait to start my first day of school. I am actually very excited, because now I get to meet other people. I might even be able to find some people who can help fight aliens with me some day.
"I'm going to school!"
"Yes!"
The bus arrives in about seven minutes.
I remember that kindergarten was very easy.
We mostly played, ate snacks, and shared toys at show-and-tell.
When I got home from my third day of school, I said, "School is stupid."
"What!" They laughed.
"All we did is the same thing I do here. We just played, took naps, and had fun."
"Well, didn't you learn anything..?"
"Ansel likes my toys."
"Oh." ..
"God .."
"I thought you learn stuff."
"Well, don't worry. You will be in the first grade next year."
"Is the first grade better..?"
"Yes. The first grade will be better."
"Am I weird..?"
"What!" She laughs. "No, you're not WEIRD!" And gives me a hug.
"I gotta get the aliens."
"Okay." She looks concerned all of a sudden.
"Do you want to play outside..?"
A long pause.
I smile, with great sincerity, look up, and then say, "Yes."

Age 6

I am in my bed. I have a dream. It is a good dream. "His eyes are turning." "I've noticed." I hear them in the hallway. Why do they talk about me, instead of TO me..? Are my eyes brown..? I get out of bed.
"Did my eyes change color."
"Yes."
"Why."
"It happens when you get older."
"Why aren't my eyes blue anymore."
"Uh--" Dad seems a little angry. "They just aren't blue anymore."
"Okay."
"Can I look in the mirror..?"
I see my eyes are now brown.
I wait for the bus, and get ready for school the next day.
The bus drivers name is Sue.
She is mean.
I like her anyway.
We get to school, and I find out my teachers name is Misses Brown.
She is nice.
I like her very much, and sheems to like me too. I told her about the aliens, and how I wanted to be a ninja some day. She was interested, and asked if I liked the Ninja Turtles. I cried, "YES!" "The Ninja Turtles Arcade Video Game is my favorite video game to play with Kyle..!" "OH, you're friends with Kyle..?" "Yes. He is my best friend. Kyle is my best friend."Great! Well, I really look forward to having you in my class _______." I respond with a smile, and then walk straight to an empty seat, prepared for my first lesson in school.
"Kyle is in a different class..?" I asked her. "Okay." I said. "Do I get to see him sometime, is there recess like at Kindergarten..?" "We have recess after lunch, where you can see Kyle." "Great!" I said, and then when class began, we learned about spelling, math, and a few other things that really made me like Misses Brown.
I was very good at math and spelling.
Misses Brown told me she thought I was "A very intelligent young boy."
I don't know what intelligent means.
When I asked her, she just said, "You'll figure that one out on your own, I think."
"Okay." I said.
"When is recess..?"
"Right now..!"
Lunch was just ending, and we all got ready.
I went outside, and fought aliens with Kyle.
He said he liked his teacher too.
We both had a chance to learn, in our own way, I guess, but at least I got to see him.
"Do you want to spend the night tonight..?
"A sleep-over..?"
"I have to ask my mom."
"Okay."
"I'll ask my mom too. Who should call..?"
"Can you call me..? I might be outside, but I always hear the phone."
"Okay."
Misses Brown said that Kyle was too smart for his class. So Kyle was changed from his teacher to my teacher, and the next day after our sleep-over we sat beside each-other in class. It was almost kind of strange. I don't know if Kyle is really as smart as she thinks. But she says she thinks we are going to both be ninjas some day, if we want to be, and that she is very happy we are both in her class.
There is a play, and we are both going to be playing "tourists." We are going to dress like Ninja Turtles, and dance to the Pee-Wee Herman music. We will be filmed. It will be awesome.
Kyle came over the next day, and we played outside with G.I. joes in the grass. I played the Terminator, and he was Jean Claude Van Damme.
I was Michelangelo, and he was Leonardo, when we played the Ninja Turtles. I acted like a party dude. I danced to the music. Kyle was awesome. We were the hit stars of the play. Everyone was laughing and clapping when we came out from the bathroom dressed like Ninja Turtles, and the music started. She timed it just right. I like her for letting me in the same class with Kyle, but sometimes I think she might have done it just for me . . .
I had a dream that night, and I was outside.
I saw a bright light in the sky.
Then I saw another bright light in the sky.
There were no stars.
The bright light was moving toward another light. The two lights were moving towards one another. I thought about it, but I didn't really care. I don't care what happens, I thought. Who cares..? So I looked down for a while, and stopped paying attention to the lights in the sky. I thought about Kyle instead. "People matter. Not space aliens. I want my friends. I want to play video games, and learn in school. This is stupid. Get me out of this dream." I look back up at the sky, and one of the lights has moved away from the other one, and is now flying in a different direction. "See," I said. "You can't do anything."
"Fuck you, aliens!" I scream, as I wake up, panting in the bed addled with stuffed animals, toy guns, and G.I. Joes.
"I am not going to sleep as much anymore."
"I was just born." "I've slept so long already, in-between lifetimes." He moved his hands really fast, for a moment. His dad saw him kick a toy, and then glanced off.


Age 7

My parents are angry at each other. I hear noise in the kitchen. It sounds like things are being moved around very quickly. My dad screams a strange word that rhymes with This. I don't know what this means. I will try to remember it. I think it is another fake word. I hear my mother start to cry, and she goes into the living room. I can hear the TV turn on. I hear she starts to scream. And then she turns off the TV. Something is wrong with the TV. "Get the fucking thing going, or what..! What..! I miss the whole damned thing..!" My father seemed angry. Is he angry about the TV..? Sometimes I think TV's were invented just to give us a way to remember that what we see is really important to us. But, I don't really know what my Dad watches on TV. He says they are "Rated R" movies, and I am not allowed to watch them. They are movies meant for him only. I hear another scream, the door slams, and my mother is crying. I hear a loud sound.
The next morning, I wake up, and the TV is smashed in the middle of the living room floor.
My Nintendo is also broken, because it must have landed on it.
There wasn't a game in it, though, so at least they didn't break my games.
I don't think I'm going to play Nintendo here anymore.
They probably would buy me a new one, but what's the point..?
It's all just a waste of time anyway.
"We're sorry." They said, both approaching me, "If you heard any arguing last night. We will buy you a new nintendo." "I don't want a new nintendo." "Why not..?" "Because it's broken." "So..?" "We can buy you a new one, _______." "I want to go see Kyle. He didn't break his." "Did you hear us, _______..?" "We can buy you a NEW ONE..!"
"Why do you yell at each other..?"
They become quiet, and just look at me for a while, and then each other.
And then they look back at me.
"Because of me..?"
"No..!"
"Money is something you'll learn about when you're older." He knew why, maybe it might not be the best time to rest, since he was just born.
"I want to take a nap."
I don't usually like to sleep, but right now I really wanted to.
I went to my bed, and I went back to sleep.
The next day they bought me a new nintendo.
It worked better than the last one.
"I'm sorry." My mom kept saying to me.

* * * * * *

Is that a fake word too..?



Age 8 

I was born.
 grew up, and I learned once that words were an abstraction.
I heard voices, also, when I grew older.
They did something to me.
I don't know what happened anymore.
I don't remember. I seem to be getting bigger. My body is changing. I am different. Every year, I seem to become another person. They put me into a new class, a new grade, and I keep finding the same thing.
I am not . . . the same.
My parents don't trust me.
They speak to me in half-tones. "Obscurity" and "The Obscure" is my God. Broken language. Sad, poorly referenced, "other phrases." Somehow, he thought of "fraze," -- though. A weirder, even stranger way to say things .. why, he didn't know.
Euphemisms.Trick-words. Half-references. Mental obfuscations. Carefully-crafter remarks. The delusional aliens above .. honest truths. Direct lyrics. Powerful phrases .. "Power-phrases." ..
Foolish speak.
Jargon.
And lies.
They are strange. They are all strange.
What have I done..?
Was I too "honest" -- once..?
What do they want from me..?
I wake up, and I don't feel like these are my thoughts. "What is that..?" I see a image in my mind. It is a face. He has dark green eyes. He looks like me. And he is a lot like me. The face appears to be staring at me with a nice smile. But he is older. He is stronger, but he is also not the same.
He seems to know something.
He knows what I know, but he is different.
Is that me..?
That day at school, I met a new friend.
Y was a cool kid, with a lot of questions.
He was raised with a lot of brothers and sisters, and a lot of control in his own arguing family, because I guess his mother and father were divorced. He was also friends with Kyle, and the three of us started to hang out more. We spent a lot of time together pretending we were soldiers at war at recess, and I was always the bad guy, because I knew nobody else wanted to play the bad guy -- but somebody had to. So I always played the bad guy.
I did pretty good at this.
I said a lot of cool stuff I heard in movies, and repeated what someone told me are "one-liners" to my friends whenever I shot or killed them with my laser rifle.
I was the king of recess.
Things changed, though, when we got older.
Y started asking questions about girls, and about our own identities.
He had too many questions. So, he asked even more, just for the hell of it. The way things changed was a fast evolution. Brendan seemed crazy to everyone ..
I was just trying to make it clear to him, "Look. There are aliens we need to fight some day. This is important. Who cares about girls when we have ALIENS who are trying to get us..!"
He kind of understood, but I don't think he ever took me very seriously.

"Whatever."
My teachers started to take a strange liking to Y, and seemed to notice the evolving friendship between us that was a little more advanced than what Kyle had to offer.
Kyle still hung out with me a lot, and Y didn't really enjoy video games as much as we did. We liked Double Dragon II, Skyshark, Contra, TMNT II, TECMO Bowl, and finally NBA Jam when the later system finally came out.
Finally, Y asked me one day. "Do you think about it sometimes..?"
I didn't know what he was talking about.
"It..?"
"You know, IT . . ."
"Um, I guess I don't know what you mean. What is it..?"
"Forget it. I'll just ask somebody else."
I was confused, and just kind of stood there, while he started to talk about something else, and how he thought we should get new G.I. Joes soon, and watch the Predator movies at his house sometime.
Still, he seemed kind of sad, or like -- not impressed that I didn't know what it was.

Age 9

"Sometimes you're partial to me. Why can't you be complete..?" "I need more than fragments..? What are you talking about..?"
Mom was writing her book.
She was angry at someone on the phone.
Dad was outside smoking a cigarette.
I think it was a cigarette.
Something is happening.
I feel like there is something wrong.
They told me that my grandfather is sick.
I don't know what this means. "Does he have the flu..?"
"No," they said.
"Will he be okay..?"
"We are not sure."
I didn't know what this meant.
The next day, I woke up, and my parents seemed very sad.
They said he was in the hospital.
I waited to go to school, when my mom said, "Okay. Have a nice day at school." But she seemed sad. I didn't know why.
I waited for the bus, and I saw Y in his usual seat.
We talked, and I told him I wanted to play G.I. Joes sometime.
"We might get too old for that stuff sometime." He said.
I actually couldn't really hear what he was said. I was thinking about them.
The next day, I visited my grandfather in the hospital.
He laid on the bed, with his white hair, and appeared to be sleeping.
He looked serene, and at peace. My parents said I should talk about my memories with him. I did.
When I got home, it was the next day that I was told my grandfather had died.
I was told I could stay home from school for a week.
My parents argued in the meantime.
Her book was not being released.
And Dad was sad.
I waited for the bus, and didn't want to talk to Y. He asked me why, but I had no good reason to offer him. I went to school, and I thought about my first teacher Misses Brown. I didn't like my teachers now, and school was different in the fourth grade.
When I got to school, I couldn't really think about anything but my Dad and my Mom.
They seemed to have haunted me that day.
I tried to listen to the teacher, but I was struggling in math class.
I blinked my eyes.
The teacher drew what appeared to be archaic symbols on the board, and spoke of some concepts I had no relationship with. I guess these might have been words.
I didn't care.
Then, when class ended, the teacher asked me why I was staring out the window the whole time.

She said, "I have someone who needs to speak with you."
The teachers name was Ms. Herd, and she was a very ugly, horrible-looking, mean, short-haired, and kind of manly woman.
She said, "Why don't you hear what is going on in class..?" I didn't understand. I wanted to know why someone named Ms. Herd was telling me to listen in class. I couldn't focus. None of it made any sense. I just got angry, and said, "Okay. Thank you. I understand. Can I go to the bathroom..?"
So I walked to the bathroom, went down the steps to the bathroom near the handicap elevator, and walked into the bathroom all by myself.
I started to cry.
I cried, and I could not stop.
I don't know why.
I thought.
"I don't want to hear you."
"I don't want to listen."
"I don't even want to see you."
"And if you want to look at me . . ."
"You'd better look at this."
So I took a paper towel. One of the hard kind from the old paper towel dispensers, and I rubbed it against my eyes. I didn't stop. I kept rubbing it against my eyes, until they turned red. I did not stop. I kept rubbing, until the tears became a part of me. I walked out of the bathroom, and I was now no longer just brown-eyed. My eyes, it seemed, were always changing. So, Y asked me why I looked like I was crying, and I said nothing. I had no answer. I just went back home. The next day, I woke up, and looked in the mirror.
Underneath my eyes. On my eye-lids, I had what appeared to be two black eyes. I looked like I had been beaten up. I went to school, and everyone was afraid of me.
I didn't know what to say.
The teachers asked, but I had no answer. 
They all thought I had been punched.
I didn't like the attention, so I decided to go to the nurse and lie that I was sick. She would believe me, I thought, since I appeared to have two black eyes. She sent my home with my mother, who was very sad, but she was told nothing.
I kept it completely to myself.

















Chapter 1.0: Def

"Chatbox"
Chat Box
WWWeb Chat

(The World Wide Web)

1995


Def, at the age of thirteen, was originally named S.

His handle, in the Deftones chatroom, was "Def" and he hacked over 100 people in the span of a years duration, as well as fourteen students of his elementary school; by the age of thirteen.
He could "clone" which was an ancient hacking technique that involved being able to not only view a private conversation, but alter the conversation by inputting text into the chatters text-boxes. Def had the unique ability to "make people say things" through this ancient ability known as "cloning" which he learned from the hackers Crode and ESP (guitar players from California) – and yet, never was told the actual knowledge about the URL code to hack chatbox.com, but he learned this "intuitively" through a new ability in our generation, known as technopathy.
He was only nearing puberty when he committed the bulk of his crimes.
Later, getting involved in chatrooms more deeply, Def hacked the gaming community known as Space Hockey, which is a long-standing 2D multiplayer game, and continues to deal with the members of this community presently to build maps, and systems, since he has been forgiven for his crimes. However, some administrators are still wary of his opinions, he still presently logs in under the name "Squee" to communicate with his long-standing net friends. He joined the UB community around the same time of his life, not far off from when he turned fourteen – but more on that later.
At the time, he was building websites on Expage, the newfound bomber website, and was practicing his 
new lyrics to become a musician later in life. 


1


He logged in, to Chatbox.com, and typed in the name "Def."

"To be honest," Def reports, "The only reason why I ever hacked anyone is because they hacked me first. My entire career was just revenge. A prolonged back-hack."

In fact, it is almost as though (as an investigator) he only hacked other hackers. Though Def was essentially just a juvenile hacker, he owned chatrooms, and had profound charisma in text environments. 
When it first happened, he was chatting in the Defchat:

He typed: "What does anyone know about Deftones new music..?"

And then Def wrote, "I'm a effing idiot."
He was humiliated, and realized for a moment he actually thought it to be a ghost, or spectre, or even a mental illness that inspired the words. The words, on his screen, seemed to have arrived from nowhere.
Instead, someone had typed in the "secret URL code" and remotely hacked his text-box.
He thought to himself, "How did Crode hack me..?"
He pondered this question for a while.

Then he realized, "maybe it was the URL code..?"

He looked at the URL code, and he noticed a glitch.
He saw the exploit with his eyes.
He typed in the address http://www.chatbox.com/name=?handle=inputmessagehere
In this "code" he noticed the "input message here" option.
What does that mean..?

Is that how they cloned me..?
So he typed in the address, to his URL bar, and entered in a random person's name.
He saw their private text, in a separate screen.
He then noticed he had the ability to enter his own text into the text box field.

x

And he did.

He wrote, "I am hacking you." His innocent victim. An experiment.
And as the person was in the chatroom, this is what happened . . .
Person One: Hey
Person Two: Yo
Person One: How you doin' today..?
Person Two: I am hacking you.
Person One: What..?
Person Two: I didn't just write that.
Person One: WTF.
Def, after being hacked by Crode and ESP, decided upon revenge against the system. He sought the end of it completely.
A "Good Hacker" (those hired by the government, to exploit weaknesses in systems, and thus protect them) knows how to do this with what is referred to as an Exploit.

Def, who knew the URL code, and the exploit, also knew a little bit of HTML code from his days of designing Deftones fansites, such as The Killer Deftones Page, and other sites, hosted on Expage.
He realized, "what if I turned the URL code into a program, and made it so that other people could use this capability, without all the coding bullshit..?" In the end, Def thought up the idea, that if he could "distribute" attacks against chatbox, he wouldn't get himself into trouble. He could teach other people the code, and they would all destroy the chatroom for him. Collectively. He decided, "I will give out the code. I will share it with everyone."
With Notepad.exe:
He started to write.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Deftoolz v1.0</TITLE>

Eventually, he wrote "The Deftoolz Hacking Program v1.0" – an HTML form that allowed the user to input anyone's name into the text field, based on codes he copy and pasted from the chatbox website, and other javascript sites, employing his gifts as a visual artist, to write the hacking programs. With the first program he developed, a user could enter a user's name, and then alter the user's text, or even spy on their private conversations with a button-click. He created "cloning" programs. Which, are highly unknown, and totally unfindable on archive.org today, though only five years ago, the site could be found in clear detail . . .
He also invented screen bombs, and other "Toolz" to alter the chatroom, with hopes to shut down the chatroom – or (maybe, only subconsciously) of simply wreaking revenge against Crode and ESP.
During this time, Def still continued to distribute attacks against the chatroom . . .
Def: Hey.
Pimp1: Yo.
Def: Anyone..??
Pimp1: I got two, today.

Def: Thanks.

He wanted the system down.
After he wrote over 14 HTML programs devised to hack Chatbox.com – and he had several that were (in fact) "ripped off" by other users of the chatroom.

It is true, he even built a ASCII macro program, for presenting pictures made out of text, to be printed on the text screen, which was code stolen by other users.
His work grew so popular, that people started to take credit for his work. Half-amused, he almost didn't mind, until Screen Bomb, and his dreadful wife showed up. Def made a very artistic program, in fact, that could change words into images – and paste them in a flash onto the chat screen. It was called an "ASCII Macro Program". These became very popular, once he had invented the concept. When the idea was taken, the chatroom was definitely nearing its end. Once people started using "open source" editors to steal Def's code, that he wrote at the age of thirteen, they were progressing, to destroy the chatroom – as he had hoped and planned for, though it was happening so quickly. (Although they seemed to think they were exploiting Def, a resounding question, has always been, as to whether he wanted them to or not).
Finally, one day, Def logged in to the main Chatbox website, and saw Screen Bomb in the chatroom. He talked with him directly, and S.B. made threatening comments. This marked the end of Def's interest in the chatroom. It had officially been over-run by rednecks, miscreants, online net-trolls, and even other more skilled hackers.
In the end, the chatroom was eventually – collaterally – shut down by the same crude hacker (a redneck, in Def's opinion) – who even had a wife online, in the sense that Def grew so incensed with his mis-use of the programs, and excessive control over the systems, he desired to shut it all down. 

Still, while Def fought with Screen Bomb, and his “terrible wife,” he continued to hack the chatroom on his own personal basis, whenever he felt like it, checking in, occasionally, with his resident “workers.” However, less and less, as time went by.

So, it was officially the end. After he realized people were officially stealing his programs, and actually taking credit for his work, he decided to shut the entire Deftoolz website down.

Sometime, toward the end of 1998, Def logged in to Go.com – original text, which was later deleted from archive.org – that was a single paragraph, "I am deleting deftoolz.cjb.net. I am sorry for the fact that our chatroom has not seen the best, but in the end, I hope you all can work it out, and find a better day, in your future lives, to do something better with your time. I am actually not sorry about this. Fuck you all. Goodbye. -Def."

Def logged in to Chatbox only bi-monthly after this, to check on the system he hoped to destroy.
Such that it seemed, the way Def seemed to destroy systems, was to become a part of them and then to exit, and then just “up and leave.” Once his presence is gone, no one seems to care anymore. This will be shown with other systems later on. So Def, was bored, one night, and logged in . . .

There was nothing new, or really going on, and no one seemed to be chatting.

As months went by, he kept logging in, and chatters seemed less and less, with the absence of his presence. Time went by, and the chatters diminished. Less and less, was the chatroom an interest to anyone. For all Def knew, some of the hackers of Chatbox had no concept of the URL code, and relied on his programs alone, which were now bereft from the internet. As time progressed, chatrooms emptied, and chatters stopped talking . . .
The more frequently he checked, the less popular, and less used, and even abused, the chatroom seemed to be. After he had originally given it to them. The chatroom was officially reaching its end.                                                                     x

In a month, or maybe two, Def checked back, and noticed that that the Deftones branch of the chatroom was no longer online.
It had been taken down, or deleted from the internet.

Then, in late 1998, all of the chatbox systems were totally shut down.
Def finally logged off, with his final words left on the Go website for all to see, even on Archive.org – for at least ten years after.           x

Chatbox was no longer findable on the internet by 1999.
x








x

x												          x

Chapter 2.0: Defchat Version Two
“Easy Hacking”
x

With the fall of Chatbox.com, Def was not finished.
He kept pursuing the people who pro-originated this "Evil Chatroom" (in his eyes) – since it had so many exploits, and weaknesses, and “it's administration was flawed” – he claimed – saying, “it had no reason to exist.”

So, one day Def logged in to the internet, and looked up the Deftones website. He saw, in red, a brand new chatroom feature. With a java applet, the administrators of the original Deftones website created a brand new chatroom, which was much harder to hack than chatbox.com.

So, he created a username, P1TcH R10T – and logged in.

It was not but over a month, or maybe two months, he developed a following in the new Deftones chatroom, although practically none of the names were recognized from the previous chatbox system. They were all new faces. He had close to no power here, and for this, realizing the Deftones had now created an unhackable chatroom, he started to socialize more than anything. I wanted to fill in the gaps of my "true evolution" later on. In life, I always also wanted to be known for my great sexuality ..

He developed a persona here, telling people his false age of sixteen, sometimes “cybering” in private chats – though knowing well he was a virgin, but not quite feeling like it if these intimate words were really written by a female who listens to the Deftones . . .
He didn't really care.

No matter where Def went on the internet, it seems that it was always his words that got him where he needed to be. It always seemed could intuit knowledge from people, using his advanced understanding of social engineering, which was the essential way that he hacked. He rarely hacked people himself, by this time, but developed a greater tendency to employ others to do his work for him. I woke up a little later, and added a minor sense of "new verbage" to my latest version of the "honest living dictionary." (a book of words I kept in a notebook, for helping me learn faster while I was young).
Once, I wrote the word, "Cunt" just for fun .. and I scratched it out, 'cause it wasn't useful yet.
During his time in the new Defchat, as well as Virtual Places, another online chatroom, where hackers habituated the rooms with scrollers, laggers, booters, and other hacking programs that I had invented just for fun, at first. Soon, I invented, some, by a group called TBH (The Black Hand) – it was expressed, in his use of chatrooms, that he was starting to become less respectful towards people.

It almost seemed, the less Def got involved with his control over chatrooms, the more disillusioned by other realms. Of course, my "real name" isn't D-E-F. I'm just a dude in real life. But the internet had almost no rules, especially as early as 1995. Out of all the people of the internet, he slowly became one of the most well-known. He was starting to lose control.

X

Developing a way with insulting people, and hurting their feelings through text, and techno-verbal assault. Once, when Def was young, he even studied "how to insult people" for his purposes in the chatrooms that he presently habituated.
In a future day, Def once willed that a suicidal man kill himself, instead of live, stating, "Yes. If you are suicidal, you should die. Go for it."
No one ever heard from that chatter again. The chatlog was referred to later on, once, by another chatter in UB, who felt rather chagrinned by Def's behavior.
Perhaps, around this time in Def's life, he was nearing fourteen, and finally starting to mature, which is why he possessed so much angst; and anger toward the world.

