Safe Haven - Part 9 - You Can Never Go Home Anymore

 It was clear to Jus that his days of chemical dancing were over. It had been where he had lived, and he knew it; he could never return home. The rock steadiness of his would-be assassin prompted him to try to follow in his footsteps. He didn't realize the man was born with much of this quality. Even if he did know, Jus knew change was possible. He had just returned from the figuratively dead; he knew he could do and become anything. 

He needed education; he obtained it. He needed a deeper understanding; he worked for it. It was a limitless part of his life. The monsters that plagued Jus forever were challenged, and he faced them one after the other.

Jus sold himself to the very rank and file he said he would never entertain, and they were delighted to receive him. He hit every target, and he surprised the warriors. As the days got colder and Jus' commitment intensified. He knew he was on his way to what he wanted to be. 

On the home front, it seemed like some of the best days. There were, however, undercurrents of things not being exactly what they appeared. Surrender and trust were whispered litmus tests of days declared set free. Emusification looked perfect until the lone stirrer rested. If times were indefinite, the lifespan of the union was unbalanced. Maarja's experience differed from the Jus' experience during the last year, even though they navigated the same deep valley. It was a most difficult complexity.

On that cool late November day, Jus promised something that he could not take back. It was one of the coldest Decembers on record, during which he studied and turned his life upside down, shaking parts of it out onto the floor as he tried to make sense of everything. He only had a month before his life was no longer his to decide.

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As the bitter December continued with limited resources, the Jus and Maarja tried to make the best of what they had. Everything seemed to be going according to plan until that fateful morning of the 20th, when Jus woke up to the news of Operation Just Cause. This violently shifted the paradigm that he had convinced himself of. A voice from the house where all of the words of scholars are homed echoed asking him, "Are you willing to die for the profit of people who do not know you or care about you?"

There was no way to turn back. Jus, whose days were quiet and warm inside the house, as the bitter December raged outside the window, was worried. What did he do? There was a war in Southeast Asia when he was a child, and for some reason, it could easily happen again.

January came, and the icy winds continued. The oath Jus took was starting to feel like someone was pushing his head underwater, and he began to notice that he had less control all the time. There were only 7 days that month in which he was free. He had been stagnant for the last 4 months, and he had to do something. But this? There was no turning back from this. When the 8th day came, he got up in the morning, where would he be tonight? He had no idea. 

As the bus pulled away from a street damaged and decaying, Jus watched Maarja get smaller out the window. A million things passed through his mind, mostly the question: "What am I doing?"

The plane took off for the sky and, in a Twilight Zone-like whirlwind like that of the Odyssey of Flight 33, touched down in a snowstorm. Jus shuffled onto a bus, and as the diesel engine sang its song that sounded like incarceration, he finally knew, this was wrong, but also happening.

Safe Haven Part 8 - People Don't Pick You Up on the Blue Highway

The cylindrical object spun through the space, end over end, in slow motion. Drops of condensation streamed out from its surface as it spun. Its contents were violently erupting inside the vessel and pushing out of the predetermined void at the top, also hurtling its volatile contents everywhere as it descended into ultimate shame.

The red, the white, the red, the blue, the white, the red, the white, the red, the blue, until you could no longer tell as it broke known speed records, gaining speed in a demented violation of physical law. Enough was enough. It was the actual limit. 

Miles of wheels turning, music playing, temptation, recklessness, love, alienation, everything Jus thought he was passed through his mind as the bullet that would hurt more than any other was spinning towards him. If those with a similar fate could give one more statement, they would tell you that they never saw the gunfighter draw his weapon.

More defiance! Even though Jus had no case to defend, he did so without substance or merit. All of his failures sat right alongside him in this room tonight. Three years earlier, he sat in this room surrounded by people who loved him as he left for good. Tonight, he was back. 

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More boastful talk of defiance erupted from him, and that is when everything in motion made contact. With its blue inscription, the white and red cylinder made contact with Jus, striking him so hard and surprisingly that it instantly stopped his words. Its contents, ice cold, drenched him instantly. Rage beyond anything he had ever felt before appeared deep within him in less than a second. He had never felt anger so intense. The rage became him.

