July 24, 2007 by Deightine.

Vision flickered in John’s eyes with the bright flashes of snow he was more used to seeing on old abandoned televisions than in the world around him. With this startling, blinking and screaming optical sensation came the whine of bees in his ears and the sensation of tumbling deep into himself. With a startled gasp — his skin soaked in cold sweat from the bad air conditioning — John sat straight up on the unforgiving motel bed, a stoney erection clenched in his fist and the room echoing in hollow emptiness. With sudden speed, he tumbled sideways across the bed and grasped at the floor for his bag. He found it still present, following the dive with a sigh of relief.

Lifting blurry vision from the ground, John was overcome with nausea and thumped back down on the bed. The ceiling was a shade of institutional nicotine cream that did nothing good for his stomach. Light burst up through the thin excuse for curtains over the windows, playing patterns across the ceiling and lulling John into a sense of ease. His stomach slowed its chaotic churns and he was distracted. The scent of his night’s companion still lingered, oranges and chocolate mixed with the lingering cherry clove.

Street sounds filtered up from ground level to his second story economy lust palace. Breathing deeply of the scents around him, John took stock of what life had brought today. From the echo of the lot, he would hazard much of the motel complex was empty by now. Many of the company men and their guests would be back in town proper, terrified of their pictures ending up in the hands of someone enterprising. Their nocturnal visitors caught what sleep they could for the next night’s curbside vigil, dreaming of their next rich john. Reaching off of the bed and into his bag, John pulled free his Aeos unit. Tilting it to avoid window glare on the screen, his eyes searched over the unit until it registered his proximity. The screen flipped into itself, coming to life with a USAP flag he had to resist saluting and reminded him that he needed to find someone to change the loading screen. With a redirection of his irises and a thumb press, he was into the storage account that kept track of food allotments. Being recently released from the military, he was a little nervous of walking around with so much and the possibility of his Aeos being hacked.

The screen registered 191 units of credited food among the federal stocks. This represented the next four years of his life if he was careful not to squander it, minus the single week of rationing he payed to last night’s distraction. The smallest trade he had was enough food to live for an entire week; fresh food that would keep Lyria well fed in return for her 12 straight hours of ministrations.

John dropped the device back into the bag, landing with a military grade thunk atop the service weapon he had been allowed to keep when he came ashore. The broken down Fabrique Nationale Herstal SCAR-H could be called a relic compared to the weapons John had been issued during Last Incursion but it served him well and could do everything he might want in a pinch. Not to mention, how does a guy complain when the entirety of your Honorable Discharge is a short and uncomfortable bureaucrat crediting you nearly 200 food chits right as you step off of the boat with a good luck pat on the back and a free ride to the nearest major city? They hadn’t collected any of his gear, any weapons aside his long range rifle and special munitions, and left him standing in a major city only slightly less capable of sieging a foreign country. Much of that gear went missing or was traded at stops along the journey to Midwest Regional Block 14, old Cincinnati. A young woman from his dreams had said what a wonderful place it had once been, right before they witnessed the white glare of Taiwan’s beaches turning smokey quartz.

With a groan, John hauled his carcass up to his bare feet and walked with a step by step chain of grunts to the bathroom. His bones ached, muscles burned and he could only imagine how the girl felt today, sleeping off a night of aggressive and almost violent sex. John had been careful not to mark her up or do her any lingering damage, but by the time he had finally fallen asleep she looked ready to retire from her night job. This thought pulled out a chuckle as John leaned forward over the toilet, relieving himself with his cheek pressed against the cool tile wall. Whatever drug it was that Lyria had found for him at his request, it left lastnight a long sweaty haze. It also let him be startled nearly to death when an alarm monitor in the room went off and announced in bright red lights that he had 45 minutes until he would be charged again or rousted by staff. John found some amusement in this as Lyria had payed the room fee, and he could easily imagine a couple of grown men dragging him naked out of the room and pitching him headlong into the parkinglot.

“Fourty-five, huh? Just enough time…” he muttered and reached into the shower, turning the knob and frowning at the pathetic excuse for water pressure. “Well, if they throw my ass out, it is going to be a clean ass for at least a few minutes.” Without ceremony or even a thought to close the bathroom door, John stepped into the tub and fought against the still frigid water for his right of cleanliness.

It was probably the tub that kept the shrapnel from getting him, and the water that kept the fire from charring the skin from the bone. At least, that is how John would rationalize it later that night. First thing, the tub began falling but John had his eyes closed at the time and could only sense the tumbling down while much of the bathroom went upward in a concussive blast like a geyser. His eyes flashed open in time for his body to be smashed against the bottom of the tub when it made contact with the one below. After a moment of recovery, he pushed the puce shower curtain aside while it smoked and got a good view of the room he had landed in. Obviously, someone in the room below him had brought about a world of pain for themselves. Pushing himself up, he stepped out onto the smoking floor. The fire had burned so hot and so suddenly that it had exhausted the air in the room and imploded the floor above.