Finally, Def got pissed, and he decided to attack the chatroom, apparently, for no apparent reason.
It was perhaps an extended attack from his Chatbox experiences, but either way, seemed like a needless hoax on anyone's part.
C:/Con/Con

If typed into a windows /run – will crash any Windows 95 or Windows 98 computer.
And give you the "blue screen of death."
Since Def realized he no longer had the ability to clone, and had no real way of getting I.P. addresses other than his self-invented VB "I.P. Machine" (a program that sends a fake address to someone, that when clicked, technically hacks both users, but only one of them is aware of it. He collected hundreds of I.P. addresses from UB this way. More on them later on.) – A decision was made.
"Why not exploit the URL code, all over again..?"

So, Def logged in, and noticed that in the new Defchat, you could make your name into a URL address if you typed http:// before your name. He did this, with a mirror address, that linked to the C:/Con/Con link, which, if you ever type into /Run on your 95, you'll know what I mean. 
Def inputted the code, and whenever you saw him logged in to the chatroom, instead of seeing his usual name (in another name) – his appeared like this:
http://Def.cjb.net/ (otherwise referred to, by actual individuae of the present issue online, which is what this book entails, with the name such as tool-z.cjb.net.)
Instead of the usual private messenger window that would usually appear when you click a user's name, when you clicked Def's name, off goes your computer.
He launched private, and secure D.O.S. attacks against at least ten, twenty, maybe thirty users in the "brand new Deftones chatroom." From his own username. He then gave the code to others, and started
a small-brand cult in the Defchat, where he hosted private conversations, and shared programs with his ..

x

"friends." So it seemed, in spite of the destruction of Chatbox.com – Def was still not satisfied with the presence of these individuals collective on the internet.
Over time, Def was occasionally booted and banned from the chatroom, but they could never stop him from logging back in through a new I.P.
Finally they just gave up.

As a result of this behavior, the new Deftones Chatroom didn't last even close to a year.

There has never been a "Chatroom" associated with the official band page for the nineties rock band, “The Deftones” hosted on the official band website, ever since.
Through his influence, or just perhaps as a basic result of the weakness in their code, the chatroom was shut down very quickly once it was made clear that it was over-run with chatroom bombers, and screenheads like Def. He refused to cease his revenge against the original chat-system. Wherever "Crode" was by this time, probably playing in his cool band in California, Def was certain that all of this was all just a massive back-hack to begin with. He just wanted peaceful, peaceful revenge.

One night, as it is reported, an administrator, who seemed to be in a good enough mood, had the nerve to click Def's name, and received the C:/Con/Con crash. He restarted, and said to Def "That was fucked." And Def replied. "Your chatroom is fucked."

They knew he was right.

It didn't take long.

The new Defchat was deleted, and removed from the internet within about five months, and no longer existed on the internet by 2000.





x2: the new league




x.3 ..



Chapter 3.0: VPChat: The New Chatroom

With the permanent destruction of chatbox, and finally the eventual destruction of Defchat, Def wandered the internet like a ronin without a master, searching, ever-searching for the truth. He scoured the internet for chatroom environments, searching, ever-searching, for new information, new connections, and new places.

Finally, he referred back to VPChat, otherwise known as the old Virtual Places Excite chatroom; the hackers playground, full of various individuals skilled enough to find out almost anything about a random user. There used to be specific websites, hacker websites, hosting what were referred to as "progz" that allowed a user to do anything from destroy a single chatroom with a button-click, or lag out a username (boot) someone, at the same time. There were sometimes even remote attacks. And D.O.S. strikes using scroll-bombers. It was perfect. 
But Def didn't know what he was getting into; he decided to log in, and started chatting around the later ages of thirteen, when he claimed to the people in the chatroom that he was sixteen, and met a girl named Trip99, who he used to log in to the chatroom and see almost daily, nightly, while referring to himself as "Coolidge."
He never committed a single act, in this chatroom, except for relate, and learn from people. Always telling people he was sixteen. Learning from Trip, and others online, he had a secret source of friendship, that his parents had no concept of, since he grew up on the internet, and they grew up on the TV.

They would chat almost every day, about anything. He knew nothing about her, though. She revealed nothing. He knew nothing about her true age. Her appearance. Her location. Nothing.

Then one day, Trip99 just stopped logging in, and Def didn't know why.
She just went away.

Afterward, they never spoke again, and it may have been as a result of this heartbreak that drew Def back into his other, Hydian, miscreantal self.
In these mysterious years of Def's life, he actually learned about how to hack more in terms of the basic tools that existed on the internet, and used a Brute Force Cracker, as well as other programs, to attain hundreds of passwords to dead, defunct websites, "just to see if I could do it." He hacked a porn website, which mysteriously only had one photograph, of a girl lying naked, outstretched. He was too stunned to continue, after this.
x
Especially after he accidentally hacked a “random old woman's website” which appeared to be a point where Def would laugh, for some reason, not knowing why.
Though he never went far with this, it was a rather desperate act to take down random Tripod sites, for no apparent reason. Was he angry..? For some reason, Def could only search for the answers on hacker websites and online sources, and he kept searching.
He will find the answer.

Def was on his way toward deeper friendships on the internet, or "any" friendship at all, since he was so anti-social, and his tendencies reflected that.
He found the hacker website hosted by someone named Kb, and downloaded Sour Yellow Sounds by the hacker-musician, Mr. Disco – and he listened to the song 12th moon, the electronic driving beats programmed by a simple computer, and basic machinery.
He was inspired.
Back then, he knew nothing more than how to program beats on a simple, and crude mixing device known simply as The Basic Wave Editor.exe.
Def started programming music, and wrote several early tracks in his years, calling himself "Dapper Impurity,” “Maligo” – and other names, supporting that he knew when he turned sixteen, everything would make sense in his life.
He had no friends IRL, and he knew absolutely no one at this time.

For the first time in his life, Def started to turn away from the world of online miscreant behavior, and began working into a more creative media, no matter what his “source inspiration” – had been . . .
He picked up his guitar, one day, and started to strum, and heard something new come out of himself that night.

* * * * * * *

Still, he had lingering feelings about his place on the internet.











While listening to the song, "Another Way Out" by Jonah ..


x


Chapter 4.0: UB

"Nice."

brendan logs in, one day.


When Def played Space Hockey, he was originally on a 56k connection, and pinged about 200 to 250 hops on average. He struggled to learn how to dribble, offend, and play the 2D side-scroller, for months, but in spite of this, he expressed great devotion to becoming a gamer.

He is still a member of this community today, though, as it will always be suggested, his opinions are not respected necessarily by the staff or administration, he still scores more on MiniBall, and believes he "destroys players in close-quarter maps” using "the swivel technique" – a special playing technique he invented using the left and right arrow keys, where the space ship will "intuitively" read the movements of other ships, and lock into them, until attaining the ball. It is known, in fact, that over time, when Def would take breaks from playing UB, his offense would falter, but no matter when he played, his defense never would.
When Def played 1on1 duels with players, he even refused to win, sometimes, out of principle.
Thinking, "I am better than this player. I can't do this." . . . So he would lose either way.
Maybe the word Def stands for "Defined." Maybe it stands for "Default." Maybe it stands for "Definition" in itself – or maybe, it stands for "Defense." Or maybe it stands for “Defiant.”
Who can really say, what he really stood for. Def was now fourteen, and getting somewhat older.
Still, learning about life, he ventured to play, and play, and learn more about people, instead of attack people. He met several online friends during this time, and even joined a newbie squad where he found a neo-nazi squad leader named Spike99, who was a fantastic miniballer, and played so well that Def always knew he wanted to be a part of the game forever.
After a time, Def got so involved in the community, that his old self started to return.
He started to "chat" more than he would play. It was tragic for the gamers to see. The less he played, the more he talked.
As time went on, his nightly outpourings became more and more disenchanting for the other players.
All day, and all night, you would see Def in BRChat, talking to various chatters, and sometimes almost

x

seemingly talking to no one in particular.
He seemed to be growing, but questioning reality, the older he seemed to grow . . .
The hyper existentialist, the believer in a God he is sure "will" exist some day, but does not yet.
Finally, he grew so desperate, that he looked up other chatrooms, and left UB for a period of time, to discover other means for finding other for connecting with people online.
Returning to “Virtual Places” on Excite, he spoke to Daitokai one night, and asked for advice in regards to his abusive home. 

"My father hates me.” He told Daitokai once, “Please, take me away from here. I will travel with you.” He said. “We will live a good life."

“No,” Daitokai said. “You must find your own way.”

I am sure it was hard for him to take this role.

Def, IRL, with his terrible issues with his father, being that his father was a strict, and extremely hard-working man, and Def was only attempting to become a songwriter or audio engineer at this time, it would appear that this only seeing a very jaded, and half-lit part of this individuals life. Def, visited many chatrooms, not to hack them, this time, but more to socially engineer, and find his way into the hearts of whomever he could locate.

He was searching.

Of course, Def was always running progz, and using software to best certain individuals who would piss him off online. He "lagged out" a few chatters, with very specialized "lagging software" that essentially can boot an I.P. address through ping attacks (D.O.S.) – until their names turn gray, and they are officially logged out. And he also performed this feat at least ten times, maybe twenty times, suggesting that, “in the very last time" he attacked anyone in VPChat, was an innocent individual, who was also a hacker, and kind of laughed at him, saying nonchalantly, "Well, I guess someone doesn't like me. lol" Once this occurred, his dream of hacking VPChat had kind of ceased. He decided, "Okay. I guess I'll just . . .”

* * * * * * *

Around this time, Def played other games such as online multiplayers such as Tribes, and explored the universe of gaming through the variant, and far-more-experienced hackers who existed on the net.

His name on Tribes, was .:Engine:.and he was many times hacked by a very advanced juvenile hacker in the game Unreal Gold Edition, whose name was Klingon. Klingon was a fantastic hacker, and had the ability to take over entire servers, and dominate through what appeared to be a superskilled ability with server technology. 

x

Def logged in, to host one of his own Unreal servers one day, to see if anyone would join his own game. Klingon noticed his game in the list, and signed in. Klingon, right away, said, "Whose server is this..?" Def, said, "Mine..?" "Wrong," Klingon responded.
The entire server was taken over in a seconds notice. He then promptly shut it down afterward, again. Def just smiled, and said to himself, "Okay."

His name in Unreal, was ###NARF###, and he used symbols alongside it, to exploit the text bugs he always loved to find in software, allowing symbols, and code to be used in names, such as URL's back in the second generation of the Defchat. 

Though he got booted from his own server, he eventually became a very active player of the game Unreal, and over time developed a short-lived friendship with Klingon.

Klingon, who may or may have not been a female – based on his assumption – was typically coinciding with Def, and promptly shutting down servers wherever the two met.

They used to see each other, and humbly nod, with respect, knowing one another well enough as equals to see that whenever Klingon shut down someone's server. Def generally just didn't care.

Def, over time, grew tired of Unreal, killing monsters with a blaster on a foreign planet, and hanging out on modified servers that were obviously run by more elite programmers.

He had to go back, and spend more time with his real friends.

So he re-joined Space Hockey, and played almost every night of his life, and in the later years, it is reported, in the later years, while he knew the more skilled hacker Dave.X who knew how to build spoofs, proxies, and even steal code. [1] He hacked several of the admins in the UB community, as a result of his rage toward "Zero Tolerance" policies as a result of the administrations determination to stop him from swearing online. This would be his final act.

* * * * * * *

Space Hockey was surely the downfall of Def, as this is where he finally got reckoned by the "admins" and some of the best programmers on the internet. They didn't know who Def was, when he first signed in with his real name B_______, but it is true that he always used his real name, and employed some of the highest forms of social engineering to hack the system.

Saying the F word in chatrooms is not taken politely, and never was from Def. 

He cursed like a machine, ever since being friends with so many online juveniles around the age of thirteen, and having tapped in to so many private conversations just when he was reaching puberty – he seemed to know exactly how to “effect” people, in the most vituperative, sometimes, otherwise, the most “honest” to the “human mind” – “my words could render.

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Yet – since this is how Def kind of spoke, he was often banned, booted, or kicked out of the chatroom of BRChat for his rude behavior when he both chatted or played in Space Hockey.

Def didn't care. He cursed them anyway. Finally, excreting a "fuck you" to one of the admins, after to
whom he despised.

He was then banned for two days.

It was finalized.

“I need to destroy this game.”

So he talked to Dave.X. A highly skilled programmer, who had already stolen the source code of the game, and hacked it as much as he had felt inclined, to which he informed Def about his background activities, and even linked him to a private “UB Hacker Website” not far different from Def's original Deftoolz website for Chatbox.com. “What is the greatest weapon you can use against someone online..?”

Dave thought about it, and had no answer.

Def responded, “Their information.”

This would be referred to later on.

With the employment of the new “Zero Tolerance” rules against language, and in Def's concept, free speech, he knew the system had to be shut down forever.

Dave.X simply said, “Okay..?” And then began his work with Def.

In the end, he hacked not only the highest administrators in the game, but almost every single player of the game, and attained almost 1000 I.P. Addresses, and locations of the users in the game. At this time, it was no longer Def who was teaching others how to hack, but since he had matured so much, he was actually "hired" by Dave.X to work for him at this time, however, it often seemed Def was never sure who was working for who.

Years ago, as it was suggested, Def and Dave used to have late night discussions, much like the days with J_____ in his youth, when he hacked over 10 kids in his elementary school. With Dave, they colluded, shared information, and Dave, with his secret "underground" website, that possessed not only the actual source code to the game of UB, but files that allowed the user to hack the game directly, also included spoofs, and proxies, as well as various other tools designated specifically for hacking UB. Which, Dave always used to avoid his own bans from the game, which he was, in fact, banned a lot, just like Def, hence their united and mutual revenge against the UB system. Though Dave was from the UK, and spoke with a thick accent in voice chat, they had a lot in common, and it almost seemed like a bridging of cultures, in order to take down the system online.

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This is around the time when Def started to write more code, inspired by Dave's programming ability, he began his work on a standalone EXE in VB6, that still runs to this day on Windows 10 – entitled "UniBored" launching perhaps the largest attack the game had ever seen, apart from Viper X. an earlier hacker, who used to shut down the chatroom before Def stepped in. His original primer. The program was a small denial of service program, that had the power to shut down, and literally destroy the entire chatroom in a single button-click, with the help of special RTF code – code from Dave.X, the administrator Frog, Z, and others. It used a "crash code" based on Rich Text Font code, that would somehow, with a single button-click, shut down the entire server all at once, every time.

Def chatted online the administrators of the game, and directly asked them for code on how to alter the chatroom, which they foolishly, and naively gave to him when they assumed he was only building a 
helpful application to benefit the game. He asked present administrators of the game for tips on “How to code a special program to send text from a program, into the chatroom..?” Frog, and Zoinky, revealed various VB code, and tips to him. He smiled, and thanked them, and logged off.

Always, in the matter of hacking, there is a black, gray, and white, but in the concept of being a "good hacker" – one must always remain gray. “For banning users, and repeatedly assaulting them for merely speaking their minds on the internet;” Def said, “the game had to be reckoned with,” So: Def decided.

La Fuerza was a songwriter, with a kind of unique personality, who actually recorded a song written by S. during his UB charade in the early millennium.

He said, "Here, take this program, and tell me what you think of it." Since Def realized he was too clever to do the work himself, and he felt too deeply about having his own I.P. Tracked, he hired a fellow gamer, from his squad, who had no knowledge of hacking, to use the program.

In truth, La Fuerza was just a songwriter from Canada, it is reported.

Over AIM, he sent him the file (UniBored.EXE) directly to La Fuerza.

So La Fuerza responded in kind, and he downloaded the EXE from a zip file over AOL instant messenger's file transfer protocol. He said, “Thanks. I'll see what I can do.”

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That night, the chatroom was quickly shut down, several times, and then for months, sometimes out of pure manic frenzied joy at his own newfound power, it seemed, by La Fuerza, who seemed to be really enjoying his new program – was shutting down the chatroom a lot more than Def had originally expected him to. As suggested, La Fuerza was not a trained hacker. Def turned him into one. What is the true case, is that Def used La Fuerza as a distributor for his code. Eventually reports showed up on the central website, claiming that a hacker has been actively shutting down the chatroom. For months, the administrators would make posts on the game's central domain, “Someone has been hacking our chatroom and game server. Whoever has been doing this is reportedly known as La Fuerza.” La Fuerza means, “The Strength” in Spanish. In the words of Def, he writes, "It was a very discreet, and careful way to hack a system. Basically, you don't do it yourself.” He said. “Just have someone else do it for you. That is true distribution.” 

Though he was underage, his crimes are greatly disrespected by the community today, though it seems out of forgiveness, none of the players are really willing to discuss the matter with him directly. Since he distributed his attack, through another person, it was technically a knock-down-of-the-system type attack, and thus it was clear that someone had to investigate.
An administrator, they glanced down at their keyboard, and quickly meditated on the right person to bring in on the situation with Brendan.
So they hired an elite user to investigate him.

Line was a female UB player, of great mystery, who Def had a great attraction to. She was soon made into an administrator.

Though Def – was attracted to Line, he had no idea she was investigating him through AIM. Line, who merely logged in as _ (underscore) – was a very clever agent to use against the overtly flirtatious Def. While Def continued his revenge against the Zero Tolerance rules, Line was tracking him, and she located his I.P. Address, and finally, his home address, and other tracked him through AIM software, and found found his name, and other information.

Def, without realizing it, though was deeply interested in Line, and her “abilities” – who in fact did simply use the alias _ before she finally called herself, simply "Line" – hacked Def through AOL instant messenger, and found out not only his I.P. address, but his home address finally, in front of him.

She told him, “So you are such and such,” and Def was slightly shocked.

He almost didn't mind, but he knew this was probably the end of his days in UB.

The administrators, however, waited.

Knowing Def had a tendency to “talk” – they expected some form of self-incrimination at some point. However, months went by.

Def, as he played the game, realized, he had the ability to learn about the chatters through his online engineering skills, however, as he chatted with them nightly, sometimes in drowsy, sleepless states, and played game after game for what felt like six hours on end, it seemed that he was getting only more interested in socialization, than his usual anti-social practices, by this unique epoch in his life. He was

X
fifteen.

It all changed, when they officially upgraded the "Zero Tolerance" rules and elected two new individuals, rileyriley, and IBBen to the staff of the UB/BR administration, to make matters worse for Def.

Two, very apparently older, and mature individuals (whoever they were) – One older twenties, the other thirty-five – were put in charge of recapitulating that "no one can use the F word in the chatroom anymore, no shit, no crap, no c___, no nothing. Or else you'll be banned for a year."

"Remember,” They said, “This is called, ZERO TOLERANCE. Stand by the rules, or you will be banned. Up to a year, for repeat offenders."

During the new time of Zero Tolerance. Def just didn't care.
Since Def always cursed, and swore like he had since the earliest days of his youth, (ever since hanging out with his friends online) he had always been naturally accustomed to what he called "verbose language." – He felt this new rule was rather offensive to his way of expression, and opposed it immediately, by speaking his true feelings in BRChat. He considered this “censorship of online expression.”


He was banned, for a night, after a few text skirmishes with the administrators, and even the game server itself; but when he returned, he had a plan.

Though he wasn't quite sure what it was, by now, Def had already attained almost every single password, I.P. address, name, and home address of every administrator of the game of UB. He also owned over 200 passwords to the gamers, and well over a thousand I.P. Addresses on drive beyond that. He continued to collect and gather information, though Dave couldn't quite tell why. The line was getting blurry. Was Def really doing the right thing, or was this just plain and simple rage..?

"Okay."

Over time, almost every single administrator in the game was hacked personally by Dave.X – and then the passwords were all handed to Def on the secret website.

One day, however, sleepless and angry, it was all too much for Def. All the bans. All the repeated bootings. He couldn't take it anymore, so he rushed the “plan.”

* * * * * * *

“So this gaming community fucking sucks.”

“What was that, B______..?”

“Nothing.”


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Def receives a text “warning” for his language.

“Fuck you, Ben.”

“Cool.”

He was booted, and gagged, and then stared blankly at the screen.
Def logged back in, a half hour later, and performed the same action again. Another ban.

An hour later, and almost deciding he was getting tired of all the “online bullshit” – Def looked into his file drives, and located the home address of 3DWarlord, a totally innocent administrator in the game, who had actually never booted or banned Def once. “Oh, this is your name and phone number. Okay.”
He wrote, “So, anyone ever heard of..?” Almost at a slip of the finger.

He posted the information, in the main lobby, in front of at least 100 chatters.

And then waited.

While Dave was persecuted, Def was punished worse, and he was given a one-year ban from the chatroom, and game, exiling his I.P. address for 365 days.

Def was given the worst sentence, since his reputation in the game would be altered completely after this. Dave never returned to UB. Line, who never speaks to him, remains an administrator to this day. He is still regarded as a “figure” in the community.

Def got up from his keyboard that day, and looked down for a moment, and then back up at his computer, and then thought, “Fuck.”











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Chapter 6.0: Waking Up

“I will never hack again.”

.. Def logged out, and officially went “offline” around this new epoch of his life. "I hope some day this all stops." "This type of thing." ... S dwelled for a while. "Entirely stops."
Editing late at night:
He downloaded a new program, the Basic Wave Editor, by Yamaha, which enabled him to mix music with the key-command of CTRL+M.

He was inspired by the hacker kB, from her website, to download songs by an artist named mR. Disco, who allowed tracks for free on the internet under the name “Sour Yellow Sounds.”

This CD was the original, and essential reason why S. made music.

It was a techno CD, made using very basic computers, and sounded like neo-80s, with a hit song entitled “12th moon.” It was the most emotional song, yet.
He recorded guitar, with his mic input, and tracked six new songs, that he shared eventually with students at his high school in Freshmen year. He listened to mR. Disco as he walked through his hallway -- the red hall, late one night. He rushed back and forth.
The song, "Crime and Punishment" droned.
Dressed in black, usually, and appearing pale, and skinny, he would show up with his CD player before class, and show it to some of his friends, one, to whom presently, allegedly works for Microsoft. He looked at himself dressed in black from head to toe and mentally decided, "I will dress this way, without a black shirt on never, for an entire year." "I don't know why."

With songs like “'Tarantulis”' and others Def decided to become a musician, and focus more on his three-dimensional life now.
He made music at either computer, for about two weeks, guitar tracks were recorded slow. They added up, and only general loops were made, yet it sounded like a song, so he kept on going. A song by the Pickups stated, affirmatically, "That's the way. Yet you've got a ways to go." The lyric droned, somewhere in the ether. It was inspiring, enough to write more song lyrics, since he started when he was fifteen. Winternal, his own song, was going to hurt. ..
He recorded more, eventually, toward the end of the school year, getting more involved in mixing, and eventually starting his first song, based on lyrics written in study hall, entitled, “Winternal.”

He shared this song, with a friend online, over AIM, a certain goth girl he was in love with, who had deep emotional problems, as Def always attracted himself to people he could support – and she liked his work also.

Def mixed the song, but never finished its mastering process, and his earliest work has either been lost, or never released except for under the name “KB” (an acronym to him) which could only be referred to later on.

He wrote several songs when he was fifteen, and by this epoch in his life, had moved so far away from him.
. . . . .

In spite of his remarkably petty crimes, "he" felt so weak, scared, and pathetic. And yet, getting stronger, that he now desired a new life altogether. He didn't quite know what. This truly was, the world of computing, and all the internet to go with our present evolution now, in the new millennium .. a way to be. And he was already choosing to leave it behind.

His internet activity, being reduced to infrequent posts on VPChat, and the occasional message with friends online, was usually something like: "I am getting bored today." "I gotta go."

“God,” He would say to her, almost happy, simply because he's able to share it with someone, at the same time angry he has no one to share it with directly. He kept saying strange, boring, simple phrases.
“I don't understand the world.” He logged out again.

At the age of fifteen, he didn't know what more to say.
In later times, it is a common phrase, that he would say, “The world is against me.”