Instead of fighting as he had been doing before the collision, he went silent. Something had just changed in him. Every word that now came from the man who had made him and had destroyed him took him apart piece by piece relentlessly, and he was just getting started. Later in the darkness, Jus plotted another escape; this time, he would no longer talk.

In the light of day, the damage done during the battle that raged into the night was visible everywhere. This was the end, Jus was sure of it. It all came down on him at once. The last 3 months rained down on him and all of its corruption, and even worse, it was all on him. Now, he needed to fix it, because he was dead, and he just needed to set things right before he could no longer do so. He saw no future; he only needed to subdue his ability to inflict damage on anyone going forward.

As the days of devastation passed, Jus made all the hard decisions that didn't show him in a flattering light, but he began to repair the damage he had caused. This level of honesty was something he had not felt since he was a child. Each day, the outlook seemed better as long as he stayed down on the floor, silent and offering nothing. 

Sitting in a room with strangers, stripped down to truth and bone, a path materialized before Jus. He would retrace his steps across the battlefields he had left burned and offer help building new paths and bridges. It was not his idea, and he was not even going to do it, but when he was so low, every bit of constructive advice seemed to be the right thing to do. This so-called self-improvement became his mission, and as it began, he couldn't imagine how far it would take him.

He had to break one more heart now, that would hurt one of them for seven more years, and Jus forever, as he rose early one morning in October and boarded the boat heading north. He could feel the world changing hard from cancer, thriving on the world stage. Echoes of his southern dream and crash landing played as he crossed the river into Memphis. In the corner, the piano man summed up man's folly in a foretelling of an ADHD society.

In the dark, he returned to the scene where everything unravelled. There was no more war, only a tender welcome from Maarja. He saw it as hope. Just like the year before, the mountains around him held great promise. It was where he wanted to be. The climate changed here. Work was scarce and not so easy to secure.

In the darkness, within days of arriving, an assassin mapped out a mission on the crisp night air. What had been taken away from him, he wanted it back. His mission would go critical depending on the opposition he received because it was personal. He moved in the dark, on foot, with great stealth. If his target, Jus, had gone down, the assassin would have appeared never to have left the public eye.

It was just another night for the Jus and Maarja, when there was a knock on the door. As soon as Jus saw him, he knew who the visitor was. Maarja screamed. But the assassin stayed on task; he just needed an honest answer to one question. Jus, who had been on a quest for brutal honesty, walked directly up to this man, whom he had been told was the enemy, dangerous, and abusive. He realized that everything he knew about him resulted from slanderous manipulation to get Jus to do things.

Jus stood before him and told him that with all he had seen, he would fight to the ends of the earth for the man who had, up until this point, been so wrongly accused. Jus had the evidence to clear him and help him get what he was fighting for with all his heart.

They walked outside and had the most starkly honest conversation Jus had ever experienced. He learned this might have been his last night on earth, but the truth had won. If matters were never straight before, they were tonight. He offered the man a ride, and a most unlikely friendship ignited that night.

Something about this man made Jus yearn for a certain quality he possessed. Jus had bared his soul for the last month, and he was so weak, but at the same time, great hope for the future surged within him; he just had no idea how to move forward, until now. The man he met was so sure of himself, like no one he had ever met. It was a treasure Jus wanted. He was done being what he had been his whole life, a victim of the wind's direction. He needed to be a rock. A rock he would be. He no longer feared the bamboo cages along the River Kwai. He was now used to incredible discomfort and humiliation. It was a price he was willing to pay. He would break himself, and now he walked into a building he had sworn to never set foot in and surrendered.

Safe Haven Part 7 - Dancing at the Zombie Zoo

 When a submarine fires a torpedo at a target, everything is calm. It is just an object, streaming intently through the water. All is quiet, and nothing seems to change.  That is where they were, Jus and Maarja. A gentle chemical serenade commenced and sweetly charged his efforts to court a girl, Jus already had. 

They traveled and saw all the sites they had ignored the year before when they were still in survival mode. It never occurred to them that this was just another distraction. Jus could not discern imminent danger, which was at its highest when life became calm and normal. 

Because things seemed to be going so well, they brought visitors from their past. Everything except the core was riding high. Fireworks and fanfare would keep them from ever looking too close. It was like being on a merry-go-round that kept increasing in speed. Lies, lies, lies about how they were actually doing. Jus built a city on materials made of assumption. Correction is on the horizon that you just cannot see.