John looked up, trying to judge how difficult it would be to get back up to his things. “Suits me fucking right for thinking back home would be any better.” he said and grimaced. His left foot caught in something wet and hot, and he looked down to regard the skinless charred victim of the morning’s sudden burst of energy. The age and gender were indeterminate, but it was obvious they had a taste for vinyl clothing by the smell that moving his foot stirred. The whole room stank of burned carbon and ozone, a taste that permeated John’s mouth as he headed toward his neighbor’s bed. The room was notably devoid of any personal possessions beyond a carelessly pitched Aeos. John’s toes tingled and he bit at the inside of his cheek for a tenth of a second before grabbing the Aeos and heading for the door. He wanted to know why this had happened and especially if it had been directed at him in some way.

All that stood between John and his clothes was a fifty yard dash, a stair climb and another fifty yard dash. And by now, who knows? Maybe the whole welcome wagon would get to see him streak in the mid-day light away from this scene of carnage? He didn’t think about it once he got the door open, he just made the distance pass by. Aside of one very startled looking cleaning staff member that saw him charging down the walkway toward her, erection acting as a moving advertisement for the power of adrenaline and then finally past. Beyond that, his short journey was uneventful.

John’s clothes fit tightly and the sticky wetness transfered from his left foot into his left boot with a wince. He had heard of these sorts of things happening, but not while hold up inside a five square mile brothel at the edge of town. He had to get out of this Playground quietly, before anyone could tie him to it.

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July 24, 2007 by Deightine.

So far this blog has mostly sat idle, bits of fiction broken up and dropped into the water like bait to see if any attention would come of it. It is an interesting thing, attention, and I find myself constantly craving it in every aspect of my life. For years now I have been analyzing my childhood and much of the decisions I have made since an emotional event that truly twisted my formative years. I study neuroscience, affective and cognitive, and spend a lot of time buried up to my eyes in philosophy and children’s stories. I spend a lot more time than is probably good for me trying to determine where my drive went… Where my urges went. In effect, my drive has become figuring out where my drive ended up. A terrible paradox.
The only answer I’ve ever been able to come up with is that at some point during childhood or puberty, I changed from being primarily a creative (but logical) thinker into a mostly listless and unresponsive introvert. Then, due to the progressing state of puberty and the few hardwired instincts I listened to (sex, food, shelter, comfort) at the time, I picked up a neurochemical reaction for creature comforts. In effect, an addiction to those things you need to survive… Constantly winding up to needing more and more of the comforts in order to feel “ok” on any given day. These needs pushed me when the rest of my drive may have been hiding in the back waiting for a pat on the back from parents that didn’t notice (and couldn’t understand) and left me learning the skills needed to gather further comforts. I learned to work (but only enough to get what I wanted for the moment), live (using up what I earned), and covet (women, vices, knowledge).

On the note of coveting… Well, I spent quite a few years as a teenager absorbed in the internet (not uncommon these days), and girls. Girls online, offline, in line at the supermarket, waiting in line during lunch… Girls all the time. But after a very short stint with girls, I moved on to women. Women are in abundance on the internet, even if most people don’t realize it. They find niches on chat communities as den mothers, gossip mongers, and hostile trolls. Some of the most virulent and unpleasant trolls I’ve ever run into were women looking to cause a reaction. In all cases, I tended to be able to get an in with them… Get under their clothes, sheets, skins. Women would travel from hundreds of miles away to meet me, or wait for hours to meet me across town from where I lived because of a passing word.

But don’t get me wrong… I wasn’t well off, or even pretty to look at. It’s a certain presence, a frame of reference, a way of speaking, that drew them in. I’ve always had that presence and it has gotten me in trouble a number of times. The worst of which left me (the poor and homely) being stalked like a movie star. Worse than being stalked? When nobody is willing to believe you are in any way special enough to deserve it and dismissing it as an attempt for attention. The true contradiction of my youth caused me to suffer from this immensely. I wasn’t handsome, I wasn’t economically alluring, I didn’t have a tremendous number of friends and I spent a lot of time off in my own little world examining what made me who I was. I became a hollowly extroverted introvert, with delusions of grandeur and notions of inadequacy.

I was pulled away inside, examining everything and comparing it against the world around me — while at the same time I looked outside like a hunter seeking a food source — and what I found was a giant cold hole in my soul where nothing could fill it. A notion many people are familiar with… The elusive “What am I meant for? Who will love me?” that has been the fixated target of poetry, writing and lamentation in history only to find a new medium in movies and comic books. I’m sure Shakespeare would have loved Ultra if he had the chance to read such a thing… Well, after the apoplexy let up from the strangeness of color, language and medium. I spent a long time suffering in that sacred and old lamentation that all humans suffer a time or two. Nobody wants to feel lonely, unloved or even just invisible. It creates a burning, yearning, screaming pain in the chest that might be mistaken for cardiological trauma were it not burning deeper. Much deeper. The reason that humans have forever attached the heart to feelings is because many world altering and intense feelings originate from a core at the center of your being. Fear? Leaves your core shaking. Love? Leaves it warm and light. Rage? Your core quakes with the heat of a trapped sun.