He woke up, one day, and realized he was no longer friends with Dave, no longer a member of any chatroom community save for cryptic engines, and started to log off even more.

This time of his life is only a vignette, because he claims it is the darkest hour, before the sun. He was one year from his fated age; the number he had always prayed to, and finally, on the day of the fifth, he turned sixteen.


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Chapter X.X: Logging Out

“Freaks Like us”


Def, having logged out of UB, remained on the internet, and around the same time he used to log in to a portion of the network called "Freaks Like Us" in VPChat – where he used to post random jargon, nicknames, curse-words, and made-up nonsense, just to amuse himself, and on occasion large groups of people – since Def finally realized he had no where good to “defy” at this point, he kind of just fucked around online, saying, “there was nothing else to do.”

That's when he met Nikki.

“Nikki was beautiful.” He said.

He would spend long nights talking with Nikki, who finally gave him her AIM address, claiming, “she seemed quite lonely, as she attended college to become a doctor or a chemist of some kind, in order to study relationships. About three or four years his senior, and “had no boyfriend.'” Her original photograph, totally tinted green, showed a thin, cute girl with dreadlocks in a unique expression on her face, smiling.

“The bottle of Bacardi, was always sitting there.”

One night, he questioned the bottle, for the first time, under Nikki's influence. He recalls being “dizzy, and that it tasted like Bug-Spray. Dixie Cups aren't meant for shots.” It was the first time he drank.

Then, once, on Christmas, Def took his first trip on DXM.

With the advice of a tragic girl, a 'psychic heart,' he claims (a rather terrific, beautiful girl, it is reported) – name removed – there was an incident when Def was advised to try cough medicine to get high.

He ate eight of the red pills.

But nothing happened.

So he took eight more.

Something happened.

X

All of a sudden, nightmare visages, and images, and transparencies, and fast-paced TV-screens flickering in his mind.

He tripped for almost seven hours straight, on the legal chemical known as DXM (which, in this authors opinion, ought to be a Schedule 1) –

In the fact, he experienced, in one report . . .

"Flying . . ."

"And then I blew air out of my eyes, toward a feather, off of the top of a pillar, in the middle of a city like Gotham . . ." "Then I saw a statue growing out of the ground in the shape of a man." "Then I saw a TV screen inside of my head again." “I saw Hell.” "And it kept changing channels."

The next day, he called Nikki.

It was Christmas Eve.

She was kind enough, and she actually spoke with S. for an entire hour.

She "saved my" Def reports.

He claims he was cured, through conversation, from his drug-illness, and listened to the voice of Nikki for an entire hour, speaking about everything from her boyfriend who used to get stoned by a rock before school, to what it's like to live, to what it's like to think about dying. They explored every subject, and they talked all night long.

They talked for almost two hours, and he couldn't seem to get enough of her stories, and her heart, and her ideas. He fell in love with her, all over again. Yet as he came down, he finally slept, thinking about her voice, the next morning, still, he woke up blurry-eyed, and walked past the Christmas tree, with a pale, and very stunned look on his face . . . he didn't know what was wrong.

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Chapter 7.0: Rightness
“Turning Sixteen”

Def logging out of the internet, meant S. logging in to reality.

He saw music, where he used to see only “Information.” Waveforms, and peaks, and troughs.

At the age of sixteen, Def reports there has never been a happier time in his life.

He claims, even when he turned sixteen, he used to wake up in bed, listening to “The Awful Ache” by the Australian band The Church who were made famous by the Darko soundtrack, and enjoy each morning with this repeating song – a sense of lightness in his body, and a sense, of what he referred to as “rightness.” That was, a unique form of justice, formed by one's own “unique decision.”

Lying in bed, stretched out, hearing the waves, and focusing on the sounds, Def, no longer online, and now turning into more of the technician, was getting more professional with his guitar playing, and had even taken lessons from the owner of the nearby guitar shop.

Still, he occasionally talked with Nikki, and another girl, who he had his online romantic feelings satisfied for, around this time, and would describe his music to them, through words. He went from the beginning of the song, to the end, and even described how the songs were made.

With his ban from UB now run out by this time, he still hardly logged in, except to talk to Pyr0, or his other internet friends. He was more interested in the real world now.

He told Nikki about his feelings about the world, but never revealed his feelings for her.

Always occluded, and shut in, Def was silent, and kept quiet during these years. As it is reported, he spoke very little in his teenage years, and practically took a vow of silence during this time. He was reported to be “The Quiet Type” by girls in high school.

Spending time with the “goth clique” – always dressing in black, he got along with all of the neo's, punks, hipsters, and scapegoats of the school. Dark haired, pale, and skinny, he never knew how to dress until later on, and yet of course was always insecure about his appearance in school.
He noticed the girls in school, but still, since he was so quiet, he tended to veer away. Saying, “They often seemed to have older boyfriends, and it appeared usually that girls went for older guys.”
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Listening to industrial rock, techno, heavy metal: Thrill Kill Kult, to Ministry, to the Deftones, to Fear Factory, and Professional Murder Music, or anything no one else had heard of, he was inspired to write lyrics in study hall, and he wrote the first original lyric to Rightness in school.
He wrote his first prophecy, later on.

This is, again, as with fifteen, another mysterious year of Def's life. Though it was perhaps his brightest, he was not sharing much of himself with the internet, world, or anyone, but seemed to be very quiet, and kept everything to himself.
One day he wrote “001100000111” inside his locker, not knowing what it meant.
Def, was associated with few, but still had some online connections in life at this time.
S. – his other side, was a songwriter, and continued on his work toward understanding the world of audio via his wave editor.
On his birthday, when he turned sixteen, he received a new white ESP LTD.

By this time, his playing ability was greatly improving.

He strummed nightly, and recorded electronic blues with his guitar, always in power chords.
Sensitive about his vocals, returning to Def on occasion, he used to scour teen chats to find, “someone who will record vocals for me.” But to no avail.
For his first few tracks, he used to lower the vocals of his tracks to the lowest conceivable level so his voice could hardly be heard.

It all kind of changed when he logged in to Voice Chat one day, on Yahoo. (Another hackers playground, incidentally, not a fun place to share your personality, in the end, he found). He found his voice more expressive, and cocky, when it was shielded by a screen. Girls seemed to take a liking, also, which impressed him. One night, two girls in particular inquired much about him.

Def, then, inspired by his recent online activity, logging back into UB, after his prolonged ban, was no longer the juvenile online miscreant.
He said, “Hey,” under his real name, and played a game of Space Hockey. 
When he returned, he asked about Voice Chat, or what was going on with Roger Wilco, and the end-result was that he made a few friends, via his personality alone, instead of the usual text transmissions.

He played regularly, started his own squad, called TRF (The Rogue Faction).
The squad developed 20 active-member roster.

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Once, all 20 of them were logged in to the chat at once. He only recruited what he referred to as the, “newbies, renegades, hackers, and the jerks of the internet.”

During this time, he spent much of his online hours discussing his personal life, his future, and his interest in music, with his friend Hobbs, who had no feet.

Hobbs was born with no feet, or at least, they were amputated when they were born. He has shown photographs of his prosthetic legs, and describes the various issues he has to deal with in having essentially just knees. Knowing this, S. always felt for Hobbs, whose online name was Pyr0, and they held an online friendship well over 7 years, before each went off to college, and strayed from the others life, simply through responsibility alone. S. reached out in following years, but Hobbs has never responded. Last thing he knew, he must have skimmed over Def's online FB profile, and decided, “this person has not changed.” One way or other, S. is relentless. “I found him again years later,” He says.

In the meantime, Def lived a more distant life from the net.
He had less and less to say online.

He logged out from the internet, again, and again.
S. loaded up his Wave editor, and started working on music more devotedly. And he says, “I started to move more into the present tense.”
“When I was sixteen, it was the happiest time of my life. For this reason, I remember very little. It is almost as though I did not have many 'thoughts' during my sixteenth year. I meditated much. The entire year flew by, as though a dream. I slept long hours. I always told people on the internet I was sixteen years old. Once I was actually sixteen, I felt divine. I would lie in bed, listening to the Donnie Darko soundtrack, in 1999, and suffer no pain whatsoever. I felt light. I felt supreme. I felt like God.”
S. wrote the song “Rightness” in his sixteenth year, producing the song for his father to hear later on, after a prolonged argument about getting a 'job' that summer. S. wanted to be independent instead.
The song was six minutes long, and had obscure vocals.
It is lost, to this day, “but may be some day recovered on disc,” He wrote:
In spite of all of his arguments, and disagreements with his father during this time, he will always say, “Sixteen was the best year of my life.”







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Chapter 8.0: “Seventeen”

“The Worst Year Of My Life.”


“Is death, sometimes, perpetuated by another, or do we all die, through a hand somehow found, or forced through a design only existential to our own power..?” – Diary notes.

Is there a push..? To reach the final hour..?

At the age of seventeen, Def, moving more into S., was much more involved with people, and the three-dimensional world.
However, also, during this time, would be the greatest trauma he ever experienced in his entire life. No matter what, nothing could be worse than this song.
S. – his IRL existence, decided to write a song. He started penning the lyrics to an idea, about a concept called “Committed” about a man who becomes hospitalized, only to fall in love with a nurse, or one of the patients, who eventually kills him upon his escape from the hospital. The song was never released, but it was actually excessively worked on, for at least six hours a day, for over one, or maybe even two months time. A constant project. A prophecy.
During this time, it was made clear to S. that his grandmother, who was called Nanny, had grown ill of cancer.
His reaction to this was to watch movies late at night, and work on music, ignoring the pain of the world, until one day, when in his most positive motion, he heard her voice over the wire, and she was telling him about her recent health issues, and suggested she come to live with him and his family, then, just him and his parents, as his two sisters were “now in college.”
Nanny, as they called her, was slated to live in their home, for as long as it took for her to find peace, whatever that meant. S. thought much about death, but he never knew he would be confronted with it in his teenage years.

During this time, he spent much more hours in school with his goth friends, wearing chain-covered pants, band t-shirts, and always dressing in black. He remained quiet, and hardly spoke to anyone in class.
S. knew nothing, about death, in actuality, and he was not prepared for this event, because the form of


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cancer she possessed was so advanced, so actively progressive, he had no idea what form of life he was in store for after this invitation.
S. waited, and finally Nanny arrived, sometime midway through his seventeenth year. It was winter. And she was sad.
“I'm sorry.” right away, she said, as though tired with herself, and seemingly angry at herself for the fact that she was ill.
As S. lived, very closely, to Nanny, in fact, more than most people during the end of her life, he often found himself alone in the house with her, while she rested in her recliner.
Since S. was always walking home from the Route 3 intersection, after school. Finding himself talking to her briefly after school, he would help her with anything she needed during the day, while his parents were typically busy at work in the meantime.
She ailed, while he worked on his song, “Committed” – and he would always walk home from the intersection, to see her sitting in the chair, either sitting in the silence, or watching TV, alone.

Always, sitting in the chair.

Day after day, he'd either play UB, or work on his song, sometimes frequenting with his friends before he went home, to rarely share much about his home situation.

One day, when he returned from school, she was not to be found.

He decided, “Is she sleeping..?”
So he logged into UB, to play a game of space hockey.

He played for a little while, when he heard, suddenly her voice.

“B______, she said, why couldn't you hear me..?” “What do you mean..?” She responded. “I fell in the bathroom, and I was on the floor for two hours.”

No tears entered his eyes. “Oh,” he responded.

He got up, and walked over from his computer chair, and sits beside her in silence.
For about five minutes, S. simply sits beside her, on the floor, while she sits in her chair, in the silence, without speaking a single word, until finally getting up, and then walks back to the computer.

Claiming she was consoled, later on, S. was never sure. He didn't know what to do.

* * * * * * *

In school, S. became more social. 

Finding a way into more elite crowds, and getting to know the cooler people in school, he even began to develop subtle relationships with some of the more advanced teachers in video, and photography classes later on.
For now, he was spending much time away from the internet, and more and more time regarding himself as a songwriter, and audio engineer.
No longer the juvenile online miscreant he used to be, he was considering himself to be starting to become a “real human being.”
This was the time he spoke with Michelle, a girl he met during the end of his seventeenth year, and also visited her house several times during this epoch in his life – a girl he loved, and “will probably love forever,” who was always dressed in 'red and black.'
He first saw her, walking through the halls. The way it usually goes in High School.
After passing her by, he felt interested, but doubted he would ever know the girl.
At the beginning of this year, he yet found himself, incidentally, sitting directly across from her at a lunch table, and eventually avidly discussing horror movies, and their interests in music.
He found out that she lives only a short distance from his home, and this seems to mark the beginning of things IRL.
Her birthday is coming up, and S. has been invited.

“Okay, I'd love to go.” He said. He is the only boy invited to the party.
That night, he stares into the mirror – and imagines his “other self.” “Who am I..?” but the decision is not obviously always his own to make, he believes, in this existential quest. He removes his black thread, and a couple of large t-shirts, and starts to sew, in the dim lights of his bedroom, while listening to Pitchshifter, the various black band t-shirts – to fit his skinny body tighter.
He ends the night with a few bench-presses to the Deftones, Dai The Flu, and then falls asleep to the movie Alien. He wakes up later, unable to sleep, and then puts on the Fly, and also watches this until the end.

* * * * * * *

S. walked to Michelle's house. 

It takes him about a half hour, from the Knox road, in Town Hill, to reach his destination, near red rock corner. “Super Junk's” is the loose name of her father's antique store.

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He has two valium in his pocket, reached from his father's dresser, and achieved through a little research on the internet. He found that “2mg” pills of valium can have 'alleviating effects' for anyone suffering from anxiety, or issues with social tension.” 
So, he brought the pills.

“Hey!” S. yells, across the scattered array of antiques, as he inclines himself to meet Super, Michelle's father, a short, gray-bearded man, who looks like an angry version of Santa Claus. He avoids the path, since he can't seem to find it among all the “various debris” and just walks through all the antiques, haphazardly, with a hand reaching forward, to receive a shake from the nervous, and obviously perturbed father of his new girlfriend.
They shake hands, and S. enters the house.
“So, birthday party..!” S. says, far too louder than he expected to hear himself exclaim.
“Yeah.” Super says.
They talk for a bit, and exchange information about themselves. S. brings up how Super used to run a Sandal shop in Bar Harbor, and forces the man to reminisce. 
Finally, Michelle shows up, with May, and a large ethnic girl, who appears Chinese. Again, he is the only “boy” at this party. They have rented three movies. All horror, save for one.
Now, they are cutting slices of lemon, and listening to the indie rock band “A Whisper In The Noise” (their first release).
S. sits quietly in his seat, listening to the beats, thinking, “I don't belong here.”
He listens to them laughing, and hears the siren call of wonder, in his own mind, asking him to reach for something deeper. So he reaches into his pocket. He finds a tissue, encasing two pills, and takes one of them. Then he takes the other. He waits.
They continue talking, while Whisper plays, and he sits, “listening to these idiots,” who he thinks. “know nothing about true life.” And then realizes, “wait, maybe I am wrong. Maybe they're cool.” He suddenly decides to get up out of his seat.
When S. gets out of his seat, the floor feels like “cushion.” It almost feels as though there is a spring beneath his feet. With a bounce in his step, he perceives, “Oh.” He realizes. And, for the first time in his life, “So this is what drugs feel like.” 
He looks at the refrigerator, and sees the magnetic poetry, and starts arranging the letters.
May observes his behavior, and maybe she was the first one to pick up on what was going on . . .

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“Can I try some lemon..?”

While he eats the fruit, as Michelle's mother enters the room, and acts disgusted at his choice to eat a raw salt-covered lemon. “Nah, it's great. I really really like it.” He smiles. She says, “Okay,” and laughs.
That night, they all watch three movies, and S. goes home after his first positive foray with drugs.
His relationship with Michelle seems solidified.

* * * * * * *

A week later, S. goes to visit Michelle again. He goes, this time, all alone, with no one between himself and Michelle.
He walks to her house, and arrives with interest in spending time with her “in any sense.” At this point in S.'s life, he has only interest in relating with humans In.Real.Life.
He sees her, quickly, and they eventuate themselves to the campground.

“There are bunnies in this campground.”
He sees several small white rabbits bouncing through the campground across from her house.

As S. stood beside her, he said a few cryptic words. She expresses interest. “Have you ever kissed a girl..?” “No.” He says. “Do you want to..?” “Yes.” And she just moves forward. Suddenly, their tongues are thrashing against one another, and S. feels infinite paranoia. This is terrible, he thinks to himself. His first kiss, was in fact the worst kiss he has ever endured. “It was too much.” . . .
Either way, this arousing instance in his life eventually drives him to the bench at the end of the campground, where he sits with Michelle on his lap, feeling her breasts, and telling her, “with kisses, to shut up via intimacy, and lip-movements whenever she says something stupid.”
“Then her mother, in her red car, suddenly shows up, driving directly towards us.”
Michelle gets off my lap, and we say, “oh, looks like she found us.”
We get into the car, and take a short ride back home, in a slow one-minute's ride.
That's the way it usually goes when you're teenage lovers. You're always getting fucked by someone above you, in a higher age.
The night was getting dim.
On the way back, it seemed almost as though the evening transitioned from light into black almost

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instantaneously. We saw the stars.

Then.

“What is that..?”

Michelle's mother looked up, and stated, “That's the Aurora Borealis.”

We all looked up at the sky . . .

The entire night-sky was covered in a great white fuzz, and appeared to have a massive covering of white, snowy, ethereal white illumination – almost the entire panorama of the sky.

“That's the Aurora Borealis..?”

“The, what..?” S. said.

Michelle said nothing.

We got into the car.

S_____a, Michelle's mom, wrote, “when I first saw this shit in the seventies, I was hangin' out of my window, yelling this shit is fucking beautiful.”

S. – totally stunned, just felt dizzy for the rest of the night. He got back into the car, and was driven home without a word to speak.

* * * * * * *

Back at home, she was suffering. She would be seen either in her chair, or bed, and nowhere else.

S. continued to work on his song.

Late, into the evening, at times, S. would walk past her as she sat in her chair, and would hear the gurgling sounds of a choked-out throat, and only hang his head. “I was not disgusted,” he says. “I was sorry.” “For anyone to die this way..?” 7:401:01.

He used to write additional tracks his song, sometimes, “maybe out of pure loneliness.”

It seemed, almost as though his title track, “Committed” was a testament against his own reality. He wanted to prove himself insane, since “the world is insane.”

Def logged into the internet that night, and chatted with various UB'ers in the game. Confessing much, there wasn't much more to do but rant in his usual neo-existential outpourings.



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They had little response.

He played a few games, and then logged out again.
He was soon getting closer to the end of High School, and his relationship with Michelle was progressing. He had just gone to homecoming with her. Dressed in black and white. He did not dance. He found himself, finally, alone with her, following homecoming, and she had pigtails. She wanted to make herself look “innocent and young.” (she said) – That day, S. prepared using Kegel, flexing, and repeatedly attempting to prepare. “This only seemed to produce more pain.”
When she finally arrived, she was with her mother, and she said, “I can stay. Want to hang out..?” She seemed deeply attracted to S. that day – and he had no way of denying the request.
As they sat in his bedroom, he showed her several of his industrial rock songs, and she only expressed partial interest in the music but more interest in him.
The next day, his English teacher told him, “You look dizzy.” He was wearing a blue Deadsy t-shirt, and he had been somewhat half-traumatized by his first sexual experience. Later, he learned that she learned how to give BJ's from a video on TV, describing that it is “important to salivate excessively, but don't go deep.” Which, as S. would learn, later on in life, is totally untrue to his senses.
Either way, he was disgusted, and this was the beginning of his growing trauma-inspired impotency toward women.
He woke up the next day, hearing his grandmother, and thought about his new song, “Committed.”
“What the fuck is the point of anything..?” He said to Nikki. “I am an existential agnostic. I believe there is no God, but I would like to produce one some day.”
One day, standing in the mirror, he he speaks out loud, as he occasionally would, and he hears his voice, transitioning from the past, slowly into the present. He finds himself walking into the large bathroom, where strange memories primordiated, and he looks at the tiled floor. “What do I know about these..?” pondering the concept, and meditating on the fixtures in the room. He looks at the wall, and notices a mark, a 'dimple' on the screen.
“I need to work.”

Essentially friendless, S. still cares much about the future. He works hard on his song, “Committed” – night and day, in fact, all the way into the late-night hours of the mid-morning, and waking up with often only three hours of sleep.
Was the song a distraction from his pain..?
It is true, he worked on this song, for at least six hours a day, for at least one month, while his grandmother was dying. She heard it playing, sometimes, from the other room, as she sat in her chair,


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and he would walk, shamefully, toward the computer, to play UB, while she sat there, alone, and given little attendency from her family “save for Him” – or anyone who might truly give a damn 'in these past few days,' than 'this, the rising son,' who knew nothing. Still, someone sat down to play that day . . .
One day she was walking out into the kitchen, and she was removing something from the freezer.
S. was playing UB, but at this time he was Def.
She tried to push the freezer shut, but failed, and instead, it seemed to have pushed her back, since it was stuck, and she felt, right onto her back, landing with the subtly spoken whisper of the word “fuck” and S. thought, “Oh God.” in slow motion, he felt, he attempted to remove himself from the computer chair, and catch her in time, but to no avail. As he lifted her up by the arm-pit, with much trouble, she said, “Thank, you.”
He picked her up, unbeknownst to his parents, who never knew he once lifted his dying grandmother, and he said to her“You're fine.”

The next day, in photography class, began the mark for some of S.'s most primordial traumas, when he almost dropped a film strip on the floor, probably to be ruined by the dirty photography room floor, and as it drifted down, he performed a few quick, almost martial-arts-like movements, and caught it with his foot. “That was some catch!” Alan Simmons said (name unobscured) – and S. simply said, “Yeah.” He looked down, and thought about various things, before going back into the dark room.
During this time, his continuing relationship with Michelle still evolved. He spent time with her every lunch, but also had interests in another girl. As he dressed in tight-hemmed black t-shirts, and wore baggy pants on his skinny 120-pound body, he traversed through the halls often with mouth agape, and appearing as though some form of sleepless zombie. He was nearing a point in his life, he thought, that would never eventuate into anything, in actuality – but it did anyway.

S. woke up one day, and he said to himself “I will finish my song.” 

That day, his grandmother took a turn for the worse.
She suffered a terrible pain, and needed to go to the emergency room. He thought, “Okay, maybe not tonight . . .”
His father, during this time, was only caring enough to say what was needed to be said. 
His aunt, who shall refer to as C.K. – was always employing “tough love” on Nanny, but it always seemed that there must have been another way to deal with this illness. She took many drugs, and many pills, but there was no talk of CBD, holistic cures, or natural remedies. It all seemed so forced. S., being that he was only seventeen, had no view in the matter other than to provide his own pseudo-spiritual, neo-existential, hyper-agnostic support. He did his best. But in the end, he may have now known this was inevitable.

* * * * * * *

One afternoon, it was that S. downloaded various “images” from his computer, printed them out, and hoped for a little holistic relief of his own . . .
That afternoon, after going into the living room afterward, his mother said – “I found those awful photographs in your room. I hope you will throw them away.” S. got up, in slow motion, without a word, and walked assuredly to his bedroom, and shut the door behind him. He reached up, and felt around to the right side, where he kept the stronger pills. The blue's.

He looked at the bottle, and without a second thought, removed ten of the pills, and took them.

* * * * * * *

When he wakes up six hours later, he just thinks to himself, the words, “Fuck” repeating in his mind, and then he walks out of the room, toward the computer.









Chapter 9.0

“Notes From The Future”

“Disfragmentation from reality is the ultimate goal of all human beings, in a reality where we are all separated, and often forced apart from one another only to return again.“
S. pondered his own words for a while, and then decided to continue . . .
“It is not through the silence, but the sound, that we achieve wholeness in our reality.”

“I am not alone.”

“I can hear, and what I hear, is often perceived through a sensory function we find, often expressed, without words. Thus, we must know that:”

“Words are an abstraction.” “Only letters avail us the truth.” “Being that existence is based on the formation and transference of Waves, I must know that I am obviously only an oscillation. I am a wave. I am a standing wave. I am DNA. I am The S that doubles, to form an eight.”