With intensity, Jus and Maarja loaded more weight upon their shoulders, the cornerstone being Jus and his agreements. As the days progressed, aftershocks began from the torpedo that was yet to hit, like a vinyl record being played backward. Again, Jus was hauled into the village square, bound by his wrists, and spit on and ridiculed. He awoke the next day, covered in sweat and dried blood. Something was wrong. It was all too familiar. He was on a train car that had become detached, increasing speed down a long mountain descent. He had no choices except the one about to be made.

Suddenly, the torpedo hit the wall of their foundation. It rocked the land until daylight. This was it—war, betrayal, embarrassment, disrespect at its purest. No more. No more! Jus had opened his heart, and in return, he was tortured and humiliated. He no longer wanted to be a part of this. Somewhere before the sun rose, he decided: It is done.

With stone-like determination, he abruptly fled and could not be swayed to reconsider. By sundown, he closed his eyes in a new room. Outside that room was a different landscape. Jus' emotions scoured recent years and systematically removed segments from his collective consciousness. That would have been enough, appropriate, and even admirable, but what came next showed that he had learned nothing.

This should have been the reset. The second chance to make well-thought-out decisions and to build on other family relationships. An opportunity to breathe, set goals, and set a solid life course. But Jus' lifelong companion, so slick and cunning, had other ideas. All safety protocols were shut off. He was about to discover what happens when one beats the aggressor, only to let it coerce its way back in. 

Outside, it was bright and beautiful. Inside Jus' heart, chemical rationalization continued its powerful metamorphoses. There was never a time that he should have stayed silent, like he should have today, but of course, that is not what he did. Feeling like he had gotten off the merry-go-round, he stumbled through the fairgrounds as enticing vendors whispered in his ear. Honey dripped off their lips as they smiled and begged for his attention. It was a gauntlet he could not survive. Somewhere deep, he had to know that this was a slide into darkness, but he was not strong enough to see it.

To stand back from this moment and zoom out of his timeline, the following year from this point on would play out like a whole decade.  Right now, there was a long way to go. Everywhere Jus went, he was the eye of the storm. Previously silent women took hold of him and demanded that he turn his attention to them. Turbulence followed him everywhere as he worked through his day. Logic and reason were not present. He moved through the days in a ninja-like dance so that in the darkness, he could soak in stolen waters with a stranger that he convinced himself would become like fine wine someday.

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The dark hours were surreal. They contrasted so much from the daylight that it became clear that merging daylight and dark hours was becoming increasingly impossible. As all of this played out, Maarja called out from her balcony, inviting Jus to a gathering, who was so immersed in his runaway life, pulled the pin on a grenade, and dropped it on the ground. It was extreme since he had only recently fought to keep her. This was war for her, and not a word could now be spoken without fire, as Jus slipped further into his chemical darkness. 

As the war intensified, Jus knew the life he so naively dreamed of could never exist here. He was still a fool for ever thinking it could happen anyway. He knew what had to happen next. The escape was planned. A house of cards had to be constructed to plan out everything that would need to be done. Cleverly placed materials, facade, misdirection, stealth, camouflage, and not changing the flow of everyday life. During all of this, there was a scent that he could not break free of; it was everywhere, and he had no idea why.

The days became like the last hours before a carefully planned escape from a POW camp. Every word spoken had to be carefully scrutinized before it was spoken. The hours wound down. Jus had no idea who his stranger was. The great illusion he had spun kept anything real from penetrating the room's walls.  The last days and nights passed in the arms of a time bomb of infatuation named Annika. The mightiest of reckonings were coming, and Jus could not see it through the chemical lens that engulfed him like an alien parasite. The darkest hours were coming, and there was no way to avoid them. 

As the minutes ticked away from his last hour there, Jus did the one thing he would regret forever every day. He opened the boxes of his life and poured his innocence into a dumpster. Thousands of days, chances to revisit those times, love, tears, and an emotional storm—all of it—were discarded, disrespected, and brought to nothing. It was like he was cutting pieces of his own flesh and leaving them behind. He was somehow proud of this rogue decisiveness, but it was just a lie he told himself to justify selling himself to the stranger beside him now. Annika was along for the ride, no matter what happened. She had told the boy that she was running from danger. She did not tell him that she was the danger she was fleeing from.