At the center of my core for several years — even though I did not always realize it — was a marble of cold, clear glass, in place of any true sensation. Aesthetic, lust, and challenge was all that I thought love to be. I cannot help but think that somewhere in my childhood — during the events that trouble me even to this day — a switch was flipped and I could no longer see what was important in life, even if my lips payed service to it clear into my twenties. A hollow zealot preaching “the word” of what is important, without themselves believing it, even if they are in fact correct in their knowledge. In this way I cultured the appearance of knowing what was important and used it like bait to lure in the fairer gender explicitly for the warmth moist comfort of attention. I would shape myself like clay around their wants, matching their every need and using my false extroversion to cover the wants I could not meet. In some cases I would take their wants, pull a cloth over them and make the woman in my arms question if what they wanted really -was- what they wanted and not just what the world had told them to seek out. In this way, driven to question, many of them would settle their eyes on me and realize that I made them think… Made them feel… Made them remember what is was like to be cherished and loved, held and appreciated. All good things, but not for the right reasons.

Only now in life am I truly beginning to understand how hollow these years of my life were. I spent all of my latter formative time obsessed with the women around me, and ignoring all of the positive offerings others had to give me if I had only accepted. Teachers that could see potential in me for great things but always noticed my total lack of drive… Others that knew I was well beyond what they could teach me, but would still push me through a pass because I was too bored of the work to even touch it. I cannot count how many classes I passed just because I tested well, they blur too much together to make an accurate memory. But the few classes I liked as a teenager? I would achieve record numbers, highs, going well beyond and so far past expectations as to leave others breathless.

But what did I carry out of these years for my efforts (and lack thereof)? A complete misunderstanding about how the world would treat me once off the leash. It didn’t help that my parents never pushed me to try to get a job and earn some money of my own, never reacted when I got good grades and barely noticed when I got bad. The classical “mommy and daddy didn’t pay any attention to me” complex that I’ve read in dozens of books, ranging from neurochemistry through philosophy and into psychology. It is not a new condition, but one that few people can honestly say has been treated. The advice they have to offer? Take something you like, do it really well, and look to see how you can receive praise for this. Let it build up your own value, your view of self worth. Then you develop it, try to use it as a survival mechanism (aka a job) for going forward. And learn… They want you to learn.

My whole life I’ve been good with women. Not exactly a skill I can use to make a living (and like myself during or after). I face in good conscience the fact that I am not as desirable as the men on magazine pages and that my personal methods for gaining their affections might somewhat discourage the only real relationship of my whole life to date. At the time of this writing, I’ve been with the only person in the world that can tolerate the darkest parts of my nature (which get pretty dark) and have been for 6 years. So despite being my saving grace, a warm shoulder to cry on and a sexual animal capable of bringing comfort on par with therapy… I cannot use it as a way to live. Hell, ethically the idea gives me the creeps. Years ago, the idea would not have only been palatable but quite alluring. Man-Ho, latest superhero to overtake the nightclubs of the Midwest. Yeah, that’d be great for my self esteem.

So what does this leave me? A whole pile of skills for dealing with emotional and incredibly complex people. So logically, psychology seems like it might not be a bad future for me. Spend my time helping to fix people that are broken and can’t find their way out of the trauma. A noble ideal, a good thought and a stable life paved with money. Right? Well, there is the path to get there to worry about. The right school requires the right grades, which come from paying attention in classes I’ve not been in for half a decade. Classes I didn’t do particularly well in. I’ll find a way, I will. But it means that for now while I hunger and need, I need to find an alternative to pay for my lifestyle that doesn’t leave me miserable…

So here I sit. My fallback… Writing.

I’ve always had a taste for it, and I love to read the works of others… Logically, with enough English skill I should be able to pull it off. But no… It doesn’t appeal to me as much as I’d like. It doesn’t let me branch free of old types… I mean, even when I do manage to get a piece of writing out and done. Heck, in some cases I even go on to like the piece I’ve written… It always has to be sexual or romantic. Poetry, short story, novella, novel, movie script, comic script, whatever… Always, something sexual. And my personal life? Sometimes it suffers from it too. I wish I could say it were a pre-occupation and that I need help for it. But I don’t. I just don’t spend too much time thinking on it… But it always comes up when I do try to express myself. Why? Because it is where all of my life experiences come from. The entirety of my youth was spent chasing skirts (and often catching them), leaving me with a laundry list of names that are hard to remember and next to no experiences of any other sort. Yeah, I’ve worked jobs… Office jobs, clerical work, that sort of thing, but nobody on -earth- loves doing that stuff. Nobody. Not even the most ardent workaholic would tell you they wouldn’t rather be working doing something -else- than what they are.

What does that leave? A life of romance novels, chewing away at the bottom most wrung of literature trying to find my niche in erotica? No. It feels too small, too stifling, like I am meant for more. It brings memory of that ice cold marble in my middle, a dread driven by an aesthetic addiction to tugged down panties, curved hips and wet lips.
So I sit here. Staring. Trying to figure out why the ink won’t come out of the pen of my mind to write something else. I ruminate, rant, think, muse… All of this for the amusement of whomever reads this now. And yet, I still cannot find the drive to sit and write something else. Considering the title of this rant, and it’s length… I now suffer at the hands of this terrible irony.

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