“All words separate us from reality. The language is altered, often, by individuals attempted to describe their own objects and surroundings, without true connection to the room of existence, but the truth is, only a poet can truly describe reality, because he understands the world of abstraction best. Philosophers are pretensing, only, often, based on reasons which are based on histories often proven false, and our histories (ever proven false) are typically, based on the idea of pre-formed rules, obstacles, and objections to the ideals, and possessions of a truly sensory individual.”
“Understanding . . .”

“I was born in __85, November Fifth.” The date of the flux capacitor, and other known regards to the concept of time travel.” “Now, tell me, what is a Symbol..?”

I am nothing more than such.

“I was never truly born, but I only exist, through fragmentory memories, dreams, and realities, sent to me, through a system, a Network.”
“Nothing is real, but what is proven by the senses which are able to perceive in the ideal, or concept, of
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their own existence.”
“I am also only real, as far as I exist in the wholeness of Other Minds.”

Obscure lyrics play on the CD Player, from a brand new CD recently purchased at Best Buy.

S. continues writing . . .

“As far as I know, the only thing that is truly real, is the fact that I know anything at all. Such as my hands. My face. My soul. My mirror. And my friends. The ghosts inside me.”
“The ghosts are information.”
“They provide the answers.”

“All of my memories, are constructs.”
“How is thought expressed, in this reality, when we know it is always born from the patternless, present-tensory, goal-oriented processes – of timelines ever-balanced, made ever-whole, and ever-equalized..?”
“How could I exist, if it were not for the pre-existence, of other souls..?”

“Am I the first soul..?”

The song stops playing, and Def stops writing.

He stares at the pen for a while, imagining the “cosmic fibers” – and perceives his own thoughts, and relationship to the ink.
“Sometimes I don't hear anything at all, since there is nobody around to hear me.”
“How do I know that I really exist..?”
Thrill Kill Kult's “A Daisy Chain 4 Satan” plays in the background, with the repeating distorted scream, as he burns musk incense, shutting the door on the unsaved text file.


Chapter 10.0: “AFTER THE ATTEMPT”



S, as he progressed through high school, continued to dress in black.
No one knew about his private suicide attempt.

Walking slow, trying to get high, or trying to find something he could get high off of, he went to rock shows, and took more and more valium, ordered from Starlight Pharmacy, always shipped from India, and Thailand, when his parents intercepting the letters, he would always say, “a penpal” However, as the days progressed, the effect became less and less.
Working on his license, and going to drivers ed, he was often stoned on the “internet benzo's” when he drove with his parents, and they could tell there was “obviously” something wrong with him.
They just never knew.

Being a closer user of the drug, he personally ordered it all, from, codeine, librium, ambien, to barbiturates, and other pills. through all legal shipping countries, following his research online.
Keeping pill-bottles, from 2mg, 5mg, to 10mg pills, whites, yellows, and blues, in the lip of his closet, hidden above his room, where no one could find his secret stash, he also kept blister packs of codeine, which he tried eventually, claiming, “pleasant tingles in my scalp, while I attempted to dream, but found myself lucidly awake.”
But as time went on, as he claimed, “the pills had less and less effect.”

He took them anyway.
One day, he found himself staring at himself in the mirror of the large bathroom, half-dazed, half-awake, and almost felt like referring to himself as a zombie. He didn't seem to know he was awake at all.
At this time, he was with Michelle, but he loved another girl as well.
He often went to shows with her, and his other goth friends, to see what it was like to learn about the “true” darkness of this world. This adopted soul. She would sometimes ask him, “What are you thinkin'..?” and he would always respond with only silence.

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He never found a way to prove himself to the other girl (n.t.b.n.'d) and he may never in this life.
He originally saw her at first, as he passed her in the halls. What is referred to as “love at first sight.” Returning back to his keyboarding class, which was of course a breeze for Def, because he always typed only his two index fingers, having memorized the keys early on, and only referring to home-row in instances when the teacher would walk by.
That winter, someone named Clint died in a car-crash through a drunken driving accident.

His mother showed up, at the auditorium, teary-eyed, to share her remorse for her lost son. He knew, as she spoke, she had another son, but it almost seemed like she had placed all her weight on Clint. She cried, in front of at least 150 students, and she said these words:

“At least, now that I know, my son is dead, this late into my life, I only have so many more years to deal with the pain.”

S. looked down, and incensed, thought everything in his mind turned red. “What a wretched bitch.” He mumbled to himself. “Get a grip. Everything dies.”
He got up, after the “ceremony” of tragic words, and eventuated himself to the cafeteria, to sit down with his friends, Michelle, May, and a few others.

May was close to tears, rather affected by the woman's speech.
Michelle had little to say, but mostly listened, until S. finally said, “What the fuck. Get over it.”
May says, “How can you say that..?”

“You think you're the only one in the world dealing with pain..? Fuck you.” He looks down at his food, and takes a bite, and a sip of his soda.
“I can't believe you would say that,” in a near-laughing tone, May says. He responds, quickly, and bitterly, “It's just how I feel. I'm sorry. So you lose somebody. It doesn't mean your own life is over.”
They all look down, until he gets up, leaving them all alone, and walks away from the table.



















Chapter 11.0

“And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies . . .”

“. . . Irene, with her destinies . . .”

– Edgar Allan Poe

“Nanny's Death . . .”


Nanny's health was worsening, and S. grew more and more involved in his music as the days progressed like this.
She no longer was able to eat food, or drink much liquids, other than protein shakes, and the most basic forms ingestion by this time.
Finally, she could no longer speak, but hardly a few, choked-out, inaudible words.
S. drove with his family, and they all arrived at the waiting room sometime around 12:30.

One by one, each family member went into her hospital room.

S. sat, and pondered nothing more than his own concepts, his music, and his passions.
He thought, to himself, as he waited in the emergency room lobby, “Death is an illusion.” He meditated, with infrequent thoughts. “This is not really, actually happening.”
He got up, and once it was his turn to speak with Nanny, he entered the room, looking down at the floor, and then suddenly flaring into her eyes, a smile, and a look of satisfaction.

He looked at her, and with this smile, immediately infecting her with the words, before she could even speak, “You know. What they say. About beauty. It does not exist only on the inside, or only the outside, but it exists on both sides. However, often, it exists mostly on one side. And I can see that you are beautiful.” He says, as he stares into her eyes.

She responded, with carefully spoken words, words, “I . . . Love you, B______.” And he simply shielded his glance, responded with silence, looked away, and then back, with a smile, turned, and then

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left the room, after the words.

That night, she did not die.

“It was the morphine.” Sandy said, half-jesting, about how Nanny seemed to be in such a good mood that night. 

They were all watching “Everybody Loves Raymond” on TV, and she sat silently, probably unable to speak.

He sat on the couch across from her, on the other side of the room, silent not saying a word.

* * * * * * *
She went to bed that night, peacefully, and slept, getting up the next day, not speaking a word, and seemingly going through the entire afternoon in a serene kind of state.
* * * * * * *
For the entirety of this next day, S.'s grandma seemed fine.


One night, while Def was playing UB, he was told by his sister, “B______, something is happening.” He got up, and almost seemingly like his movements were to the soundtrack of a sad song, he felt himself in slow motion, as he entered the pink room.

She was breathing heavily, and she was panting.

“Here.” B______ was given Nanny's hand; and he held her hand.

As the air left her body, he could feel the energy leaving her. He watched, as she breathed heavily. She breathed, in panting breaths, quickly, and then slowing into a final sound.

In a final pulsation, it all ended in one last “sound” – a final pulsation – a tone.

“No.” S. said, and cried immediately. He didn't seem to know why.

He went into his bedroom, and while crying, lied flat down on his bed, on his stomach, and still while crying, out to God, he said, “People shouldn’t die.” And thought it over and over again.

He lied down on his bed, and said to himself, and then realized, “People shouldn't die.” In a more definite tone.












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Chapter 12.0:

“One Year Later”

Graduation 2004


S. sits at his computer, studying old code, and old programs, and thinking about the new songs he wants to make, just having graduated high school.

He writes:

“I hear a car in the driveway, and within moments I have an argument with my father about getting a job, only to leave him stranded alone in the car in the driveway, as I walk haphazardly into the woods, not looking behind me.”

The year is 2004.

“I study the ground, and find a way to my aunt's road.”

“Eventually, I go back, and circle around, only to find myself walking so far through the woods, that I end up on the Gilbert Farm road, maybe a quarter mile from my house.”

“I decide to visit my ex-girlfriend.”

"Maybe someone still gives a shit about me."

Now that the internet benzo's have stopped working, he's been considering new avenues.

“I arrive at her house, the yellow, "Super Junk's" lot – which is covered in antiques, and find myself sitting on the front step, with no one there, simply waiting, and pondering the rightness of my choice to become independent.”
”Sitting, I decide to write some lyrics, and pen a few words on a scrap piece of paper from my pocket, and write down a few words.”
I'm a driveway soul, I walk along you all . . . I never knew the soil . . . until it rains, it falls, down from the upside trees, and I RULE you with this – 

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”When I look up from my piece of print, I notice a young girl, only about two or three years older than myself, and crossing the street to Super Junk's.”
”She walks, from the Rabbit campground, adjacent Michelle's home, to the antique's lot.”
”She appears distressed, and has mascara run down her face.”
”I decide to approach her.”
”I get up, leaving my notepad on the porch, and walk to her, asking, "anything you need..? I'm a friend of the people who live here."
“She says . . .” – “Yes. i want to build a drum."

”I look at the pile of stumps, and discover a somewhat perplexed look on my face.”

"Out of a tree stump..?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

"What is your name..?"

Her name was Brittany, or Sarah, or something like that.

”She was presently working at Route 66 in Bar Harbor.”

”I asked her to sit down with me, and talk for a minute, since I wasn't aware of the business procedures of Super Junk's, and I certainly had no right to sell her the stump myself, not that a stump really needed to be sold . . .”
”The mascara, was running down from her eyes, and it appeared as though black tears painted on her face. ”
”I asked her why.”

"My boyfriend fucked my best friend."

"Oh.” I said.

”We talk for a bit, and discuss things, and the more we talk, the more I learn my own problems are so 
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infinitely minute compared to some of the other souls in his world. I just listen, and find myself in this strange, serendipitous discussion with the hippie girl from the campground across the street, thanks to the fact my Dad wanted me to get a job.”
”She asks me, finally, in a near-attempt at flirtation, "do you smoke..?"
”I say, 'No.'”
”She responds,” – "Not cigarettes."
”I simply stare at her and smile.”

”She says, 'Because I got this new bud, over at the campground, and it's fuckin' . . ." trailing off, with a blown-away look on her face.”

"No, I don't smoke cigarettes or weed . . .”

“I do valium.”

"Oh." She says.

”We sit in the silence for a while, understanding that our relationship will probably never evolve beyond this day.”

”We sit for a while longer, and eventually a car shows up in the driveway. May, and Michelle's parents (both of them) show up, with May apparently in the possession of a small white mouse she had found in her trailer.”

“The girl from the campground walks off with Super, as they go to inspect the tree stumps, and I decide to ask May why she's here.”

”She says to me that she has been:” – “okay.”

– ”And that her father was beating her earlier that day.”

”The white baby mouse maybe represented a symbol for her healing into a new day. I don't know why she kept it.”
”We washed it in the bath-tub, and the experience was surreal, to say the least. 'I thought . . .' but as far as I wanted to express this thought, I realized, the pain of others was infinitely worse than my own. 


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I wanted to tell May how bad I felt about her father's terrible behavior, but somewhere in my own mind, I could not seem to find the humility to express the proper words. I was more involved with my own pain.”

”Finally, the girl from the campground found a good tree stump for her project. In a loose quote, 'I tell you, if I ever dated any other woman, it'd be the girl rollin' a tree stump across the damned highway in the middle of the afternoon.' Super said.

”She left, just as mysteriously as she arrived.”

”S____a, Michelle's mom, was in her usual 'mood' (if it could be described that way). ”

”It was not long, after the campground girl left, that after spending a few minutes with May, a girl I knew devotedly in High School, who always had a troubled life, that I found myself talking to Michelle, who 'had a hard day at work.' She was not in the mood to deal with our bullshit, but I didn't care. I asked to stay. I didn't want to go home. She said, 'okay,' and we decided to have a mini-party. May, myself, and Michelle.”
”We ate, and we dined, for a bit, until finally a phone call arrived from one of my family members. It was my sister. She said, – 'B______, why aren't you coming home..?'

”And I responded,” – “Because my home is full of shit."

"I just graduated, and the first thing I need to do, apparently, is get a fucking job. What about what I want to do..?”

”And I hang up, to her cut-off words.”

"'Any drugs in this house..?,' I asked Michelle.”

"Maybe." – “She responds.”

”We spend a little longer, waiting, until finally a car arrives in the driveway. It's my sister, saying, 'B______, you need to come home.' I write, 'no.' And then throw my cell-phone, striking her lightly in the chest. She cries. And then leaves.”
"Great, I hit her right in the tits . . ." –“Michelle doesn't seem to feel too good about this.”
“She gets emotional.”


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"I just had a fucking long day at work, and it isn't my fucking job, my responsibility, to be here and help you with your problems." (Probably in nicer words, but she was always such a cruel bitch –S.).

"'Any drugs in this house..?,' I ask again.”

"Check my mother's coat."

”We go into her mother's red car, and rummage through her coat, finding a pot-pipe, and a bag of weed. Myself and May take a few remote hits, while Michelle watches, and then we go back inside. 'I don't feel anything.' 'Yeah, I don't feel that high.' We both admit.”

”By this time, it is starting to seem like the people who have genuine problems in the world, beyond that of merely arranging window-showcases, and displays in a crappy Lobster chain gift store, is really important compared to our hateful parents.”

“Neverminding this temporay suggestion, he says, 'I'll always love her.' 'We went out to the Rabbit campground that night, just for fun, with a flashlight, and acted like intruders until someone creeped up on us, and we ran back out giggling like kids.'

“Then I passed out on her couch, and walked home the next day.”

* * * * * * *
Life IRL was getting pretty weird, by this point for S.

Def, hardly having an existence on the internet anymore, was now mostly transformed into his three-dimensional self as “S.” And he became much more involved with the solitary life, as the days progressed following high school. He refused work, at first, but in the end, it became obvious (and evident) that he needed a job in order to satisfy his father's needs – so he started working in the warehouse for a period of time.
He wanted to make a short film, about a man who believes every day is Halloween, and pull pranks on his neighbors with blurred-out camera shots, but in the end, he found himself, after discussing his plans with the principal at the high school, who offered to play his feature for the entire school, after colliding with an individual named B. Shaffer – at a gas station on a hitch-hike walk back from MDI, who was (and probably is) still performing in rock bands.
B. Shaffer wanted to make a CD instead, and use S's talents, more toward music out of their newfound friendship. So S. plugged in his microphones, and they recorded a few songs, and his film never happened. During this time, S. was also experimenting with playing music with other people, in bands, and other projects, but these bands never materialized into anything. Now out of high school, and
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working only hardly for his father, he only played one show with his friends, often high on klonopin, a stronger form of the same type of drug as Valium, which is a benzodiazapine used to treat seizures, falling out of the car when he first opened the door. Laughing to himself, as B's girlfriend took great amusement at his fucked-up state. He walked into a punk rock show once, and said an obscene phrase into the microphone, and then exited the venue.

“She” was there.

He remembers asking her a specific question. But he can not exactly place what it is today, he claims.

That night, he had a terrible blister on his thumb, and was wearing a massive duct-tape covered band-aid. He ripped it off, mid-show, and threw it into the crowd, as he played the bass (rather poorly) and then finally gave out autographs to a couple of thirteen year old kids, who apparently then went off to the side of the concert hall to smoke weed, while S. simply thought to himself, “This band fucking sucks.” They never played again.
He wanted nothing to do with B. Shaffer after that.

During this time, he still worked in his father's warehouse. They allowed him about $10 pay, while he usually just pretended to work in the back-room, usually writing lyrics most of the time, whenever he had a minute to focus on “my own concepts.”
Finally, it became obvious S. needed to do more with his life.

One day, S.'s mother said, “B______ I signed you up for Husson college.” – “What..?”

He heard these words, spoken by his mother – knowing, his time had come, he knew he had no choice, following all the control mechanisms from “school” experienced before, it was obvious this form of torture had to continue. “Okay.” He said. And then kind of went a little crazy.

S. spun around on the floor, after spilling soda, while shouting, and laughing.

Running from room to room, in a wild frenzy, screaming, “Let's go to back to school..!” Only to find himself in front of his mother in the kitchen, rolling, in twisting, circular motions along the white tiled floor, in the puddle of spilled soda. 
She actually laughed too.
She'd never seen him act this way.

Then he said, “Yeah, I'll go to college.”














 




X

Chapter 13.0: “The First Day Of School”

“I don't care how ugly you are.”

“I don't care how pretty you are.”

“So long as you are . . .”

“With me.”

“My love.”

* * * * * * *

A random movie plays on the TV-screen, as S. watches his film play, late at night, preparing for his first day.
He has no idea what movie it is, and then turns off the TV.
His songs, Committed, Rightness, Blood and Air, The Electric Ant (based on the Philip K.D. Story) as well as others, are nye to be produced, and heard by a wider crowd, only unbeknownst to him at this present time. He has only so much hope in himself.
Now, it seems logical.

He takes a few V's – but feels nothing, and just gets a little head-buzzed.

Lies down,

And falls asleep.
The next day, is orientation.

He is going to go “Husson College” in Bangor, Maine, to work on enough credits to find himself worthy of the school adjacent this, NESCOM, to study Audio Engineering.
He enters, with a green shirt, and walks in, with a look on his face, of infinite despair, thinking, in his

X
most existential tones, “Why am I here..?” He meets his new roommate, Larry, otherwise known as Lawrence, and Lawrence tells him “Cool. You like rap music..? You like video games..?” S. hates rap music, and hasn't played a single game of UB in over six months. “Sure,” He says, with a smile. 
That night, they discuss matters, and S. shares a little bit of his music with Lawrence. It's a track from his never-to-be-made horror film, about the Halloween Man.
Lawrence is polite, but obviously has no sense of this kind of music.
Finally, they bond a little more closely, once the subject of drugs enters the discussion.
As S. and Lawrence, speak, quietly, and alone, in their dorm room, S. tells him “Yes, I have over 200 pills of valium, if you're interested.” Larry is interested.

With that, S. becomes a local hit in his college, in spite of his quiet nature, he is 'discreet' – having used services from Starlight Pharmacy “Internet Benzos” being discreetly distributed through tiny plastic bags, from his carefully monitored pill-bottles, and sold each pill for about $2-$5 apiece, based on the strength of the pill. He sold at least 30, maybe 40 pills, to Larry, over this period of time, as well as several of Larry's friends, and individual football player associates, who seemed to respect S. for his exploitative behavior. He made friends fast, and yet, kind of slow, at the same time, though Larry often left he dorm room to party, S. often stayed inside, occasionally selling a bag of pills from his dorm room desk drawer, while toiling away on an industrial track. “I would have taken the pills for myself, if they still worked on me. My tolerance was so high, it just seemed like I might as well get rid of them.” He made at least $150-$200 from all of his transactions. 

“I just nod out.” S. received, in response, to the question, “what do the pills do for you..?”

S. got rid of all of the pills, in about two months. Larry did most of them.

Larry smoked lots of weed, and it was becoming more and more apparent, with his high tolerance to benzo's, that S. needed to try something new.
One night, they walked to a dorm room, in Hart Hall, where they visited two individuals: Robbie, and Tyler, who sold them a couple of joints, during which the entire party was interrogated by a black RA while Tyler had the bag of joints hanging out of his back pocket.
Tyler just laughed, when Larry observed this for him. “I was hit on several times, by the girls at the party.” S. said. “One of them gave me a hug, for no apparent reason, just because she said she 'liked my style.' I think she was drunk.”
On the walk home, S. dressed in his usual black décor, wore a wool coat, as Larry handed him one of the joints, though he only smoked it like a cigarette.
Ever since smoking by the docks at the age of thirteen, S. knew how to roll joints and cigarettes, but
he'd never yielded an effect from the smoke. He always thought smoking, in any form, was a 

X

pretentious, and dumb habit.

Then things started to change.

They sat, playing Playstation, while S. said “Yeah, I don't feel anything.” Larry, simply due to his high tolerance to weed, agreed; but S. was a newcomer. What they say about weed is true – you don't always get an effect your first time.
A couple weeks later, S. is invited for what is referred to as a “burn ride” with his college buddies, Larry, BooGoo, and another individual, a massive football player. S. – weighing in at about 135 pounds, S. sits in the back seat of the car, hitting a blunt with his three football player friends, and decides to himself, “Okay, this time. I want to get high.”

He'd watched Larry hold in hits, and puff out his cheeks, when he takes in the smoke.

Eventually, he realized, it was necessary to “Hold in the smoke” – “For as long as possible.”

So he did.

S. takes his first hit, and holds in the smoke for at least ten seconds. It almost hurts. His throat feels like it has been punched. But it's a good feeling.
He sits, in the back of the car, not sure exactly what's going on, when they finally arrive at the well-known pizza restaurant, that gives discounts to college students who have their student I.D.'s. 
“I remember, when I got out of the car, I felt like my legs had springs in them.”

He walked, almost as though tingles shot up his legs with each step, and eventually stood in front of the cashier, beside BooGoo, who was stoned, and “we all reeked.” The cashier said, “did you guys just smoke..? Because you smell like . . .” And she trailed off. BooGoo shook his head. S. simply responds with the word, “Yes!”
“We all sat down at the table, and ate our pizza, with soda that I had paid for.”

“Eventually, I became threatening, and challenged Larry to a fight.”

“He started to get enraged, and said, 'Do you want to fuckin' go..?'”

“And after that, I just started laughing.”

“The entire table, BooGoo, myself, Larry, and the other guy, just started laughing hysterically, for no apparent reason. It lasted for at least one entire minute. Maybe two minutes of insane laughter,” S. writes.

We just couldn't stop laughing. I bet everyone in the place was freaked. I swear, it lasted for at least two



X
minutes.

I actually thought I was about to get my ass kicked. 

Then we went back to the dorm, and I sold him a V or two.

























[Blank Page]
Saved for the fight that never happened.
(Sorry).







X

Chapter 14.0: “Life In Husson”

.. sucked

S. associated with few, though he still knew several, in a way, finding ex-classmates from high school. One, a mystical soul obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons (Sean..?). And the other, a girl with a scar running down the center of her chest, who he took photography class with. The third, a girl he hacked when he was thirteen, named Cough, who was a “really nice girl” S. says.
. . . Cough was originally hacked by S. when he was asked to log into her account, by a friend named J.R. – who was a social miscreant at the worst level. He was both seemingly, and allegedly a self-repressed soul, in many ways, and it was obvious. S. giving him the time of day, since he always attracted himself to the stranger souls, agreed, “Okay, I'll hack her for you,” And, after typing in TeenyTiny84@hotmail.com – he then typed in the password, on his next thought, simply the username minus the numbers. It worked, and he logged into her account on the second try.

When S. sat down, to eat dinner with Cough in the dining hall (TeenTiny) he was deeply attracted to her. Just as it was obvious, it was never his own intention to hack her, saying, “I always wondered about why J.R. – would launch an attack against such a nice girl.”
He remembered, as he spoke to her, the moment when he read the saved draft file, written by Cough's mother, begging for “whoever is hacking my daughter's account to leave her alone” and how after this, he totally shut down the entire operation, to J.R.'s infinite disappointment.
They used to ride home together from school in his Senior year of high school, one of the few people S. ever allowed into his own home during his high school years, save for Michelle. He showed him a few of his songs. They watched the film Brazil once, the first half, in one of the only instances S. ever associated with “anyone” inside of his own home. J.R.would study engineering in Germany, on a far different level than S. today. They have not spoken in years.