So fittingly, as the headlights showed on Stella Manor one last time, a cat jumped up on top of the dumpster. It pleaded with Jus with haunting certainty: "You are not abandoning your oppressors; you are abandoning yourself." The parasite won. Jus would soon know what it is like to be dead.

A Path of Least Resistance

 The many things we do to ease the pain of those we love—is it good? Is it wrong? I know that hardship is part of growing into a strong person, and yet, sometimes, as parents, we stop that growth in the name of love. 

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It is that proverbial "I know a shortcut" story that I think will satisfy all of the pains and still create a teachable moment. I never realized at the time that love that intense can blind me to the traps that extend the three-month journey into three years in which we never reach the land we set out for. 

Lost in the wild, we constantly try to get back on track to find the summit. But every time we see light up ahead and use more of ourselves, it is just a false peak, and we still have no idea how far we have to go or if we are even going the right way. It is a form of torture. In a way, I have tied myself to a chair as I watch all of this play out. I feel helpless and sad. I let everyone down, and they are frustrated.

Like a flooded basin, the pain of this decision to prevent pain begins to spread everywhere. It contaminates every corner of our lives. I look down at all the broken pieces this has caused and have no answers. Words and intentions are now stained with the blood of mistaken steps. Nothing is clear.

It is so ironic. All I wanted to do was ease their suffering, but instead, I created more and spread it out as far as the eye could see. I wish I knew how to get back. I wish I could make it better. 

The path of least resistance is never that; it only looks that way. The hero becomes the hunted, and his party becomes hostages. It is torture day and night to make what seems a loving act and realize it was the worst way possible.

How can I stop the bleeding? Materially, that answer is simple. But what of the heart? What mending is there for that? Is it a one-for-one transaction: least resistance for weakness? Is depressive aggression the enemy? My lifelong stumbling block? I saw you in the woods as I sat facing the fire in late '83. I knew you were there. Why don't I ever learn? 

Safe Haven Part Six: John Barleycorn Must Die

 Distraction can be the sweetest reward. Here, everything was distraction. The boy loved everything he saw every moment of the day. It was the same for the girl because it seemingly dissolved all the antagonists in pursuit. Where to focus now was the question. It was good, and it was terrible. Only when sunlight hits soil previously covered by a building can one see what seed was spread over time.

A meteor streaked night August sky gave way to the cool dark nights of September. The days were brilliant and alive. The boy was suddenly given opportunities for advancement, and he took them with gratitude. Everything fit in this new land. He had a place to live, purpose, and respect, all of which the last year had dissolved one after the other. 

September allowed him to take so many pieces scattered over hundreds of miles and put them all back together. At the same time, he built his empire in his new city. This was what he had needed all along. Oddly, none of these winfalls separated him from his companion, like a shadow that stayed lockstep with him, ensuring that the lights of Saturday night would be doused like a fire.

By day, the boy drew great respect from a man many years his senior. He streamed quickly into great favor. Sweet crisp October mornings, as a steam radiator played its unique staccato, the boy would sit across from the old man. He would listen to the old man talk fearlessly about his weaknesses. He always respectfully acknowledged, until one day.

The boy suddenly succumbed to voices in his head that had been with him since Joplin, Missouri, October 86, and over and over since then. John Barleycorn must die. There comes a time when many travellers come to this realization, and the boy knew it was real. The old man stopped talking and looked across the table. "You? Son?" The boy's shoulders fell low. "Yeah, me." He felt ashamed, but the old man kindly told him everything would be alright.

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The moment the word left his lips, gravity ceased to exist. Like suddenly being selected for battle, everything was uncertain. It was like a spaceman landing on a new planet and removing the helmet to see if the air was breathable. Yes, the boy was breathing, but he was not sure for how long. It was pain, but also like a painless physical injury. It was fantastic and terrifying at the same time. 

Music from his childhood became stuck in a loop. A desperate message to the personification of his disease materialized. It was a breakup, and it was mourning. A small lifeline of people declaring to understand, who were nothing at all like him, was the only thing holding him together. He wondered if that could be enough. This brought him outside the zone where he was allowed. The girl protested, comparing his previous course to this one, arguing that the old way was better. As the saying goes, sometimes you are the windshield, and sometimes you are the bug. The hammer, the nail. You get the idea.

The merging of everyday life, withdrawal, mastering new skills, and always being connected to the string he could not see. Everything was new. There were weeks of activity inside each day. 

A new year brought more choices, which gave way to spendid distraction and preoccupation. It was a nice place to be. Everything got better if you did not slow down. The boy, although thriving, still felt like he was operating through the days void of several internal organs. Something was always missing inside. 

As winter finally gave way to spring, the wave rose higher and higher. Business ideas, welcoming friends and family, framed busy days that contained 100 hours each. There was enough distraction to subdue the boy's emptiness. The distraction seemed enough to keep the girl's injury hidden as well. Sooner or later, no matter what anyone says, you cannot defy gravity. 

The crash came without warning. It reeled them all the way back to the old brick structure and the smoke-filled night when the soldiers came in and seized them. It was clear; the core was broken, and he really did not want it to be. The boy wanted to fight. He would do anything. Everything around them was so prosperous; why couldn't they be alright inside? 

As the days went by, the boy went over the crash repeatedly. He was determined to win the girl over again. He decided that the problem was himself. Perhaps he had overreacted. He was fine. His chemical vacation proved that he could function and even thrive without it. Look at all he had done. The old man who had helped him last fall was gone; the boy would not have to look him in the eye and rationalize this nuclear decision. 

This was the way that he could win the girl back. It was too extreme a change for her, and this could be the compromise needed to put it back together.  She did not protest or condone in any way, except to be silent, which was an endorsement in the most significant measure.

None of us will recall the first time after all those months that the boy picked up that bottle and touched it to his lips, but everything else that followed was like watching a massive car crash in very slow motion. All facades would burn away, leaving only what was really there, and then shock waves of self-realization and deception would follow. Mr Barleycorn had weaseled his way into the party, and now the boy was about to see some serious stuff. 

Here is where the ship started burning up in the atmosphere.

When you're down in the hole

There were many times in my life when I felt invincible. Limitless energy, strength, and power were always there, and I never questioned their origin or future. Relaxation was something other people did, but it was a myth to me. It never mattered, and it did get me into trouble many times as it could cause me to overpromise my time and assistance. My heart was in the right place, but the laws of time and physics held the real story.

As I have walked through the decades, the damages have slowly begun to humble me. Lifting entire appliances and sleeper sofas on my own, dragging them up stairs with nothing but rage to propel me, takes its toll. 

My 31-year-old self stood in the dealership shop where I used to work. My auto technician friend, who was 45ish at that time, recounted how his bones and joints hurt all night and how he never slept well because of it. His description of his malady was sobering. A flash of heat went through me because at a mere 31, I had acted like I was Superman. I did all those things he said I should never do. I knew then that I was on the wrong flight, and there was no way to change it now. Up ahead, payment must be made.

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It came faster than I imagined. Back surgery at 35, rheumatoid arthritis at 40, chronic tinnitus at 58—where did the break happen? From 35 on, the next 25 years have been spent learning how to do the same job but more intelligently. Overall, I have done well.

One of the greatest follies is overconfidence; it is one of mine. I went through all these valleys trying to negotiate with a fraction of my former energy, strength, and endurance and felt that I had it all figured out. Of course, pride comes before a fall. There is always something new.

Today, I am in the depths of 20 days of a strong respiratory virus that has also triggered a very painful condition. It has made me feel like I have fallen into a hole, as if it were a trap. I have always thought that I was good at seeing all possible outcomes in the road ahead of me, but let's be real: No one possibly could. To declare such a thing is just foolishness.

One characteristic of me is that I truly multitask. In the failed business world, there is a saying that there is no such thing. It is believed that if you attempt it, all tasks fail. Mine is a different brand. It is not so much running multiple jobs simultaneously, but I can see every step travelled in all of those tasks, and whenever one set of steps can carry 2 loads, I do that. It may be due to years of LTL (less than truckload) transportation dispatch and load brokering. Whatever the case, I am exceptional at it.

After being in the hole for the last twenty days, I can suddenly see that choreography as we need things and other supplies running out. My brain has calculated how to make every moment, mile, and step count. 