* * * * * * *

As S. progressed through college, he took “Public Speaking” and received an A minus for his display of HTML coding, and how to write a website using notepad. He smashed his glasses afterward, in a bathroom stall, thrown on the floor, out of rage, when he felt he'd done a poor job on the report.
Things would be like this for a while.

It took a while, but once S. finally finished his first term at Husson, he was to be enrolled in Audio Engineering, at the on-campus tech school known as NESCOM.
X
He recalls, that when he first went to the dorm room, on his first day, meeting “Biff” (his roommate) he felt partially instructed by his parents, to eat at the orientation, though he ate alone, and was probably perceived as an outsider by his classmates.

It all began, eventually, that S. would become a subject, or object of terror in the school of Husson, and in NESCOM as well.

He was not received well by anyone, he thought.

“I bet she has a lot of cats.” S. listened to the sardonic words of one of his new classmates, a dark-haired, large individual jested, while he sat in the back – surrounded by microphones, and studio equipment, in his first Audio orientation, listening somewhat humored and yet perplexed as this personality talked shit about the “nice woman” (in S's opinion) who spoke at the initial college orientation. 

S. laughed quietly.

The Audio teacher finally enters, who is the lead singer of a band broadcasted on the College TV station, known as Hoyt, shares that he has a lot of faith in the future of all “all future audio engineers.”
S. listens, and studies everyone in the room, as Hoyt speaks. Hoyt hunches, and hovers low, for a second as though suffering from something, and then returns to the main focus:
“Becoming a professional audio engineer.”

Returning to his dorm room, S. puts on the movie “Scream 2” (mostly because of the soundtrack) and writes lyrics silently, to the noise of the TV-set. 

Biff enters, and laughs. “I watch good movies too, sometimes.” “He watches good movies too, sometimes,” Biff says.

“So,” he says, afterward:

“I'm goin' out tonight.”
S. pauses the movie. “Where you headed..?”

“Gonna go see an old friend. Gonna blaze.”

“You smoke..?”

“Yeah.”

S. smiles. “Me too.”

X

That night, S. sits quietly on the couch, hardly speaking a word, and partakes in the enjoyment of bowl after bowl of “BC Bud” and various other strains, at his first genuine weed party. He turned down all offers towards the beer, for now, and kept mostly to himself the entire night, sitting quietly on the couch, and hardly moving the entire time.

* * * * * * *

Instead of working creatively, and intuiting designs through a more receptive mode, S. was more interested in “receiving” information from the world at this time. 

That's when he met shrooms.
“I know a guy.”

Biff said, a local college hair-dresser, and apparently was selling some blue-hued shrooms.

“Okay.”

S. says he had tripped before, but it wasn't good.

As S. refers – “My first trip was a nightmare. A TV station, switchin channels, every nanosecond, in my mind, as though a constant display of one image after the next, of the most horrific scenes. It was influenced by cough medicine (DXM) which was described to me as 'heavenly' by, someone. So I took it.”

S. attains the bag of shrooms, from the hair-dresser dealer, and talks about the dosage with his friends.

“How much should I take..?”

“Always start off with half an eighth.”

“Don't do a full eighth. You'll be fucked.” An eighth being 3.5 grams.

* * * * * * *
So, I ate half the bag, and drank some orange juice, and waited.


Biff sat somewhere near me, it felt like .. while we put on “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in spite of my request for Natural Born Killers. “No, fuck that movie.” Biff said, so I accrued to the decision of Hunter.

As the drugs kicked in, my thoughts kicked in.

We decided to set up a basic playlist, as it was described that “Time is infinite” when you are on drugs like this, it doesn't matter if you're only listening to four songs. It feels like ten thousand. So we listened to a bunch of music, and got super-high that night.

X

Having selected, out of the few, a little Peter Frampton, Comfortably Numb, Buffalo Soldier, and one more, which I don't remember. Maybe it was Sublime. Seems like I wouldn't be able to forget though.

Once I was high, I got up, and realized, “I need to understand the universe.” Everything was streaming consciousness. Music and life flowed seamlessly one into the other. There was no need for punctuation as all things just continued, with or without need for judgment of linearity or time of any kind. All was space. All we needed was space itself.

Biff watched, as I exited the room.

I realized, after all the orange juice that I had drank, that I seriously needed to use the restroom.

So I went to the public bathroom, and took to the handicap stall.

I sat down.

Then I thought, “What is this shit..?”

And I realized. “I am shit.”

“All humans are shit.”

“We are all some form of waste. Excreted, from a higher matter.”

“Thus.”

I realized,

“We are all the same.”

“Then I got up, and sat back down, as I realized the floor was pulsating.”

I saw waves, and grooves, and tides, in the tiles beneath me. It wavered, and fluttered, underneath my feet. I watched, as the ocean of tiles fluttered beneath me, as I sat on the toilet, that I knew, also, all humans are shit, and thus, we are are all the same.

“Then, after finishing up, I got up, and I looked at the wall.”

“In a silhouette, I witnessed, like some form of 70s car design, the figure of the female body, flowing, in repeatable patterns, and I saw her lying on her back, with her black body, tits raised in the air, flowing infinitely across the bathroom tiles as though an infinite hood ornament – on the wall.” It was beautiful.

Stunned by this psychic imagery, I decided to wait a while, and then sat back down on the toilet, though I was totally finished with my experience. Biff walked into the room, and said, “B______ WHERE ARE YOU..!” I said, “Right here.” And he said, “I was so worried about you. You just walked out of the room.” And then I said, “We are all the same.”

X

“I then got up, ignoring Biff, and decided to exit the bathroom stall, with only interests in meeting the only people in my dorm hall who I didn't know.”
S. walked out of the bathroom, and knocks on the door. He reads the names on the door, and intuitively reads that the person answering the door is not “Adam” (one of the names listed on the door) and he then says, “Uh, is Adam here..?” And the blonde-haired individual, who is a rather large football player, and appears angry, responds, “Yeah” and then walks out of the room, leaving the two alone.
“Hi. I'm B______.” Adam, lying on the bed, who dons dark hair, is another large football player, and he says, “hows it goin..?” “I'm trippin.'” S. responds. With a slight pause, Adam says, “That's cool.” “I think I'm gonna go drink some orange juice.” “That would be good.” Adam responds. '

And then S. abruptly leaves the room.
“Dude, where were you..?”

“I was, uh . . .”

S. – totally fucked up by this point, decides to follow the whim of his friends. “What are you. I mean, where are you..?”

“We're gonna go smoke a blunt.” Tyler says, with Darcy included, a girl who has been attracted to S. since her initial meeting with him, while dating one of the hot-shot college dealers.
“Throw me away. Persecute. Oppress me for my sins..! Throw me in a jail cell!” S. exclaims, rather suddenly, standing in the entrance-way to the dorm-hall, while everyone stares at him. Everyone is quiet, and just looks at him. 
Soon, he finds himself sitting, as typical, in the back right seat, the star of the stoned show, with Darcy leaning heavily against him, and taking great interest.
He takes several hits off the blunt, saying, in a choked out voice, after exhibiting a vast amount of smoke, the word, “HEY..!” And Darcy imitates him. She is obviously attracted. He doesn't seem to notice.
He wakes up, the next day, after passing out from mixed drinks, and weed, to see her cup of red liquor on his dorm table, and Biff reports, “Yeah, man, she says she was in here last night.”
“She was..?” S. says.







X


Chapter 15.0

“Virginity Lost . . .”


With his new stemming interests in the world, and furthering himself away from the internet, and also having not written a single song for over a year, S. seems more interested in “learning” about the world than inputting anything into it . . .
One day, he researches a new chemical agent introduced into drug popularity, known as Salvia Divinorum. He decides, after watching a few videos on YouTube, following his first “good trip” – “I need to try this shit.”
Inviting Biff, as well as his dealer, G, to the head shop in Bangor, they purchase a small water pipe, a filter, and a bag of 20x Salvia Divinorum (Purple Sticky).

“I want to get fucked up.”

S. takes his second hit, and immediately, he is transferred into another world.

He witnesses a streaming yellow line, running across the horizontal horizon, and then seems to be traversing down a plastic lego waterfall. He finds himself, waking up, to hallucinations, and Biff has apparently taken a snapshot of him in this fucked up state. “Smash that camera.” S. says, very angry. “I didn't think that would happen.” “Dude, you should have seen yourself.” G laughed, “Yeah, man, you were raising your hands up in the air, like you were trying to get up, but you couldn't.” “Okay.” He simply responds.

For the readers sake, let it be known that Salvia is not a “social drug” and likely never will be.
It is a spiritual alterer, if nothing else.

S. – afterwards, felt a profound tinge, or buzz from this chemical, and said, “Can we get high..?” But G responded, “nah, we gotta eat first. The dining hall is opening.” “Fuck.” S. responds. “Okay, but can we get high after..?” “Yeah.” G says.

They arrive at the dining hall, and sit down, after getting their trays, all kind of warped by the recent experience with this strange new drug, apparently not actually “new” at all, but only recently popularized by the drug culture, especially in Maine.

X

Faik, a turkish neighbor of S.'s – says, “yeah, take a seat.” To a young Japanese girl, and her Korean friend.
(Husson college, during this time, was greatly multicultural, and taught language courses to students from overseas every year, until the program was finally shut down the following year).
S. looks at her – and asks, “Hi. I'm B______. What is your name..?” She kind of laughs, and says, “Oh, “I am Lumi.” She smiles.
Biff laughs, quietly to himself, calmly observing, as S. flirts, and talks with Lumi for at least twenty minutes, to a half hour, deeply enthralled with her culture, and wanting to learn more and more about her.

S. says, “Well, it was very nice to meet you, Lumi.”

She seems very flattered by him, as he admits to her several times, how, “stoned I am on pot right now.” As an excuse for any of his social anxiety. She accepts this with constant smiles.
He seems to have a way with communicating with her, but it doesn't matter.
Over time, Lumi eventually dated Faik.
They have a fling, and apparently sleep a night together in his room, her, shirtless, and refusing sex, while he attempts everything in his power to sleep more closely to her.
Eventually, she receives a phone call from Faik, “While I am in Faik's dorm room. Calling her 'baby' while he speaks to her, as she says she is now going to return to Japan.”

Lumi had a skin infection, and whenever she would see S. he would always assure her that “you look fine.” “You look fine.” The same words.

S. sits with Brandon, in the dining hall, a TV student, and they're talking about films, music, and their interests in the future of “the media.”

They discuss various things, when suddenly S. sees approaching from the corner of the hall, Lumi, who nears, and then walks directly toward him.

“I am going now. I will leave back to Japan.”

“Oh.” S. says.

“Okay.”

Brandon looks away from them, and takes a sip from his straw of orange juice., with eyes darting toward the corner of the room, as though he is not listening.

X
“Well, it was very nice to meet you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” S says.

He says, “Can I . . .” motioning for a hug, but then reaches out his hand.

She laughs nervously, and they shake hands.

She leaves, for Japan, the next day, and then, on an impulse, while riding home that weekend, S. remembers, “I had her e-mail address.”

He says, “I felt compelled, by some higher power, to contact her.

He wrote, out of impulse, after making an impromptu visit to his dorm room from a weekend visit at his parents home, to find her e-mail, and sent these words from his dorm room, one weekend, before driving back home:

Hi!

It's B______ from Husson.

It's self-conscious, but I really wanted to apologize right away for my 'insecure laugh' which I believe you probably overheard while walking away from me the other day after our conversation. It was the presence of a friend of mine that influenced my behavior and I'm sorry. Hopefully you don't even remember what I'm talking about! I am very happy you said goodbye to me before leaving, and I'm sorry we never spoke more than we did. :)

I hope your stay at Husson wasn't too terrible, and I hope your condition improves – I'm sure it will. You're a very nice girl, and I hope that stress you mentioned didn't get you down too much. I still need to show you my music, but I'm afraid I still have nothing great to show for. Maybe I should write a song for you, what do you think ..? If I do, it has to be good – so I hope you don't mind waiting too long. Being a student at Husson makes it hard for me to do what I love .. hopefully the summer will be a better time to churn out some good music. I never asked you what your major was you know .. you have to tell me.

Hope to hear from you.

Goodbye

-B______

(P.S. – I ate those vegetables).




X




Lumi responded . . .

“I will miss you a lot. Please do not forget about me.”

“( What a good boy you were to eat vegetable!!)”

Good bye Lumi

Saying she will return to America in two weeks.

S. responds, with more letters, and the two exchange at least twenty letters in only a week, until Lumi finally makes it clear she is returning to America even sooner. “You got her,” Faik says, one night, with a sorry look in his eyes, after hearing about their dozens of e-mails exchanged.
* * * * * * *

She wears a black coat, and is standing outside of his new single dorm room, decorated in lights, and LED imagery. Techno, and downbeat electronic music plays on shoutcast.

He opens the door, and he says, “Hey.”

She enters, and she says, “How are, you..?” Her English, always broken, and poorly spoken.
“Good.” He smiles.

They listen to his new song, he claimed he would make her for her, upon her return, which repeats, in whisperry words, “I like you a lot.” 

They kiss, which is the first kiss S. has experienced (consciously) in over two years. 
“Do you want to have sex..?”

Lumi, against sex on the first date – declines.
Soon, Yuri, a black French dorm neighbor, enters, with a knock, and abrupt self-invitation, enters, to ask if I have any shampoo. I say, “no, man. I'm busy, dude.” He laughs, and says, “I can see that.” And then leaves.
We kiss again, and then she leaves, to return to her own dorm room, situated in the ghetto hall, Hart Hall, where it is obviously discriminated that poorer people live in this dorm.

She is hit on, several times, I hear, by fellow dorm-mates, while she lives in this ghetto hall.

“One man grabbed my ass, and said, hey cutie.” S says nothing.













X

* * * * * * *

“I might be getting with a girl tonight.” S. says to G, while they smoke a joint in the Bradford Commons parking lot.

“I need to get high.”

“All-right man, just chill.”

A car shows up, suddenly, and G gets out, joint in hand, to speak with his 'bros.' I wait, anxiously for the joint to return.

“Dude, what the fuck was that..?”

“Hey man, they're my fuckin' friends.”

“You just walk out of a car with a joint lit..?”

“Fuck you.”

S. laughs – “Dude I don't know. I might be in for a night, man.”

“You think so..?” “Yeah.”

“Good luck, man.”

“Just keep me high.”

S. returns to his dorm-room, stoned off his ass, and Lumi is slated to arrive in just about fifteen minutes.

He waits, while listening to chillout music on shoutcast to the lights on his ceiling.

Finally, a knock on the door.

* * * * * * *

“Hey.”

She stands in her black coat, and says, “Hey.” and smiles.

She enters, and very soon, they are kissing, and becoming intimate.

X

S. turns up the music, to hopefully drown out the noise, but, as you will learn, this is to no avail.

S. readies himself, and yet Lumi is unaware.

“Do you want to, be on top..?”

But she doesn't understand.

Once they are finally having sex, S. doesn't feel thing. He is too high. Lumi, on the other hand, can feel everything. 

She laughs hysterically. 

“Almost maniacally . . .”

They fuck for twenty minutes in various positions, and Lumi seems to be laughing in this way.

The night ends with kisses, and she sleeps with him again the next day.

S – in his stoned, spinning, and highly altered state, simply said, “I couldn't feel a thing.”




















Chapter 16.0

“The Japanese Girl”

Def, far away from the internet, was no longer a part of UB, or any online community at this point in his life. Now so recently inspired, he began to endeavor more into the world of producing music, and began to improve his home studio.
Ever since Y2K, it always seemed like machines ran poorly with the newer operating systems, he always thought.
As he grew away from technology, when it came to communications, gaming, or anything to do with his old juvenile online persona, and decided, to finally form his own clique of friends out of an apartment in Bradford Commons, just outside of Husson campus, down Husson avenue, in number seven.
During this time, he associated with G. and various cryptic members of the school, one, who was presently under bail conditions, and the other, who was merely a friend out of school, who worked at a car wash. Another, who was preparing to drop out. Smoking blunts, nightly, at the playground near Bradford Commons, he also sometimes befriended members of NESCOM, though his interests in school were disintegrating at this point, and he had more interest in his own work; he often showed up to class either drunk, stoned, or very sleepless, and often in a very defensive type of mood toward his classmates.
Once, he even stood up in the middle of Computer Tech 101, and said, from the back of the room, “whoever is fucking with the machines right now, please stop. I'm trying to complete my assignment. Seriously. Stop.” And then sat back down, to a remotely stunned classroom.
The individual who had accidentally deleted one of the important files for a classroom assignment, later attempted to “mindfuck” S. while seated behind him, S. “claims” – he was typing randomly at his keyboard, though he was not typing anything at all. S. even overheard him say the phrases, “I just got drunk tonight. Came to class.” While his other friend, stated the words, “Do you want to keep mindfucking B______, cause this doesn't seem to be working,” he reports based on their whispers. Eventually, S. got pissed, and turns around, and looked directly into the eyes of the targeted individual (who had deleted the files) – and said, “What the fuck are you doing..?” He appeared stunned, and said nothing, with the same puzzled look on his face, hands raised in the air like, “I don't know..?” After, this individual looked very ashamed as he passed S. in the halls.
S. was taunted, in Husson, many times, by bullies, and what he referred to as the “redneck” clique, which only progressed with his worsening behavior toward the world. From nightly blunts, sometimes smoked with total strangers, and off-campus students, he would receive strange looks, remarks, and over time, people started to talk more.
Several times, individuals would even stalk him through their vehicles, and after class, merely to jar his interests toward going to school, it seemed. Lumi was also taunted, and stalked several times.
S. – who was, in fact, rather fit, and handsome at this time, having lifted much, and taken Creatine, once he had evolved from his roommate situation, into a single, and then into the apartment, it took time, though he received less and less threats from said “redneck clique” – he was still given shit.
As time went by, the more time he spent with Lumi, the more he made a point to be seen with her, and with his friends, who were, some, football players, once endeavoring with Yuri and G. and a drop-out, Sean, to go “searching for the assholes who were taunting him,” representing his “posse.” They achieved little, though it seemed enough for S.'s paranoia that one of the students he interrogated was a former member of his dorm. 
He dated Lumi, exclusively, and she seemed very devoted to him. They were always intimate, and together constantly.
He smoked, nightly, at the Bradford Commons playground with Skanks, G, and Mike.
He got high, while Lumi studied obsessively, and seemed to be picking up English extremely fast the more time she spent with B______. He worked on music in a small closet-studio, using a basic version of Reason 3.0 – a simple mixer, his old tools from the teenage years, an electric guitar, and about three microphones.
They lived closely, watched films together, ate together, walked together, talked, fucked constantly, and happily didn't really seem to know anything about each other, but didn't really seem to care.
One night, it is reported that S. played a trick on Lumi.

Out of pure desire to amuse both him, and her, or perhaps mildly inspired by the drugs – he put a rubber snake on top of her pillow, right underneath the blanket, and waited.

Later that night, he was drinking wine, and watching overmastered TV commercials, thinking bitter thoughts toward his Audio school, when all of a sudden, he heard a violent, and awful scream. “Oh my God, something is wrong.” He got up, having totally forgotten about the snake – well-drunk by this point, and saw Lumi, hands on knees, sitting on the floor, in a fetal position, and crying.
“I'm sorry. Oh. I'm sorry, Lumi. I forgot. I forgot I put the snake there.”
Their relationship wasn't perfect, but it seemed to have no way of being stopped. From hiking by the ocean in Bar Harbor, experiencing his family, and showing her his home town, she grew only closer to

X

him as time went by, and they were what could be referred to, as a “cute couple” whenever they were seen.
Rap music was playing in the background, one day, when she got home from school with one of her friends. The girl was Korean, or Japanese, and her name was Mana. S. took to enjoy her company, putting on Cat Power, next, while Lumi obviously wanted to get busy with her studies. She was not so much of the social butterfly she was in high school.
Lumi had two small marks on her neck, one far larger than the other. The mysterious marks, and throat-wound would only be explained later on, along with her other health, and mental health problems.
“I just wanted her to go..!” Lumi said, that night, once Mana had finally left, S. got back after buying a “specialized” lighter at Rite-Aid, and she was still lounging around the apartment, acting slightly “sycophantish towards us.”
They had few visitors to the apartment, during this time, but there was an individual named L. who was involved with B______ for a great length of time – L was a blues rock guitarist, aspiring, who had no skill with the guitar whatsoever. He learned much from the ukulele, blues, and rambling styles of S. over the years, but as the reader will learn, not all relationships evolve.
Aside from this, S. habituated himself around other students of NESCOM, and only on occasion would invite them over to his apartment. One day he bought a bag of shrooms from Brandon, and noticed that “The only reason why I exist is to become in connection. To connect. Connection is the reason why I am alive.” He then realizes, once his girlfriend gets home, this was a very bad time to be tripping.
(10:30 A.M. In the morning).

She goes to take a shower, and S. lies down on the floor, and witnesses infinite faces pulsating through the ceiling. “Oh my God, they're actually faces.” The textured ceiling, took to form little white, ghostly apparitions, all pulsating with life, and apparently reaching out to his senses.
“I have to tell someone about this.”

He gets up, and opens the curtain of the shower, to a naked Lumi, and says, “Lumi. I took mushrooms.” And then leaves the room.

Once she is out of the shower, she is embarrassed, and angry.

“B______ I don't know why. Why you take those drug.” (Her English always breaks when she gets angry).
B______ looks down, and studies the floor, and realizes the infinite shame of his existence.

It's been a while, but now, S. is finally going to have his first bad trip in over two years.







X

He sits down on the couch, and studies the patterns symmetry in cloth underneath the TV set, even though the euphoria is gone, he still perceives the infinite twisting motions. (That's why it's good to smoke it off, not wait it out, he reports. She just sat beside me. I felt terrible).

His bitter, and somewhat surprising anger toward Lumi, beginning perhaps around this time, was minimal, but started to progress, as he drank more, and would make nightly “post-hangover” treks to the local Rite-Aid twenty minutes down the street, often walking in the cold with a thin coat. At the same time, she was always an interest to the other students in her class. Around this time, S. was also starting to have panic attacks.

S. had an assignment. He pulled the lyrics from the track, because, “they sounded like shit.” After hearing other student's tracks, he sat for a while, until he noticed a bad taste in his mouth. “It tasted like blood.” He got up, suddenly, and said, “I . . . I need to go to the bathroom.” His audio teacher, Hoyt, somewhat concerned, said, “Okay..?” and Stumbling in the hallway, and almost falling over in a fainting spell in the main lobby, S, stumbled up the stairs, only to find himself in the upstairs bathroom mirror repeating the words, “You are okay. You are okay.” But he did not know what it meant, or what had just happened . . .

In the description of the security campus, “A white bald man has been prowling the library, and the campus, in search of I quote young Asian girls.” “He is at least forty years old, and rides a bicycle.”
S. has witnessed this man, both on and off campus several times. And on his bicycle, even near Rite-Aid.

“This is not the only thing I had to deal with.”

“One day, while staying a weekend at home, I heard about someone named Galen, from an auto sales place up closer to mid-maine, – and found out, that he was attempting to hit on Lumi late one night, in her dorm room, before our relationship had evolved very far. Based on her words, I logged in to the internet, found out the phone number of the business, and I called his boss.”

“Galen had been calling her, and finally, he showed up at her dorm room, at a surprise visit. Upset with this information, Def followed up through the information he gathered, and he dialed the number to the auto sales company.”

Galen's boss picked up the phone.

“Heyyy, is Galen there..?”

In politely sounding tones, “Oh, uh, yeah, sure let me get him, hold on.”

I wait.

“Hey, hows it goin'. What can I do for ya..?”









X


“Are you Galen..?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Are you aware of a young Japanese girl who lives in Bangor, Maine..?”

“Um, what now..?”

With little hesitation, he simply rushes to the point, and says, “Galen, she has a boyfriend.”

“Um.” Galen simply responds, nervously. “What now..?”

“I don't know what this is.”

“I am her boyfriend. This is her boyfriend calling. Leave her the fuck alone.”

“What – now..?”

“Hey Galen, what now..?!” 

And then I hung up.

He never bothered her again.

S. and Lumi dated for six months, at least, before it was finally realized S. had a problem.

He told her, “I will quit. I will even get a job. I will get my license.”