My collective task at the Army NCO Academy was "Consolidate and Reorganize". A collective task orchestrates many individual tasks from the soldiers' manual applicable to that overall goal. The C&R scenario is your unit was just attacked. Your water supply took fire and is leaking on the ground; there are casualties all over the place, chaos, screaming, munitions burning, and smoke everywhere. The injured must be brought to a safe triage area and treated where they are not in the open. Water and food need to be secured. A defensive perimeter needs to be set up, ammunition collected from wherever you can find it and given to the perimeter guards. Strategies of what to do next must be set, utilizing whatever and whomever is left to the best of your ability. Why? Because historically, when the OP4 hits you and then pulls back, they are regrouping, and now, knowing that you are this damaged, they are coming back at any moment to finish the job.

Down here in the hole, you can bet I am finding things I did not account for. I am not out of this hole yet, and I have no idea how long it will last. But you can be sure that for all of my responsibilities of caring for my household, I will do even better to carry us through this ever-elastic framework, that is, our ever-changing circumstances.

Safe Haven - Part 5 The Fall and Rise of the Kobayashi Maru

 As the wagon pulled away from the land where it all started, destructive fires burned behind them, making it clear that there would be no way to return. They had made this journey many times before, but never like this. It was a one-way trip tonight. From a distance, it seemed like growth and expansion; in reality, it was cover and concealment. There was no plan, but really, was there ever a plan?

When they arrived, it was dark. The woods and interior looked different than they had before. It was lonely, and it held no answers within it. They quietly put in supplies, whatever little they had. Inside, the boy wanted to know where all of this was going. He had no idea what was next. Previously, he had been on the wrong side of the airlock, which was bad enough, but at least those times, he was alone. Now he had companions, and that made it very different. He did not feel any closer to those in his care. Ever since the journey, everyone was weird to him.

Photo by Charlie Gallant on Unsplash

As the sun rose, he wanted it to be a play day. It was Saturday. He sat in the sand of the beach, looking at the glistening sunlight reflecting off the water, and wished he had answers. Winter was coming. It was a predator that kept pace with his steps, yet somehow, winter took slightly longer strides. He knew there was no way to outpace it.

Had he fled a month earlier, he could have gone south, to a warmer land without the threat of winter, but that is not what he did. There was nothing he could do about that now. He would have to come up with a solution. Nothing happened. The summer sun got hotter, water was scarce, and food even more elusive. 

He looked around rural areas for work, but it never provided results. So they journeyed south, not far from where they fled from, to take temporary work with old friends. The summer spun like a top of changing world events, devastation, and loss of respect. But like an injured animal, friends took them in, and the boy could never quite understand the motives. Forty years later, that equation is even more perplexing.

They journeyed back and forth on the road that led north into the quiet peace of their uncertainty and back south to the psychological tango of mercy and doom. There was no accounting for how they were able to do this. The boy did not even know how they were being sustained. He grew more disillusioned as he continued through the darkness in the light of the days and long dark nights. 

The voices in his head were ignited by the comments of those around him, which passively aggressively charged him with self-deprecating feelings. Some days were hot, in the city, in homes of the past. Other days were also hot but filled with children screaming and laughing at the lake, enjoying summer vacation to the fullest. The mercy of infactuation allowed the trickle of poison that kept the boy subdued, always keeping him looking selfish, a failure worthy of conspiritorial manipulation.

Like panic season, the precipice of the end of everything was advancing fast. There were no tricks or scraps from which the boy could construct answers. All resources were depleted, and he failed. Fortunately, it had affected the girl so much that she relented to being left in the lands she once fled. When you are number one, that becomes the prime directive revealed, and all of the facade burns away.

What happened next was similar to what happens when you remove Kryptonite from the vicinity of Superman. The boy's strength began to rise. New ideas that should have previously been obvious came to light, and he pursued them. He was incredibly successful. Resources were at their lowest, so he put every last one into his new endeavor. It was an investment that would win.

The days were fine. He made a decision, and he was surrendering to it. Meanwhile, in the land where the Pease Brothers settled, the girl spun the hourly assessment to determine what words would be used in the next hour. At this point, it was more of an instinct than a plan.

The days and nights went by quickly, and the time came to reunite. He still believed they were a team and sometimes, so did the girl. Things began to have a routine, and life became something that she liked again. It seemed like fate was smiling upon them, so they took the next step to end their wayward wandering and put down roots. This was met with them blatantly being shot down. All of the wars fought in the days of living in the ancient place where a thousand people lived and died rose to smite them one more time.

This knocked the boy down into the dirt, ash, and smoldering timers he thought he had been free of. He smiled, pushed his face out of the dirt, and stood up. He shook the fire from his hair and said, "Did I ever tell you? I love the no-win scenario." He played it their way; now, it was his turn.

Like the perfect campaign of coordinated attack, he left nothing untouched. Every T crossed and i dotted, his assault was bulletproof and held unswerving confidence. Today, he wins; he just needs one more lifeline support from those who will love him forever to finish it. Of course, they made it so.

The boy will never forget finding that the road to where he had been going his whole life went further north. That long climb felt like change; it felt like his 52nd chance. The day was bright and summery, and relief and real life were not only coming, but they were here, and he claimed them. It was not October; it was August. All of June's uncertainty and the following desolation had led them here, on the road to a new life.

With only the little bit they had, they set up the new homestead on a quiet summer day before he had to leave. He would be back in the middle of the night. August meteors streamed over his head in a spectacular array as he traveled home. As he approached home, small fires were burning in the street, and angry people were yelling. He assessed them as he walked to the door, and they quietly watched him walk past.

What had he done? The boy wondered if he had made a terrible mistake, but deep down, he knew he had not. Something about it felt very right. A bunch of drunken idiots who slept like vampires during the day and caused destruction at night. Well, that was something he could handle. He would no longer be pushed by the wind as he had been for the last year. Something had happened to the boy during all of this; he was the captain of his future, and no one would change that. Well, except for the girl.

Rogue Twilight

My legs complained about the miles I logged today. No matter how many people are walking with me, this is a very lonely journey. I felt good, too. There is nothing more fulfilling.

As I took each step, carefully contemplating the thousand that followed, I felt stronger. I could take on the load of others in my entourage, which is also a reward like no other. 

The evening began to fall, and I shared stories and warnings with my travelling companions. I wished to share more, but fatigue and illness soon won out. I had been fighting for survival only 24 hours earlier, a battle so intense that I was not sure I was going to make it. Somewhere, you must pay the price.

As the night air grew colder, the stars rotated above all of us in a dark kaleidoscope of dreams and random interjections that would change the laws of physics in a world that was familiar enough to make sense and then suddenly not make sense at all.

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

Even worse, the illogical becomes the logic. It becomes what we fight for. As we dance through the fourth dimension, gaining, we run face to face with ourselves from the land of the sunlight. We look so foreign; we silently stare into dark eyes in disbelief. How? I saw you reaching for more. Why did you take anything in the first place? 

I begin to wonder if the man in the dark mirror is me. I mourn for the progress I made in the land of the sun. Are we the same person? Or is he just fragments left over, that the stirring of the night sky floats to the surface, so that I can pull them out, right here and now?

Even more disturbing is the people I encounter. Why? There should be no connection, but here we are. Did I pick up a current that can be felt but not seen? Are we simply travellers in the same group trying to beat the same enemy?

Like a trail walk, there is a mighty judgment coming. A wise man said, "The time has come to see yourself; you always look the other way." There is no avoiding it. It started with the girl landing her spaceship as I was lost in a nighttime forest. Although she has been gone for a long time, her care still manifests.

Moving across the borders, bad news comes in waves. As I look at the structures that represent the cities I have journied through, the repairs I made then look much worse than I ever thought. My shame and shock at the fragments slowly bring relief as the steed mightily pulls light across the land, bringing truth into the corners and conquering deep shadows.

It takes a while, but I am glad when the warmth steams away the night's dew. Images evaporate and show what they are, fragments to be extracted and not repaired. Decisive eradication. Never look back. It was just a dream. It was the Joker dealing the Rogue Twilight, pulling broken pictures and thoughts from deep within. Without this Aurora of sorts, how could I ever move forward in everything I do?

Now, with the light overhead, I raise my glass to the memory of the night sky that spun above me in its betrayal and mockery. I will never trust it because the walls inside of that dimension are not as solid as we know them to be. Mere thought can move us through the solidity of substance. But I do know that this is a purge and if I really want to finish the journey, I have to endure the Rogue Twilight.