But he never really quit.

He only took six months off from weed, to drink in the interim.

During the end of his stint with killing his bud habit, he found himself playing guitar with L. in his apartment fifteen minutes away – and was nearly strangled, having to slip through the man's grip, as he tripped on Salvia for the first time, but S. was already a weathered user. “Jesus Christ.” He says to himself, as he watches his friend thrash and writhe on the bed.
L. gets up, and claims he sees tracers of his foot-steps on the floor. He is terrified. “I don't know about that shit, man. I need a smoke. Fuck. Can I call G..? Fuck. I'm gonna call G.” S. had a high tolerance to almost every drug, and no one could ever seem to handle the doses he took for himself, so it was always so hard to be the 'good doctor' for anyone else.
G. answers, and he says, “I'm eating a ham sandwich.” L. says, “Is he fuckin crazy..? I mean, I know he's not crazy. I'm not crazy. I call for a bag of weed, and he tells me he's eatin' a fuckin' ham

X
sandwich.” Half-amused, but not willing to laugh following a near-stranglation attempt, S. just says, “Yeah . . .”

S. leaves that night – feeling half-lit, but a little bit more victimized.

He tells Lumi, “So, I had a fucked up trip tonight.” He shared all of his drug experiences with her. She was actually, as time progressed, growing more and more empathetic to his use of drugs, in especial toward his use of marijuana.
“I hope it wasn't that bad.” Her English was improving, becoming less broken, and more like the speech an Americanized Japanese girl. “Maybe the next time to try it, it will be more controlled, or maybe you won't do too much..?” She says. 
When someone actually flashed their genitalia at her, from their car-seat, outside Husson campus parking lot, S. was so incensed with his inability do anything, he bought a bottle of wine.

The mysterious “bald white man” who was in his forties, who rode a bicycle, from his own apartment in Bangor, Maine, continued to follow Lumi home from school, and finally, one day, he asked if she would “like to go up to his apartment with her.”

He was becoming more and more enraged, and finally, in spite of his growing anger, it was nearing the hour of his final exam.

S. was so distracted, and so aberrated by these recent experiences, he struggled in class. Sometimes wouldn't pass in assignments. Occasionally, he would even spend only half the allotted three hours of time in the studio to work on his tracks. He was starting to care less and less about his studies.
Students started to notice this. “Is he always stoned..?” Maybe it was just the after-effects, but rumors started to spread, and S.'s behavior in and out of class was starting to become regarded as “eccentric” and “strange.”
He would do strange things, from fail assignments on purpose, to embarrass other students, or make himself out to be a fool whenever the opportunity struck – just to prove some form of masochistic point, sometimes gesturing toward himself as a psychotic, with random, Freudian slips, during weed parties, to randomly-spoken remarks about his sexuality in other moments, which always had a unique effect on the resident closet homosexuals of the school. As he was beginning to hate school, and everyone there at this point. Eating weed cookies, directly after class one day, he asked the dealer, “how long till this shit kicks in..?” Stumbling in the parking lot, and for good reason, he said, he made these remarks, because “I hate it here.” He writes.

X

Often, walking home, in a sulking state, listening to his CD player, Mazzy Star, he would sweat profusely from his withdrawal from his nightly drinking, and find himself smoking a joint, after his six-month break, with little shift in his tolerance, and now, seemingly dealing with newfound lower-back pain that had begun following the panic attacks.

Struggling to even get up from the couch, sometimes, S. found himself in tension, apparently suffering from anger simply misdirected. He says, “when I got back into smoking, even after six months, it was like my tolerance hadn't changed at all. I took an Ambien, and I passed out one night, crying excessively at a Chinese restaurant, and nobody seemed to know why,” he writes.
The final exam was in two days.
He was scheduled for his last assignment in “Routing 101” Audio 2, at 1:30 P.M. It was a pivotal assignment, and if you didn't pass, you didn't pass the class.

* * * * * * *

Not much is very clear about where S. was before his last assignment, but he showed up, apparently, on time.
He knocked on the door, even earlier than his assignment was scheduled, when Hoyt, the Audio teacher, answered, saying another student had taken his spot.
Hoyt, who had once even asked B______ himself, “Are you taking drugs..?” Was a small man, and never seemed to have much respect for B______. With little else to say, once it became his turn, since another student showed up in his place, he was instructed to wait in the computer lab.
Once S. got into the studio, he plugged in the microphones as he had been instructed in class, but when he reached the control room – where the actual routing took place, he had no sense of where to plug in the cables. He choked, trying various inputs, when he realized, “I just don't fucking remember.”
Hoyt did his best to console S. – but S. knew it was over. He accepted his “on the spot” grade of a D+, and let the teacher know he probably wasn't too interested in continuing.
S. walked home to his apartment at Bradford Commons that day, down Husson avenue, listening to Mazzy Star's “Five String Serenade” – thinking to himself:

“I am dropping out of school.”






Chapter 17.0

“That's it. I quit. I don't give a shit.”

– Local H

“You're not a victim. You're just a star. Shining brightly, in a lonely universe.”

S. bought a bottle of wine, and drank it slowly. He meditated, thoughtless, for a moment, when a flash occurred, and then she walked into the room.

“So . . .”

He says nothing.

Her English always breaks when she gets nervous.

“You are going to . . . you are going to drop out – of school..?”

“Yes.”

She looks down.
He gets up, and walks into the closet studio, and plugs in the electric guitar, and starts to play a new recording. “I fucking hate this place.” He mumbles to himself, dwelling silently on the tones, and then out of a slight compulsion of bitter sickness, and anger: combined – simply thinks the words, “Fuck you.”

“I can't do this anymore.”

Later that week, they have an argument.

S. – who is no longer attending classes, sits in his bedroom, angry, smoking a bowl, and waits for the proper moment to try and communicate with her.

“Lumi, speak to me.”

She says nothing.







X


“Why are you always studying, studying, studying..?” “You don't give a shit about me.”
She looks up at him, and says, “I have serious assignment tomorrow. I need study. I need to study.”
“Fuck you. I want to break up.”
He leaves the room. And waits.

After one year, it seems that they are having their first most profound argument, far off from the time when S. once threw his pipe off a landed boat, somewhere in the woods, while smoking weed with Lumi somewhere down Sandy lane.

“You want to break up with me..?” She asks, entering the room, with the apparent tears in her eyes.

“Yeah.” He says. Before she can speak, he says:

“This is going nowhere. I fucking hate my life. I need to either die, or find something else.”

She starts crying more.

“B______, I love you so much.”

“I don't care.”

She starts to cry even more.
Repeating the words, he only seems to inculcate the effect of his words.


* * * * * * *

Lumi cries, “Oh, B______” as she rubs his face, now on top of him, almost physically begging him not to break up with her. He gets up, and leaves the room.
He writes a new song on his ukulele, and then returns to the bedroom, where she is meditating.

He says, “I thought about it,” after seeing her pass through to the bathroom, back to the bedroom, “And I don't want to break up. I'm sorry. I'm just fucked up. Here is a song.” He plays her his new song, and she “accepts his apology.”

* * * * * * *

They continued to stay together for a few months in the same apartment, together for months, though S.'s drinking continued, it also seemed her own health was failing, with often subtle remarks about her “throat surgery” and placing a heating coil around her neck during the Winter. S. would visit his family some days, but mostly spent as much time as he could with Lumi, sometimes arguing, sometimes deeply intimate, in a sort of bipolar show of not quite knowing enough, but always wanting to know more . . . and they continued on like this for a while, as S. occasions himself to return home each weekend, practicing driving, as he still hasn't gotten his license, visiting his family now and then.
He rode with his father, who says, “B______ I think it's time for you to make a change.”

With the news of a new employment opportunity, S. doesn't even think twice, but immediately says, “Yes.”
S. was scheduled to work for the first week, at C. Gardens, on MDI, where he will be tasked to be handling a rake, and working the parks in town such as the Village Green, Agamont Park, and other big properties, and hot-spots in the village of Bar Harbor.
S. took to this information, and accepted his new life, his father having said that “His boss liked B______ right away, as he walked up to each worker, and shook each one of their hands,” – “which was totally unorthodox in the field of men such as landscaping.”
He was working with Tom McKay who was rumoured to be jailed once for a bullshit crime at the bank he worked, and had done two years. A sixty-five year old man, who spoke in a thick Maine accent. And various others, who he would meet later on . . .
“We eat what we call a, ha, a riding lunch.” “You eat between jobs. If you smoke, smoke. Just remember to keep working. You'll do fine.”

In spite of Tom's advice, S. could not handle a rake.

He struggled, immediately, to move even the remotest amount of “Ziggapods” and leaves from the Village Green, totally embarrassing his fellow workers, and received constant advice.

He struggled for days, to maintain any form of physical stamina against the weather and leaves, but to no avail.

He was a horrible landscaper.









X


Interestingly enough, a few times on the job, S. got to know his fellow workers in deeper ways than he had ever been interested. S.H., told him that “I have a jump drive, that you can plug into any computer, and it will rip off their I.P. And personal information in less than 30 seconds.” “Oh.” S. responded, with little interest.
He also learned that some of his fellow workers were ex-military, others, absolute drunks, who drank avidly on the job. Others, pillheads. Others, simply devout potheads. “And there was only one female on the crew, the gardener.” 
Tom had lost a son in Iraq, while the other Tom having been jailed, seemed to be working mostly just to keep himself busy. C, his boss, lost his daughter. The resident hacker had been persecuted for his addictions almost his whole life. Other members of the crew had either been jailed, or had been oppressed, or persecuted in some way, S. started to note on. Even the resident female worker had been persecuted once for trying to raise wild rabbits on her farm property, and had her horses taken away, and it seemed like almost everyone on this crew had been fucked by society in some way. So, they didn't give up on S. in spite of his terrible workmanship. In fact, the “other” Tom, the aforementioned soul who lost a son in Iraq, who would often see B______ and tell him things like, “B______ I just want you to know. Every day. You're doing better. You're doing better, every day.” S. listened, and took to the words, and resumed raking.

He went back to his apartment, that weekend, and spent a lot of time with Lumi.

She appeared young, and as though an angel to him. He felt almost guilty for knowing her. “I don't know.” He said, later that night, in reference to nothing. It was finally admitted, during their relationship, the reason – in beginning reference – toward why Lumi suffered from health issues, and various mental health problems. She kicked a cabinet, and had to visit the emergency room for a broken toe-nail, around this time. S. didn't understand.
Finally, it was revealed that she was not only bulimic, but also anorexic in high school, and drank nothing but diet cola, eating sweeteners, no food, and only referring to sugar sweetener packages for sustenance. S. once put some down his pants, in a tease, and she started crying. “Lumi, what's wrong..??” “You don't know. I used to eat those. Those sugars. Every day. I had a – eating disorder.”
He understood, right away, but still didn't quite fully know the depth of her pain.
As he started to work more, he lived less at the apartment, and eventually was moving farther and farther away from Bangor.
He would occasionally come home, while staying in Bangor, during the Winter's, to find her with a heating pack around her neck. “The twisting.” She would say, in reference to her “surgery” from when she was a teenager. She would never explain the actual cause.
As time went on like this – S. grew despondent toward reality at this time, as he worked, and seemed to be excessively physically tired every day, often napping in the PM hours, and having little to say toward the world of audio or songwriting, save for a few lead guitar tracks to some basic rhythms, and typically no vocals . . .

X

* * * * * * * *

One night, S. got stoned, while watching a movie. He watched a sci-fi, which he fails to remember, and then passed out that night, he claims, after he left his “vaporizer” (a small, wooden contraption, that heats marijuana to the temperature just before burning, something around 175°C to 190°C) It was early technology, back then, and he usually used it in the privacy of his bedroom, but tonight, he left it out in the living room. He got excessively stoned, and left it out, turned on, with the heating element turned up high, and went to bed.
The next morning, his parents were telling him, “B_______ do you want to start a fire..?” And made him feel rather embarrassed about his stoned mistake. “I just wanted to get high.” Eventing himself into his bedroom studio, to record the suicide anthem, “Empathy.”
His mother had told his father that he was making claims to suicide, so she declared he needed a “talking to” based on what she'd heard from the other room. He screams, and his father stood, bolted upright, with some form of alarm, as though expecting an attack, while S. screams him out of the room.
“I JUST WANTED TO PLAY A FUCKING SONG!!”
“No,” She says. In a kind of nervous, near-laughing tone, “Some-times . . . it is good to say those things.” She looked away. And then down.” He watches her, and her low response. She just looks away again. 

* * * * * * *

Lumi went back to the apartment, that night, while S. stayed home in Bar Harbor, and worked on his new song. The “epic” rock song he was planning, to use slide electric guitar, and “juicy rhythms.”
He worked on this song night and day, when one night, he was working on the track, and found that he had accidentally deleted one of the source files. Out of anger, he decides to delete his entire months worth of work; and the entire program from his Fostex – thinking on his father, thinking on the recent experiences at school, at work, with Lumi, and then the phone rang.
“B_______ do you think.” She says. Kind of expecting a certain form of answer, now that Lumi is graduating college soon, and would require a green card to remain in the states. “Do you think, we will, be, I mean, stay, together..?” With almost no hesitancy, S. simply responds, 

“No.”

“What?”

“No.” He says again.










X

They had been dating for over a year, a year and a half approximately, and S. seemed to have no other decision in mind than escape from this present life.
“I will not know you in the future.”

She cries, and says. “I . . . I can't believe you are saying this.”

“I don't care.” He goes silent for a long while.

~

“Okay.” She says. “I guess we will . . . break up.”

A couple nights later, Lumi called, and she said, “every ten seconds, I say the word sorry.”

S. pauses, and wonders what she means. “Why . . . what do you mean..?” 

She calls again, that week, sensitive to her situation, and finally she wishes to see S.

He arrived having driven himself this time, walks up to the apartment labeled “Budge” in Bradford Commons (they all had cryptic names) – and knocks. She answers, with her roommate, the African exchange student, n.t.b.n'd, and says, “Hey.” After she requests to “get a good look at him.”

Lumi wears her usual black coat, and they exit the apartment together.

They left, and got into the car, while Lumi sat beside him, seemingly in a state of misery, and has little more to say than the word “sorry” over, and over, again.

After the 50 minute trip from Bangor to Bar Harbor, they get out, at Knox, and enter S.'s home off Route 3.

She sat with him in his bedroom, and says, “There is, some – thing. I need to tell you.”

“Okay.”

After several awkward words, and a few broken words, on the subject of her older classmate, a Korean
X
Methodist minister in one of her business classes, who she just had a school project with, she finally admits:
“I slept with him.”
Then saying, kind of in a laugh, “It is, almost, like . . . he . . . he manipulate me.”

Def later found out T.K. – through internet research – that the The Korean Minister, who had a son with down syndrome, and was an alcoholic, had suffered a drunk driving charge almost exactly around this same time, through internet research, in 2008, in Patten, Maine.

“Okay.” “I forgive you.”

S. said, then picked up his acoustic guitar. He played, “Empathy.”

Then he got up, and left, to go outside.

After a joint, and a red-bull vodka, S. then returns to the room, and Lumi watched, crying, he says, half-stoned, but mostly drunk, the words, “I . . . um . . . no . . . um. . . . You, can't sleep in here.” She watches as he drags the mattress out in front of her, to the adjacent room, where she slept alone for the night.


Chapter 18.0

“Japan”

“Sometimes, it feels like . . . we are meant . . . to hurt one another.”

She used to say, “I want to show you J'PON..!” (in her pronunciation) – and it seemed, no matter what, there was a prevailing responsibility S. felt to meet her sister and family and culture before it all ended.

S. decided, even though he had made it official he wanted to part ways with Lumi, and remove himself from this present life, in spite of everything, he still agreed, “Yes, I will got to Japan with you.”
He would always smile, and feel this to be an unrealistic plea.

Then he said, “I need a passport.” To his parents, one day, at the very last second, deciding to see her home town, and her family, before he finally parted ways with her, so he claimed.
He at first rode on a small jet with her, recording the lift-off with his camera, while she ate an apple and read a magazine. Traveling from Bangor, at first, to Boston, and then to Detroit, which finally left overseas in a larger jet, and watched the new Simpsons movie, high on benzo's given to him by his doctor, who even insisted, “if you have anxiety, you can just zonk out on the plane.” (Dr. K., his doctor, who was the same woman who delivered him in the Bar Harbor hospital, he loved to note on.) He had felt rather satisfied in achieving this, and passed out on his way to Chiba city.
He arrived, to meet her mother, and father – her mother, who spoke “some” English, and her father, who spoke absolutely none.
“Her father was a veterinarian, mostly for larger animals like cows, and had even been published a few times in articles in Japan. He seemed like a very honest, and uniquely courageous man to me. Always crunching his beer cans, and throwing them away instead of recycling.” S. knew “some” about him, before they met, and he always felt intrigued to be in association with anyone of Japanese origin, in their middle ages, who would act, and behave, like such vivacious and childlike souls. He recalls, “They acted like children. Everyone in Japan is so young. They are the most beautiful culture I have ever experienced. You don't grow old. You grow strong.” With what little S. knew of the Japanese language, he convened with the culture, buying mis-spelled 'Engrish' t-shirts, and traveling the subway with Lumi to various destinations, throughout intervalic arguments, but somehow always maintaining a positive behavior throughout the trip, with occasional signs of affection, and remote glances from the other side of the room, whenever he had the chance to secure her.

X

Still – S. – in his perverse desire to maintain his relationship with her, in spite of his desire to break up, continued be silent, distant, and expressed lesser interest, whenever Lumi approached him in intimate scenario's. Usually, she slept by a heat light, and it was reported that around this time Lumi finally tried valium for the first time in her life. He says, “She walked out of the bathroom, apparently, stoned, drunk, or really fucked up, but it seemed like benzo's, which I found out later on it was, and she seemed to have this kind of bittersweet, tragic feeling about herself. She seemed guilty, and happy at the same time. Then she asked me for a hug. I refused to stand, but simply wrapped my arms around her waist. 'That is cute,' her sister said, watching from across the room.
He drank wine coolers at night, searching for anything with American speaking channels, but eventually just resting with the subtitles of cartoons and Japanese TV, attempting to maintain the feeling he used to get from pot back home. To no avail, thinking, “I can't get drunk here.”
Some mornings, waking up, lying in his mattress-bed, on the floor, in her bedroom, simply thinking to himself, “What the fuck am I doing here..?”
Her parents thought, after all his nightly binges, he might fall down the stairs. “What the fuck..?” He would say. “I'm not even drunk.” “I wish I could fall down the stairs.”
Through this period of time, S. visited several of Lumi's friends, relatives, neighbors, and associates, even including her grandmother, who made jest out of rap symbols – to S.'s infinite enjoyment, as she formed a gang symbol in a photograph. Once, a fan-dancer, she told him.
People would often say, “He looks like an actor.” When they saw S. – wearing his black white-lined Volcom sweater-coat. He appeared unnatural to everyone, but somehow always seemed to possess some form of kindred relationship to this environment . . .
Whenever Lumi wanted to have sex, S. would ask,”Do you have a condom..?” in spite of her birth control, and one afternoon, even in the presence of her mother, she asked him why he “wasn't interested in having sex with me anymore..?” 
He didn't seem to care . . 
He used up all the money he received, as gift, from her relatives, on Engrish t-shirts, and even purchased a $300 guitar, with her father's money, while he was in Japan, so desperate to hear his own voice to the melodies he was used to back home. He claims, he performed because he was so desperate to hear his own voice to the sounds of any melody but street-noise, “garbled Japanese TV-drones,” or the “sounds of Lumi, and her constant complaints, and constant gossippings in Japanese . . . “
They ate dinner, finally, on the last day, with her grandfather, who sat in a camping-style seat (whatever they're called) – and S. enjoyed rice, “the best rice I've ever had. It only took two bites to satisfy me. I just stared at it the whole time, for the most part, hardly eating, but mostly just in a state of wonder at the delight of his own plate.

The table would spin, and food would rotate around, for each member to enjoy tea, wine, and refreshments, at the final luncheon in Japan with S. and Lumi, and her entire extended family.
They boarded the plane, later that week, and S. got on – somewhat high off some type of Japanese drug, apparently called “Buffren” (A derivative of IBUprofen), and sat, somewhat angry he was in an altered state, since he wanted to be sober for his ride, and Lumi's dad had even asked, “Are you okay..?” in the airport. He simply smiled and nodded. But he wasn't.

“On the ride back home,” he says, “it seemed like everyone was watching me.”
“I swear to God, I remember hearing some high-class looking dude, asking what my name was, to one of the male bartenders on the plane, and he said my name out loud, telling the man, his name is B______.” I didn't seem to mind, though.

S. listened to his CD player, sketchd on his notepad, while Lumi ate an apple, again reading a magazine, until they arrived at the Detroit airport.

* * * * * * *

When they arrived at the Detroit airport, S. learned their plane had been delayed for an entire eight hours.

He thought to himself, “Okay. What now. We gotta wait for a fuckin' plane..?” Lumi said, “Plane takes eight hours. What we do..?” In her anxiety-produced broken English. “I don't fucking know. I don't want to fucking hang out in a god-damned airport in Detroit. Fuck this shit.”
She gets upset.

“We need to catch plane. I need to finish my degree.”

“Lumi, we'll get back home.”

“What do you want to do..?”

“I don't know..! I can't sleep in a god-damned airport.”

They search, and search, until finally one of the clerks at the airport instructs them that for any delayed flights, they can stay for a free night at the Holiday Inn, just outside of town. S. says “Great. Let's do that.” Lumi is opposed to this idea. “We will miss the flight.” “No, we won't. I can buy an alarm clock.” “We will miss the FLIGHT..!” She turns around, and starts walking. He puts his hand on her arm, “Lumi. It is eight hours. Think about it. I'll just sleep for five hours. The timing is fine. We can make it. Be realistic.” “NO!” She says. “Fuck.” B_______ responds.

She looks upset, and says she wants to sleep in the airport.

“Lumi, this is the Detroit airport. Do you see this fucking place..? It's fucked.”



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“I will sleep here. You go.”

“You want me to go..? I'll fucking go. I'll leave you here.”

She looks up, with concern, half-imagining he isn't serious, and then he just starts running.
* * * * * * *

S. runs through the airport, eventually reaching a jog, in his attempt to get “as far away from Lumi as possible” while he then slows down, and walks through the airport, “trying to search for an alarm clock, or any clues about the Holiday Inn.”

Making a phone call to his parents, he said to their confusion, “Lumi is God knows where.”
. . . At radioshack he talked to a black cashier, to buy an alarm clock . . . and the man is nice enough to help him put in the batteries, and program it for him. “Thanks,” he says, and leaves.
He also speaks with two female clerks, who he reveals that, “I don't know where my girlfriend is.” To their hesitated responses.

Finally, once he's somewhat satisfied with all the information he's gotten, he realizes, “Okay. Where is Lumi..?”

He starts searching the Detroit airport.

He goes from one end of the airport, almost an entire quarter mile, to the next, from escalator, staircase, to escalator, searching, to no avail.

Searching, and searching, finally he grows tired, after a half hour, and begs himself, “Where the fuck is she..?”

Finally, walking down a set of stairs, he sees a figure in the distance.

She was all by herself, walking slowly, appearing to be crying, about 100 feet ahead of him, going directly toward him as he walked down the escalator.

It is Lumi, crying.

She is walking directly towards him. They approach one another, slowly, while the entire airport seems to be entirely vacant of people except for just the two of them walking towards one another.

“Okay.” He says. “Can we go to the Holiday Inn now..?”

“Yes.” She smiles, bitterly.

So they walk to the receptionist, at the front desk, near the bus area, get a slip, and ride a free bus to the Holiday Inn. S. fails to use the alarm clock. But they wake up in time anyway.

X
They board the plane the next day.

And within eight hours, they arrived back in Maine.

* * * * * * *

He calls her one day, after “watching Mulholland drive, with jittering eyes, since I had been in Japan, and hadn't smoked a hit of weed in two weeks.” “She is despondent, and seems far away.”

Lumi lived with an African exchange student – as S. moved back home, to Bar Harbor, only to visit occasionally on weekends.

As their relationship neared its final end, she lived, and was still spending time with more of her resident classmates. S. had nothing to do with it.
He raked leaves, and improved at his job, as time progressed, with Tom, always repeating, “Man, I just want to tell you. Every day, you seem to be doin' better. You're getting' better and better every day.”
He eventually received a raise, and was making a good amount of money to invest in his studio. Lumi rarely called, and he rarely called her.

Finally, she was to graduate school, and go back to Japan at the end of school.
At Lumi's graduation, S. brought a hand-pipe, and a large bag of weed, when he left in the middle of the ceremony, all of a sudden, and got up out of his seat in the bleachers, walking through the halls of Peabody, eventually leaving the building, seemingly unable to deal with the experience – to smoke a hit, by himself, in his old smoking spot in the woods, off the trail, just away from Bell Hall, where he uesd to smoke with G. He thought about nothing. He just smoked, staring into the dead, snow-covered leaves . . .

When he returned, Lumi had already received her diploma.

He said nothing.







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Chapter 19.0
“Lumi's Departure”

After a few stoned-drunk nights with L. S. finally realizes he needs more, at least one last time.

He fucks Lumi, for the last time, but the delivery is mostly on her side.

Then he passes out, in her apartment, on evening, in Bangor, only to return back home, and continue on with his usual habits.
She seems infinitely guilty – all the time. “Is this a part of her culture..?”

On the final weekend visit, to S.'s home – he is revealed the information towards the facts of her scars on her neck.

Finally, lying in bed one night, on a visit to S.'s home one weekend, she shares . . . “I . . . had an eating disorder. And, when I realize, I could no longer throw up, with my fingers, or other things, I used a knife.”
“She told me, she cut herself in the throat, with a blade, and showed up, standing in her parents doorway, gasping for air, and asking for help, and they rushed her to the hospital.”

Later, she had scars from her “twisted” neck-surgery, that revealed too weak a job. A boyfriend, she told me, in a drunken attempt at a hug, accidentally pushed his thumb through her throat, and she was again rushed to the hospital. By this time, her past had only been revealed too late for S. to care beyond the quickly, and only half-toned words of forgiveness.
Later that week, it was a very dark night, and S. drove with his permit to Bangor, with his mother. He entered the apartment, to see Lumi.

He said, “It was fun.” “Don't say that.” She replied, right away, in a somewhat angry tenor. “We did more than have fun.” “Okay.” He says. And then nothing else. They exit the apartment.

He looks at her, and smiles.

“Goodbye, Lumi.”

















X

“Goodbye,” she said, while she – pushing him, rather forcibly, lifting him a few inches off the ground.
She turns around, and walks back into Bradford Commons.
He got into the car, and his mom drove him home.
















X


Chapter 20.0: The Spring

“Aftermath”

& The First 100 Songs

S. smoked a joint, that following night, and enjoyed a flashback of his past from his days in Audio school. He sits in the classroom, with fog on the walls, and every student seemingly as though a ghost.

S. walks up to his business of music teacher, J. Tassi – the former co-founder of Arista records, and in spite of his fellow classmates disdain for their teachers taste in music, he asks him, waiting until every student has left the room, finally getting up from his table, and approaching, with the words, “I have been struggling with inspiration. I know you write music. And I just wanted to know, what do you think I should do..?”

“Just write 'em.” Joe says.

After only a momentary nanosecond of a pause, S asks, “Just . . . 'write 'em..?” Joe responds, saying, “Just write 'em.” Again, looking S. directly in the eyes. “If you think you're struggling with inspiration, the best thing to do is just force it out of yourself. Just get it out. Just write 'em, man. That's the best thing I can tell you. Just get it out of you.”

That summer, after the departure of Lumi, S. started recording more seriously. Through the progressing months, he recorded over 100 songs, though not all were “hits” he was happy with the fact he was finally starting to release.
. . . He worked his job, often smoking on the job, finally, smoking deeply after work, and often occasioning himself to spend more time with the drunks, though he was never interested in drinking around them, which he never did.
His ability with the rake improved, and as he continued to receive .75 cent raises, finally, his pay was nearing that of the same of some of his workers, who sometimes complained about how much money they were receiving from their boss, while S. would only kind of think guiltily to himself, “This guy is 20 years older than me. He's a drunk. He's lost everything. And I'm only getting paid one dollar less than this motherfucker..?” Throughout, he mowed graveyards, parks, mansions, oceanside homes, and also worked throughout the fall, collecting dead leaves from various properties throughout Bar Harbor.
Sometimes he would think about Lumi, and remotely, while he rides beside Thomas, the resident drunk.
X
on the crew, who would always drink beer out of a coffee cup while driving down Main street, and feel deeply enamored by his hateful words, though he deeply admired him, he was often in too much pain to pay attention to his daily rants. Sometimes purchasing another beer in the middle of the day just to maintain himself. S. took note of his drunken behavior, and studied him closely.
“Some day, I'm going to fucking . . .” He mumbles, to himself, and Thomas asks, “What was that..?” “Nothing. I just saw someone.” Thomas says, “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

He had spotted an old friend, reading a newspaper in the Alternative Market, JV, who was an old friend from high school, in passing by the shop.
As he looked out from the truck window, he eventually arrives at the property near the real estate agency, and starts to mow, while Thomas does the trimming.
Over time, he starts to think, “Maybe I should find him.”

Josh was a songwriter, S. used to spend time with in Bar Harbor, at a locale called “Cafe Bluefish” (upstairs apartments) – where he used to crash on the couch, and was eventually forced to pay $20 out of his pocket to maintain his own company there. No one seemed to like him. He was always sleepless, tired, and in a droned-out state, seemingly more interested in some higher function of his own mind, “than to actually deal with the resident socialites of people.” He said.
He used to wake up, without any rest, and almost appearing with rickets, stumble outside, and take a few hits of his “alternative” weed smoke he ordered off the internet. Blue lotus, mixed with various other potent ingredients such as the synthetic THC chemical (finally localized, and exploited later on in the millennium, through German studies) And say, “So, how you guys doin' today..?” And seem, only half-pretending to care. They would notice, his morose, and morbid state; only constantly. He'd say random, cryptic statements, sometimes alluding to his past, but rarely was he truly understood by anyone in the apartments.
He wore a striped brown and yellow sweatshirt. Zoe took great interest in him, thinking “Are you Jewish..?” when she first saw his long black curly head of hair. “No.” he said.

Jordan, the girl he soon took to, would be the reason why he'd be kicked out.

She was ten years older than him.

“Have you ever heard that colors are vibrations..?”

S. receives no answer, and everyone at the table just kind of looks away.
He looks down, and gets up from the table, and walks over to the heater, standing, with somewhat hostile thoughts toward his hosts, and considers the notion of suicide for a brief moment. And then says,

X

“Or that death is only an illusion produced by a limitless universe, only being experienced by souls pre-mortalized through the fact they have already died..?”

No response, again.

However, he seems to gain little respect, around this time of his life, S. still began to move a little bit away from music; and more toward writing, and his interests in spirituality, he would continue to express these kinds of remarks around this time, no matter what anyone seemed to think of him.
“Sometimes I think I am dead.” he mumbles to himself, quietly, in the corner, and then JV approaches. “Hey. We're gonna go for a walk. Want to come with us..?” He says. “No.” And then changes his mind. “Okay.”
* * * * * * *
They find themselves, grappling with the sidewalk ice, and acting drunk near the clock-tower, as they move through the 20 degree weather of Bar Harbor, freezing, but so adrenalized, Wes, JV, and B______ didn't really seem to care. 
S. has a certain somber attitude about him, and he seems as though he is actually searching for something. It never made much sense to them, until later on . . .
“I always wanted to be nothing more than a tone.” He would say one night. “A syllable. A sound. A letter. A wave. This. That's all I ever wanted to be. Just a sound. I want to become a song.” And then, without anyone noticing, S. began to cry.
S. as he walks back with Wes and JV, unnoticing, and finds himself back in the apartment, with Jordan standing on a chair, smiling as she stares at him – constantly stares at him – from the chair she stands on, viewing from over the partition between the kitchen and the living room, just smiling, while he sits, near the TV, and fireplace, and JV plays a song, improvised, his first take, called, “Didn't Take Long To Find Out.”
He looks up at her, and grimaces, with hatred in his eyes. Thinking, “Oh fuck you, Jordan.”
And then he looks down, at the row of books.

Fuck you all.

He shuts his eyes, and pretends she is not looking at him.











X

Chapter 21.0

“Nights when less is more.”

“Although cryptic, sometimes reality can be easily described through words. I often find, that in my greatest mentors, only exist the books written by thoughts perpetuated by another mind. It all seems so connected. What if I am part of a different world..?”

S. looked down at his copy of “Many Lives, Many Masters” – and meditated on the concept for a while.
“What is reincarnation..?” He thought.

The book, “Many Lives, Many Masters” (Weiss) – was written by an individual to whom was once referred to as “past-life regressionist” in his use of hypnotism during the seventies, who only “stumbled” onto the details of a persons past-life information, via absolute chance, and found, that all human beings are born from another time.
S. referring to the book, says, “He would count backwards, from the individuals age. When he reached zero, he kept counting backwards. Time was altered. And the mind would find itself in a different place.” “Masters” would speak, S. writes.
“In the transitional state, souls review their codes, and find the details of their essential Existence. They discover why they are here. Then, returning to the present, find the ability to thus re-write, and alter any traumas ever experienced in the mind or memory.” S. wrote in his diary.

“How do I find the truth to my own soul..? Is the soul real..? Does it exist..? Who am I..?”

After his recent shifts in life, he'd been spending more time with L. – and found himself writing music, blues songs, and playing lots of tracks with L – who spoke much about ancient authors, and told S. many things about the writings of the past; the more S. described his interest in writing toward L.

Finally, he began to get close to the end of the book.

“Many Lives, Many Masters” – ends with a revelation.
He states:
Weiss discovers that all humans exist, in a part of a system, through incarnation, to incarnation, via a connected design of patterns. He found, that we have the ability, not only to reach this information, but the data of souls in-between lives; through Information, “in itself.”
That night, S. took a bath, as he finished the last chapter of Many Lives, Many Masters. When he got out of the bath-tub, he says, “I lied down flat on my stomach, and as soon as I did, I found myself in a different place.”

He started to dream . . .

Almost immediately after lying flat down on his stomach, and within almost one seconds time, he started perceived himself, in the other room:

“I found myself sitting at the computer.”

“I was hearing something.”

“It sounded like thoughts. From far away.”

An answer was replied.

It emanated. 

Like a buzz. 

The “Information traveled through me.”

“Like electricity.”

“I then started to fly.”

“I seemed to be howling, like some kind of reptilian beast.”

I thought about this, and as I hovered in the mirror, after this wild scream, and cognated, from the mirror:

“I can fly.” “But now I'd like to walk.”

In that moment, I found myself hovering down to the floor, in slow gradual motions, until I was finally standing, and then began to walk around.

As he had then, in his moment of choice, staring at himself in the mirror, chose the decision, to “walk.”

S. got out of bed, totally alarmed, and electrified by his astral projection, and found himself walking into the kitchen, and walked through his bedroom, into the hall, eventing his way through the living



X
room, until he entered the kitchen, and was staring at himself in the same mirror from his dream . . .

And he said to myself, out loud, “I guess I'm walking now.”

. . 

Chapter 22.0

“C”


“Is anger, sometimes, a perpetuator of more powerful, and more beautiful energies..?” “Sometimes, I think, the more angry I get, the more relieved I feel. Almost as though – the more I hate the world, the more it seems to respond to me; in any measure or form. Is this logical..?”

It is nearing Christmas, and S. is sitting at his computer.

He is presently working with his old school wave editor, meditating on new music, and thinking about it all . . .

“B______” You got a present from Lumi.

“Oh.” He says.

She leaves the room.

Without thought, he immediately places the unwrapped gifts on the floor.

After stomping on the gifts, he said:
“Fuck you.”
Throws them to the side of the room, and continues working on his song.

Then he realized

“What have I done..??”

He opens the gift, and sees the tie, and the pair of slippers. The candies. The letter. Thinking, “Oh God.” And cries.

Then he plays the song “Numbers” by the Church, while taking a prolonged hit from his pipe.

“I miss you . . .” He thinks, while smiling bitterly. “You fucking bitch . . .”
X
Wherever he is today, the minister who fucked Lumi was far away by now, only later tracked to a random Methodist church in Massachusetts later on.
In a flash, he recalls how she once sat on the bed, and used to tell him how she would cry beside him, while sitting in the passenger seat of his car after class, and, while confessing her sins, with his hand touching her leg, he would say,“You are forgiven.”
“That is so fucked up.”
He would go straight to his studio, and begin working on a song.

She was humiliated, but he didn't care. “Who fucks a minister..?”
Thinking to himself, “You stupid bitch . . .”

* * * * * * *

As S. stares at the present on the floor, he looks back at the screen, which is showing a Craiglist window.

She responds, right away, and her name is Lisa.

Lisa, who is a rather cryptic soul at first, with only so much to say, seeks Def, at first, for his ability with words, saying things like, “Out of everyone I have ever encountered . . . you seem like the most interesting and profound.”

Claiming she was greatly effected by his initial e-mails, as it was becoming more and more of an interest for S. to move away from music, and get more into poetry, prose, and writing; in fact, he started penning lots of poetry at this time, and wrote at least twenty, to thirty “lyrics” or “pieces” a day. Sometimes fifty.
He was also beginning to read Hunter S. Thompson, Burroughs, Poe, Kafka, and various other “elite authors,” in his opinion, who he only referred to as “the best who must be understood, if I wish to understand myself.”
He decided, “And if I want to understand myself. I must understand words.”
“Words, from language, is all derived from Sound – in the primordial tech of knowing that we all inherently use letters, and symbols, to form our names and descriptions of reality. We are all born from letters, inherently.” 
With this, his newfound effect on online users progressed, as he was developing a greater interest in simply referring to himself as “Writer.” And nothing else.
Later that week, he got wasted that night, and finally, he got back into the benzo's.

X
“Are you okay, B______..?”

“No.” “Yes.” “I don't know.”

He took about eight pills, drank several glasses of wine, “maybe it was a mixed drink.” And passed out with an entire ounce of weed broken up on his desk table . . . “You took too much, B______. You took too much. His father repeated, who had done lots in the seventies, knew exactly what was going on.

His father, that night, read to him, while he could hardly comprehend the words, the Tao Te Ching. He passed out, on his back, and woke up, ten hours later. Waking up, he went to work a couple days later, but the season was ending. It was moving into Winter by this time.
One day, it had been said, that S. showed up with Lisa at a gas station, and collided with an individual known simply as “C” – who was also a local drug dealer.
He gets out of the car, to buy a soda, and realizes, “Hey, wait, isnt' that..?” And talks to him for a moment. C drives a large brown gangster-style car, not knowing anything about cars, this is just how S. described it.
He gets his phone number, and gets back into the car with Lisa, and they drove back to his place.
He had originally met C at “The Rock Nest” (a smoking spot) just down from COA college.
C called, one day, out of the blue, and outright asked S. “Do you need anything..?”

S. had been smoking legal herb at the time (legal alternatives) and was getting tired of the tripped out buzz, so he said, “Okay. When can you be here..?”

C showed up that day, sometime around 3 o'clock, and sold S. a half ounce of commercial bud. “Cool.” They smoked together, and C took great notice of the immense, and prolonged hits off the bong S. would take for his body weight. Every time, he would almost attempt to instruct S. to take smaller hits. But S. didn't seem to care.
For weeks, C and S. hung out – and they spent much time together, from car rides, close conversations about his new drug-deal endeavors, confiding much information to S about his “business” (as dealers always had confided about their business with S. for some reason) – he learned much about the world of dealing, and what could even be perhaps referred to as the somewhat criminal life. This individual did other drugs, and he was promiscuous. He claimed to have “several girlfriends.” No one really knows why C took such a liking to S. – but the relationship would progress, for months, finally, until it became obvious and evident that S. was getting on C's nerves.

“What the fuck, dude.” C finally said, after S. hit the entire bowl from the bong, and left no hit for C.
“You gotta hit the side, just a little bit, and leave some green for me.”



X
“Okay.” Then S. said nothing.

Their despondence grew, as time progressed, and over time, they communicated less directly, but started to focus their intentions more on S's studio, and his music, since it seemed like C was actually attempting to “heal” or save S. in some way.
S. descended, and continued to lower through the downward spiral of his own self-disillusionment.
He didn't care. By this time, he was even thinking, consciously, while in the company of C. “Who is this motherfucker. Get away from me, sometimes. I want to be alone.”

It is almost as though C could read his mind... A self-proclaimed ‘master’ in martial arts (black belt) C was reported to have great skill in the fighting arena, and if this is true, probably also true in “other” arenas.
He never quite understood, and yet, since C was only a year older than him, and would sometimes say, “Yeah, I remember you from high school.” S. had no memory of C in school. He spent time with no one, and thought about nothing but his own personal endeavors during this time. He was a shadow. 
“That's cool.” He would blink, and then look away, kind of bemused by his own interests in whatever song he was working on, because he was progressively caring less and less a fuck about C after enough bad deals had gone down – sometimes being charged $100 for ten grams of commercial bud, or even more, just to achieve a half ounce. It was “a very disappointing relationship” he claims.
Their relationship continued to fail, and as time progressed, S. started to meet some of C's friends, and began to associate with other musicians more and more, such as Charlie, from California, Max, and Charlie's girlfriend.

That night, he had been heavily ripped off by C, probably because he needed extra money, or had some secondary ambition to exploit these three college kids.

S.'s disdain grew, and he began to hate C more and more, though he continued to put up with the odd relationship, and eventually began to allow C to record music with him, and even play the Didjeridoo, to “rid the room of evil spirits” from his room – As C put it.

“I'm sorry, C.” S. said one night.

C responded with a hit, and simply said, “smoke more.”

S. takes another hit, and passes the bowl back to C.

“Yeah man,” C. said, “you have been.”

S. said, “I'm sorry I've been a real asshole lately.”







X

Chapter 23.0
“There is only One God.”
The Acid Trip


Later into the year, after several minor skirmishes with C. over his excessive use of weed, and how much money he seemed to be spending each week on bud, the two continued to hang out for quite a while deep into the summer of 2009.
S. recorded more music, and began working on more serious tracks, some slightly more vocal, or in fact, “far more vocal” in his opinion – than they had ever been in the past, as early on, S. – as it was expressed in his teenage years, never recorded his vocals very loud, and was always embarrassed of his own voice; or perhaps just of himself. He eventually started raising the level of his vocals, singing louder, and pronouncing himself more into the microphones. 
He also set up a drum set, and began learning percussion at this time.
C sometimes, seemed almost amazed at S.'s growing vocal ability.

Reading from the Capricorn Rhyme Dictionary, S. once recited various phrases based on non-linear word-choices from the book, and rapped an improvised song based on the book. C, who had never seen this before, simply responded, “I don't know” when S. handed him the book, and said, “Here, you try.”
By this time, S. had begun to study the subconscious mind – and was stemming new interests into the world of psychology, words, and language.
The more S. smoked – and read – and got involved in writing, the more his concepts seemed to shift, and change. He expelled constant phrases toward C. who would listen.

He thought, in his unique phrase, that “The mind can be summed up in a single phrase. The subconscious mind.” “It all relies on the alphabet. Letters. This. Like you. And me. We are waves. We count ourselves. We are also numbers.”

He says, “The subconscious mind, is the patternless, present-tensory, goal-oriented mind.”

That night, in his diary, he wrote,
 “It functions, on no-time, as well as a mortal function of time, and seems to be relative to our own designs in this reality as essentially justified by our own pasts, presents, and futures, determined, through a conclusive, and active goal-oriented function of the system of Thought. To the subconscious mind, there is no such thing as linearity, but only conclusion, and wholeness. Thus, time does not exist to the mind, which is essentially Infinite.”

“The mind invented time.”

“Do you think that you really exist..?” He would sometimes ask C.

“We all exist, B______. Life is infinite, as you describe the mind. Nothing ends. Get a grip, dude. Take another hit.” “You're not smoking enough.”

“Sure.”

S., finally, as he's finally grown more accustomed to the ways of the dealer, only hits a small corner of the bowl, and then passes it over to C.

“I just want to learn more.” He looks up, pondering. “There has to be more to reality than this.”

“What do you want to know..?”

“Enough.”

“You can do anything you want, man. It's all up to you. You have the potential to do anything you want to, in this world. Decide for yourself.”

“Okay. How do I..? I want to change the world.”

“That's fine. But you gotta learn, man. This world is already good the way it is.”

“It ain't about changing. It's about improving.”

S. dwells on this, but doesn't seem to hear him.

* * * * * * *

During the summer of 2010, a new art store displaying art-work from local artists in Maine, had opened up beside the Village Green.

S. originally walked in, asking if his metal spiked art was meant to be seen as “kinetic” and Jeff stated, “No. I just put fuckin' spikes on the wall.” And S. responded with the words, “Oh.”

The art shop was however a minor success for Jeff, in the early summer, with many new artists, and unique individuals coming in, inclusive of some of S's friends – in particular Wes, who sold a print,


X
“Silver Bullet” to his original success in the world of art. One day, after buying a cup of coffee next door, S. felt compelled, and walked into the store with his “camera portfolio” – showing Jeff his most recent art-work, “kinetically-designed” based on swirl-patterns, and free association. Jeff responded with the words, “Want to do something in October..?” S. responded, “Yes.”

* * * * * * *

During this time, S. was often seen drinking coffee, Red Bull, or mystery cups of coffee in the Village Green, with his black guitar, penning lyrics, and spending as much time with the denizens of Bar Harbor as humanly possible. He left his house, riding the town bus, at least five times a week, and sometimes invited friends back to his studio.

That week, S. arrived, at Joe's apartment, sometime around 6 or 7 PM with C – who informed S. that he had an entire blotter sheet of acid in his backpack.

S. had no idea what was in store, but there was an obvious sense of tension about him.

He seemed to be the focal point of the night.

Most everyone knew he had a new art display, and the fact that C had taken such a good liking to him, being that C was the coolest dealer in Bar Harbor, it was obvious this quiet kid from high school was perhaps an interesting member for a tripping circle . . . S. just thought, to himself, remotely, “I don't fucking know about these motherfuckers.”
In one moment, S. is listening to Ben's microphone on his cell-phone, and the echo effect it produces when they all hear their voices in the room. He is impressed.

He played a snowboarding game on playstation, for a minute, with one of the members of the party, which eventually numbered seven, including S. – and they all began to drink, smoke, and finally, put the small white pieces of paper in their mouths.
S. just swallowed his, eventually. He took two hits, after being asked by Joe, in his suggestive, charismatic tones, “Are you gonna get dosed, B______..?” “Yeah.” S. responds. After the two hits, promptly afterward, sits down, and and waits. They all wait, in fact.

“I am a wave. I am a vibration. I am the infinite eye. I am tetzulah. I am God.”
He seems to start hearing voices in his mind.

“What..?”

Suddenly, after a period of time, after smoking the blunt, and asking C “What do you want me to do with the blunt..?” It's obvious the drug is kicking in. He places it on a soda can, and looks at his hands. Suddenly, a voice. A voice, precipitates, seemingly from above, and he hears words approaching. He finds himself being perceived in communication, obviously,with a foreign presence. “Who are you..? 


X
What do you want..?”

“I am God.”

“Go away.”

“That would be impossible.”

“Do you remember..?”

The words echoing after they were spoken. 

“Alone. Alone. Alone. Go away. Go away. Go away.” He tries, and tries, to push the voice away. It seems to work, at first, generating, in response, some form of static sigh of surprise and shock.

He looks up, and everyone in the room is staring at him.

He says nothing.

Suddenly, the words echo in his mind, perhaps a thousand times in a single second:

“Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember.”

S. suddenly flashes on his past, and he is regressing through portals, gateways, and infinite loops. Then he suddenly flashes back to the present, and he notices that he is not thinking anymore. Everyone is.

There is now, what he refers, the Universal Mind.

All at once, they all cognate the same thought, and it seems to flow as a circle around the room. “One.”

“Oh yeah. Telepathy. I know about that. So, there is only One Mind, as we all know.” But the only person who seems to be very aware is S.

Everyone listens.

“We are all born from the same matter, and all minds are connected, essentially.”

“And there is simply, and has been, only, One Mind.” These words seem to come out of him, as though spoken from another voice.

“We are all One Mind.”





X
His eyes flashed into infinity.

If it could be said, as “Time” progressed (wherever time really was, at this time) – it seemed that space and time had been altered altogether.

“I need to see this.”

“B______” what are you doing..?”

“Watch..!”

He gets up, and stares over, up to the wall, and stares directly at a spiral drawing he had done previous, on another day, and suddenly, as he thinks the word “Purple” everything in the room is suddenly tinted purple. Then he thinks “Green” and everything turns green.
“That's natural.”S. Cognates to himself, smiling, satisfied.

“What the fuck, B______..?” “What the fuck are you doing..?” other voices resound from about the room. Then Ben gets up, and reaches at B______'s shoulder.

Immediately, S. grabs Ben by the other arm, and in just one millisecond, Ben is thrown down to the ground through some seemingly superhuman force.

S. then walks over to the hallway area of the trailer, and spins.

“What is happening..?” S says, and then faints.

“How was he spinning like that..?” they said.

X


Chapter 24.
“The Stigmata Wound”

“Where am I..?”

“. . . dead..?”

A thin white line was beginning to show up in my left hand.

“I recalled voices, being transferred, from mind to mind, as though no one was speaking at all. We all spoke without our lips. It was direct nonlocal thought-transference.”

Suddenly, S. sees himself standing in a small, dingy room.

Then he sees himself, surrounded by six different versions, or “copies” of Ben.

He then sees, or perhaps, “hears” what appear to be intercoms, and beeping sounds.

“Am I on a spaceship..?”

“Where am I..?”

“Fly up to Joe, B______.” “Fly up to Joe.”

“I can't fly.”

“Yes you can, B______, you can fly. Fly up to Joe.””Fly up to Joe, Brendan. Do what you were just doing.” They all seemed to be crying. “Fly up to Joe, Brendan. Can you fly up to him..?”

“Okay.”

He finds himself in an ambulance, and he is handcuffed.

He struggles, thinking, the literal thoughts, “I need to die.”

S. attempts to move his hands, to keep the wound open in his left palm.

The blood flows, but he is soon given a shot of thorazine, and falls asleep again.

He woke up, a man staring him in the eyes, apparently with a very desperate, and seemingly shocked look in his eyes.









X

S fell asleep again.

He wakes up, to a smiling older woman, who seems to be in a very peaceful attitude, as she rubs some form of orange fluid on his chest. He says, “Am I going to be okay..?” “You're going to be okay.” She says, and he falls asleep again.

* * * * * * *

S. woke up in the hospital, he was given a catheter, which he (thanking himself) requested for a kind female nurse to remove, with the words, “Can you get this thing out of me..?”
“Sure, she said.”
The woman removed “the thing” from his penis.

He falls asleep, after a sandwich, and a little Gatorade, and finally, a doctor enters the room to debrief him on his “experience.”

“It was close, B______.” The doctor says. Who also has a rather shocked look in his eyes.

In regards to S.'s mental health, he simply says, “I was on drugs. I didn't mean to hurt myself.”

It seemed to make sense, and the doctor bought his story.

Later, that night, C showed up. He brought S his glasses.

They spoke for only a few minutes, until C. said “Here. It's your glasses. You left them.”

* * * * * * *

They're riding in the car. “C's gangster-style car.” And they're smoking a joint. “So what happened..? I was too fucked up to remember. I cut myself, but I don't remember. How does that happen..?” “You went like this.” Indicating a hand punching, and then moving down on a window-shard, with the left car-window.
C opens the window of his car, and motions down with his hand. “You punched out the window, and then you went down with your hand, straight into a piece of glass.” “I honestly don’t even know how you did that.” 

S. sits in silence for a while, meditating on his glass-shard stigmata, looking at the bandage on his left hand. C was breathless the whole car ride, and was both happy and sad, it seemed.

* * * * * * * *

The next day, S. smoked a joint with C.









X


They walked out, after it was rolled, and S. just decided to bring it up, as they walked out to sit by a shed near his home on two chairs situated beside it. He asked, “So was that telepathy..?” Without much response, C. just said, “I don't know if I believe in God.”









Chapter 25.0

The Art Display

During this time, as S. had been officially moving away from writing, and poetry, and discovered the realm of visual arts more pronounced in his life, both inspired by fellow artists, and his own desire to “will the imagination into action” he thought again and again about “color and vibration,” and “the true essence of existence, which is frequency.”

He would take excessive amounts of paint, and drip it onto a canvas, only to lift the canvas, and tap the edges of the board against the floor, spreading the paint, producing swirl designs he referred to as “kinetic art.” Taking a piece of glass, and put it on top of the swirl designs, to produce more glossy images. The prints, sharp-edged, were rather impressive, and became displayed in Bar Harbor, that year, while S. spent much more time socially, smoking by the shore, and communing with the local residents more and more.
By this time, S. had become extremely social, and often took the Island Explorer to visit town, and go into excursions just to enjoy the world, and “Experience.”
His art dealer, who will simply be referred to as “Jeff” – was often drinking red wine, and had a lot of opinions about his fellow neighboring shop-dealers. “If you want to sell plastic dog shit, and fuckin' key-chains . . .” often ranting, and talking about “next year.”

Seeing the bandage on S.'s hand, the shop-keeper would rarely ask much, and initially it was said that S. simply told him it was from a “alcohol-related incident.”
The tourist town, of Bar Harbor, Maine, at this time, was kind of thriving, pre-2012, and there was a lot of energy all around. Everyone seemed to be partying. Everyone seemed to be getting out, and hanging out in the park quite a bit. S. himself would often be seen, sitting in the grass, with up to seven denizens of the town, some much younger than him, while they passed cigarettes, and discussed their plans for what to do with their lives. S. mostly listened, and remained very quiet, yet whenever he spoke, he was typically heard, though with few words.
“Do you think I could sell some smaller prints..?”

One day, to S's infinite satisfaction, he watched as Jeff thumbed through about 20, 10x10 mini-prints of abstract art, and chose out his favorite ones. He'd never felt such attention, before, he thought to himself, and it seemed 'the town' was really starting to take to him.”

X
Women, and the female shopkeepers, as well as many of the “new girls in town” were developing an interest in S. – he would strum a nylon black Mexican guitar, one he purchased post-breakup with Lumi, on a little voyage with his Father, and Sister to Puerto Vallarta later that year – and would even sing, sometimes, the songs, “Plastic Jesus” and “Wagon Wheel” as well as a couple of his own. 
Meeting several people this year, he also spent much time with JV, who would often visit him at his home, and record music with him. At the same time, he continued to buy weed from C. He also spent time with L, the blues player, and finally an individual later named Moody. Another soul, W. – (who at first seemed to have trouble communicating) was also a growing interest in his relationships. Once, a bus driver asked, “Who did you hit..?” When they saw the bandage on his left hand. “Oh. No one.” And he just got off the bus, without another word.
In spite of the variant eccentricities of his behavior, he started branching out, and meeting several of the stars of Bar Harbor.

They smoked often by the shore, and for the first time, S. has the slow, silent revelation, that, “People are good.” – although it diminishes quickly, once he hears his friend make a stupid remark, and then, realizes, “maybe that was the last time.” Instead. He gets up, wipes off his pants, and says, “let's . . . get out of here.”
They all get up, following his lead, as he was, somehow, often silently leading.

They used to walk over the rocks, down by the shore, even late at night, drunk, and wasted, with need of extra adrenaline, and humor, to make it through the jumps, various skips, and slippery spots down by the rocks and water. It almost felt like things used to be, smoking down by the docks when he was thirteen.

S. would sometimes show up at the Village Green, late at night, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, jeans, sandals, carrying a guitar, and talking about “Infinite Change. To the motherfucking universe.”
Once or twice, S. was seen at home, in the most “athletic” he could be expressed. He played the drums, more and more, by this point, and also owned a small pair of black juggling sticks, and seemed to have great balance with his hands, in spite of the injuries he'd taken.

His guitar skill improved. He recorded more songs. One day, he asked Jeff, “Do you ever want to get high..?” And Jeff responded, in almost careful words, looking into S.'s eyes. “I have gotten high. I used to be a codeine addict, B______.” S. said, “Oh.” And then nothing more. He paces around the art gallery, for a moment, looks up at his paintings . . . one entitled “Screen.” One entitled “Phantasm.” One entitled “There is a river.” One entitled, simply, “Music” that was never labeled. And another, that was originally entitled “Cosmosis.” And exits, without a word. 
He walks back to the Village Green, and sees his friends, thinking “I'm thirsty” and goes to the Rite-Aid, and buys an Ice-Tea.

He walks back to the Park, and sees Jeff, all by himself still. They talk for a bit. As they talk, it seems apparent they are starting to get to know each other better now.
After Jeff's blunt confession about his past, and they've been talking about their taste in music for a while, both look over, and almost upon unified glance, suddenly, a ten dollar bill floats in through the doorway. S. looks, just at the same time as Jeff, and Jeff says, “get that fucking thing.”
S. walks over, and grabs the ten dollar bill off the floor. Not three seconds later, or maybe four, a woman enters the art gallery, and says, “I'm sorry. Did you see a ten dollar bill anywhere..?” And she laughs kind of embarrassed at herself, saying “I just lost one.” S. looks at Jeff, and Jeff lowers his eyebrows, so S. says nothing. They simply shake their heads. Jeff, after she left, said, “Go buy some cheap wine with this.”

* * * * * * *

S. goes to the Bodega, and purchases a cheap bottle of red wine.

He returns, and Jeff says, “Allright. Let's drink this.” 

“I . . .” 

S. responds. 

“I can't drink right now. I've got an empty stomach.” 

Jeff does the eyebrow thing again.

“You serious..?” 

“Yeah.” S. responds. 

And leaves.


Chapter 26.0

The “Fake” Suicide . . .


S. – around this time, was falling. But he didn't seem to know.

He was not doing so well, when it came to his thoughts about reality at this time. He thought much about his recent experience with C. who was no longer calling, and always seemed despondent on the phone towards the end.

It is not described exactly when, since S. was so fucked up around this time – but he was smoking perhaps the largest amount of pot, and drinking the greatest amount of liquor more in this, than in any other epoch of his life.
He would occasionally show up to the art shop, and drink wine, and then leave, with only cryptic words, expressing profoundly odd behavior, usually saying little, and was seemingly becoming less and less a member of any concept of a normal reality. 

With all of his prolonged treks, as he'd often be seen either with headphones, or carrying his black Mexican guitar, sometimes his only footwear being sandals, carrying the guitar, which in fact only weighs 15 pounds, he could be seen almost anywhere in town.

People were starting to talk.

“Cool.” “Eccentric Artist.” “Creep.” “Drug Addict.” “Who is he..?”
Over the course of one and a half months, getting into the fall, only one print had been purchased, which was by one of the shop's workers, an older woman, of very honest demeanor, who S. had spent a few quiet, more direct conversations with that summer, out of most people.
(This would be paid for the next Summer, when he finds her working in the town later on. A $20 sale).
“I'm fcckkked, aren't I..?” He said, to one of the other workers, one day, in a short, half-whispered mumble. “What..? I don't fuckin' know, dude.” She was a thirty-year old woman with blonde hair and a nose piercing. She didn't seem to like him.

Late that night, while working on a new song, S. received a phone call.

X
It is Lumi.

“Brendan. What is this I am hearing about you..? You were in the hospital..? You tried to kill yourself..?”

“Lumi, I . . .” He attempted to speak.

She seems angry with him.

“I didn't try to . . .”

“What are you doing..? You have no job, nothing. This is your life. Why..?” “I was on drugs.”

“I don't really know what happened.” He told her again, “I was on drugs.”

She hangs up, afterward, her Christmas gifts still stashed neatly underneath the right side of his desk, and takes another hit, to the song “Numbers” – ever-repeating on his stereo.

S. decided, the next day, walking directly off the bus with the thought, “I need to change my mission statement.” He says to himself. “My art was all based upon a design from a higher matter. From the higher dimensions. It is based on intuition. Instinct. Impulse. Kinesis. Thus, I must refer to all of my art as Impulse Art.” 

So he walked, pen and paper in hand.

He walks, steadfast, to the art shop, and carries a piece of paper, with a poorly sharpened yellow pencil (old school style) in his left hand, and enters, to find her, the only woman who has ever purchased any of his art. The one person who seems to offer him any empathy. He says, “Hey, T_______.” “I want to change my mission statement. Is that cool..?” “Sure.” She says.

He sits down, and starts writing, with an excess of scribbled, totally illegible, and crossed-out words.

He gives her a penciled paragraph, which is very hard to make out, even for him, and probably hard for Jeff to read. It has not one, but perhaps maybe four crosses, and scratch marks on the paper.

“Thanks.” He says, smiling.

And he leaves.

The next weekend, S. is rideing in the back seat of his parents car, on his way to Ellsworth, then to Goodwill, then Wal-Mart for new movies.

His mother says, “Oh.” In a neatly-spoken tone, and she hands him the newspaper.

~


X

Following Jeff's suicide, S. decided he needed to make a change.

He attempts to visit his wife, later that week, on the final day of the art display, but it appears his parents are too busy with company to offer him a ride.

“Jeff killed himself..?” “Yes.” He was told, still disbelieving.

He looks down. “Why..?” “No one knows.”
He sits with L. at a weekend visit, and smokes a bong with him.

L looks at the bandage on his left hand.

* * * * * * *

“Look, B______, I'm gonna probably move to Portland, and I need a friend.” L says.

L appeared to have tears in his eyes, and his voice was shaking.
“And I really think you do too.”
S. looks up at L, but has little regard for this request, deep down . . .
“What will I do..?”

“We can record music. We can start a studio. A fuckin' band. We can do it all, man.”

That night, L had also been making recurrent images with his hands, S. alleges – suggesting “explosive” motions, and the symbolic motions either suggesting the “big bang” or something else. S. made no sense of this.

“Sure.”

Later that night, S. smokes a red-white-and-blue bowl in front of the “then-sober” (and pot-free) L, who is finally influenced to take a hit, out of his own bitter desire to become closer to S. – a lamp sits lit up on the left table, by the computer, illuminating the computer where S. has been writing excessive amounts of poetry every day, mostly experimental, and drug-influenced . . . he tells L about his new bedroom, and writing set-up.

“Is that your lamp..?” L asks. “Yeah,” S. says.

“So, I'll see you soon..?”

“Yeah. I'll see you soon.”




X



Chapter 27.0

The Final Week


The morning after L. left, S. woke up in great despair, finally defeated with mania.

He laughs maniacally, and insanely, and repetitively, from his bedroom . . . which he never learns is heard from the other room or not. He does not seem to care.

Then, suddenly, after a few hits of the joint sitting bedside, feels compelled to write, thinking to himself, “I need to write.”

He gets up, to write poetry, but apparently, he smells something emanating from his lightbulb, as he turns it on for decent lighting, and he then notices a small circular bandage strip attached to the top of it. “What the – ?”

He immediately, in near-slow-motion instinctual impulse, reaches down, with his left hand, and unplugs the plug from the jack, and takes a deep breath and says “Okay.”

He is no longer laughing.

He calls SN his brother in law, who is a police officer.

His sister picks up.

“No. He's a fucking killer. Remember how he was on that trip to the Red Sox game..? He's a bad person.”
“Um,” A. his sister seems too concerned for words, and finally hands the phone over to SN – who has just woken up in this moment. “Okay, I'll be right over.”
SN shows up, witnesses the circular bandage strip on the lightbulb, which he unplugs, puts into a plastic bag, and then they all three drive over to his sister's apartment in Bar Harbor, where his grandmother in fact used to live, and he sits on the couch with crooked glasses on his face.
“Okay, B______, we don't really know what's going on, but we just think you need to calm down.”

“Fuck.” He simply says.
 “I'm going to hell.” He mumbles, incoherently to himself. They just look at him. And then away.

Soon, a woman enters the room, a Native American woman, who is in fact a relative of S. through his uncle, and she is there to “fix the window.” She leaves, with the cryptic words, something about “dilapidated windows.” He reflects on the crooked lenses of his broken glasses. And his sanity, he imagines.

He returns home, later that day, and it is becoming clearer, that S. has not really been himself lately.
He was obviously going “somewhere” with his life – but only one side, of perhaps, the coin, may truly know where. S. smoked more, drank more, and he wrote more. In fact, he started to write “at least” fifty poems a day, at this time. 
And drinking whiskey. 

* * * * * * *

With his paranoia increasing, and his association with reality decreasing, S. became more and more obsessed with the idea that people were both “after him” – otherwise, that he was “after himself.”

He could not quite tell the difference.

He drank, while pondering Jeff's suicide, and knew no solution.

Often found passed out on the couch from whiskey, it was obvious that S. was losing interest in his fellow world, or any interest by this time.

Eventually, after enough arguments with his father, who would say, “B______ you're drunk,” responding with the humiliating words, “You're fat.” Often fighting, and getting along less and less . . . 

S. recedes to his bedroom, and cries for a prolonged hour.
He dwells, thinking on the future, and then finally forms his decision.

In this present state he was in, he recalls “it is hard to remember my stay in the hospital.”


x

X

X

X



Chapter 28.0

Final Chapter.


S. was a volunteer, at the McClean clinic in Boston, sometime in the later decade of the first millennium, and had at first walked in, with hopes of eating the food, resting, and simply watching a little TV, enjoying the groups, and spending a purposeful time away from his fucked up life.

A girl, Sonia, approaches him. “Hello. You look nice. How are you..?” 

“I'm good.” He says.

“Look. I have been. They. They come into my room.” She is obviously Latino, Mexican, Hispanic, or Spanish, either way, she doesn't speak English very well. “They come into my room. They touch me. See look. I have mark. I have marks on my body.” She shows him red marks all over her flesh, from her neck, to her arms, to her thighs. S. just smiles, and blinks twice. And says, “That is fine. You'll be okay. I'll probably be here for a little bit.” He smiles. “I'm sure we can talk about this more later.” “You will talk with me..?” “Yes.” “Okay..!” “What is your name..?” 
Over time, he got to know the residents, and became a subtle star among the various patients of the Boston hospital, reportedly “one of the best hospitals in the country.”

His roommate was receiving an implant, and so was Sonia. For mood stabilization. 
“There are several unique characters in his ward,” reports, as he was often seen with his tiny black pocket notebook, and pencil in hand, penciling diary notes about his various surroundings.

He writes:

“Two, named Ryan, one, named “Amin” (Middle Eastern, who always seemed to stand in a perfect posture, with his hands crossed on his stomach all the time) – eventually, a fellow musician, who had been “committed” for inviting his therapist to believe he was suicidal. A girl who wanted to be a cat, who was also a great believer in God. Another believer in God, thirty, who held “groups” related to her beliefs in class, which I once read a scripture out loud, only to have this class canceled later on, “due to a confliction of beliefs in the hospital.” Then there was Mack, a man who stood at least six foot three, with a large stature, who was suffering from HIV, and was presently homeless. We spent much time together. There was Nick R. or Nick Z. – who wore short curly black hair, and had an appearance similar to my own. “I have been here six times.” he told me, over dinner. I had little response to this. And there were others, such as the petite Asian woman, with curly lips, who practiced yoga with me in the social room. Another class that was canceled, because, “it is too close for comfort.” I'd go outside, sometimes, with the cat-girl, and she would talk about God, while I'd watch her smoke cigarettes, and recall her overheard phone call when she apparently told a loved one, “I just want to be a cat. I just want to be a cat.”

Once, recalling, “at the gym, the cat-girl rubbing her breasts, while, with his cell phone, a worker seemed to be showing a photograph to Amin, and I overheard (or so I thought) – the words “I'm just lookin' at B______. over here. This crazy motherfucker.”

– Reporting, that he was often still very paranoid during his stay in the hospital walls.
He would go to the gym, and attempt to play pool, or basketball, but generally wanted to learn from the other patients. Though, “It seemed more like everyone wanted to learn from me instead,” he writes.
Once, one of the resident “Ryan's” would walk out of his room, with a long-sleeve shirt, underneath a t-shirt, shorts, covering pants, all multicolored, and appear as though a clown, almost as though to mock the system on purpose. He at the same time had a deathly serious look on his face.
One night, S. was suffering.
“Ah man, why am I here..?

He took a 2mg valium, recalled the early days, and talked to Nick while staring at the map of the world, and they both pointed to various locations they were deciding to own.

“I got this.” S. points to Alaska.

“This is mine.” Nick points to Germany.
“And this.” Nick points to the map.

“No, sorry, I'm taking that.” And S. motions with his hand, at the map, and seems to remove the country of India from the world, and puts it in his pocket. 

“Fine.”

Nick reaches for the United States. “This is mine.”

“You can fucking have it.”

He also recalls learning how to play the piano while he stayed in McClean.
“Someone taught me how to play using the black keys.” . . . “Just the sharps and flats.
S. sat down, one quiet evening, while most of the patients had been either lounging quietly about on their meds, or other patients simply resting in their beds, when he struck the first note, with the resonator pedal, letting the first note resound, and he listened to the tone.

After this, he struck another note, and then another, in sequential movements.

The music took on a certain rhythm, and he started to play in repetitive motions employing nothing but the sharps and flats. It took on the repetitive melody of a repetitive retro dance beat..
Two girls entered the room, and started dancing.

Sonia, and an older patient, entered, and started dancing.

Finally, S. – was interviewed, by several of the workers at the hospital, eventually the primary doctor, who had much to say about S.'s theory on the universe, and past-lives, and then, it was finally expressed that he was not to be in the hospital for very much longer.

He was diagnosed with bipolar, OCD, depression, anxiety, and finally, a unique diagnosis. They said things like, “He was only in the hospital for a week, and it didn’t really seem like there was that much really wrong with him.” Claiming he was not yet, but, “would” become schizophrenic later on in life.
Depressed maybe, but behavior was quickly improveable, seemingly improving and his regard for the other patients, apparently, very positive outlook in other people was received very well, over time, and with his black Pentalic notebook, occasioned to the pen he would write with on the bench near the med window, he would sit, socially inviting himself to the energy of the other patients more and more.

Sonia, continued to socialize with him, and they developed a somewhat closer relationship.

Finally, as the week began to reach its end, S. – in his final interview with the head doctor, was told “B______ you are set to be released tomorrow.”

He said, “Okay.”

Although he was perhaps not entirely satisfied, he thought, “I guess that's it.” S. played a song on his acoustic guitar that night, while his roommate overheard.

“I guess I'll see ya.” Mack said.

“Yep. It was good. Keep playing that fuckin' keyboard, man.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“Play it like you never have before.”

“I will.”

“I'm gonna miss you, man. How am I ever going to see you again..?”



X
S. said nothing. “I don't know.”

Sonia walks up to B______, and sits beside him. “So, you are going..?” “Yes.” Sonia, who had spent much time in the system, just stared at him silently, and cried. “Her parents had visited a few times, and they appeared to be very nice people,” S. says.

“I'm gonna go back home now.”

“Okay.”

“Will you miss me..?”

“Yes.”

“I am going to miss you, too. I like your piano playing.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay.”

S. pauses, and says, “Okay.”

“So, that is the end..?” “The end..?” “We will not speak again..?” “You are going now..?”

“I don't know if anything really ends.”

“Okay,” Sonia said.

“Only for now..?”

“How do you know..?”

“I do not know.”

“So, will I ever see you again..?”

“I don't know.” “I think somehow.”

“Yes.”

“How will I remember you..?”
B_______ looked up at the light on the ceiling, and imagined walking down the hall to get his things.

S. fixed his glasses, and looks up to the ceiling lights for a moment, and then back down at her, as he begins to walk away, thinking about the question she asked him.
The truth was right on, now, because he was actually right about what he said to her.
And he said, “You will remember me by my name.”

He looked up at the ceiling, and then walked down the hall. He walked away, as she watched him get up and leave past the bench, and all she saw was a silhouette.