Maxwells

    Maxwell looked up from his bar stool to see his own face staring back at him: a picture on the local evening news.
    For all the wicked things he had done in the name of his own pleasure, natural or perverse, he never believed that he would not know what to do next. Suspect at large. Rape. Double murder? This wasn't suppose to happen.
.  
    He didn't know her when he met her. She was drunk at the bar. He saw her as soon as he walked in and he smiled because he knew from her face that this was going to be easy. Her eyes were half closed and the smirk on her face, scanning around at the men's faces staring back at her, who were paying more attention to her than anyone else at the bar. She gazed at the men in front of her with blissful detachment. One of the men handed her a drink and she looked up at him, jutted her shoulders towards him, embraced the glass she was handed and said "For me?" in a voice that raised an octave within the two words.

    Rebecca Figg, the news banner read. He looked down at his drink. What had happened? What went wrong?
    On the television, a one Clayton Barbee, a friend of Rebecca Figg (bullshit, he was just trying to get into her panties) was being interviewed by WLFI reporter Mike Priggett. Clayton told the news reporter that he last saw Rebecca alive, leaving the KnickerBocker -supposedly the oldest bar in Lafayette- with Maxwell. The crime lab was testing the DNA found on her (of course, because he ejculated on he tits, but it wasn't fucking rape.) Her body was found by her neighbors who lived in the apartment downstairs; a historical house built in the 1890's, now sectioned into three apartments; a Midwestern Victorian mansion with a lot of character and drafty windows. Maxwell had left the door open when he ran out of the apartment in the middle of the night. He panicked. He honestly never thought it would come to this.

    Maxwell walked towards her. She was scanning the leering and adoring eyes of the men in front of her. By accident she caught eyes with him, walking towards her. She held her gaze for a moment. "What are you looking at?" She asked with a tone of conceit.
    Maxwell's lips curled up in amusement. "You" he answered.
    She furrowed her brow and sarcastically asked "and you are?"
    "What do you care?" Maxwell stopped walking, but continued to stare into her eyes.
    She looked down at her drink, smiled, the sighed.
    One the other men standing in front of her turned to Maxwell. "Is there a problem buddy?"
    "And you are?" Maxwell asked in a darkly inquiring tone.
    "What the fuck do you want to know why name for?" The man asked with the aggression in his voice beginning to rise.
    "I'm sorry." Maxwell said in a condescending tone. "I like to greet the strangers I am conversing with when I meet them for the first time." Staring into the man's eyes. "My name is Maxwell." Maxwell looked down and took a sip of his drink. He looked up again at the man and barely extended his free hand. "Please to meet you."
    Rebecca giggled, then took a sip of her drink. The man, with a vein pulsating visibly out of his forehead, stared at Maxwell. Finally, he turned to the bar and yelled "Christ! What does it take to get a drink in this place!" A couple of people in the bar laughed on impulse at the cliche, but most simply sighed or sneered for a moment before returning to their own conversations; their personal lamentations or exultation of that particular Saturday night; discussing politics; complaining about work and significant others; congratulating professional accomplishments with shots of Jagermeister or Fireball; etc.
    Maxwell turned his gaze back to Rebecca, who had been watching the whole interaction between suitor number four, we'll say, and Maxwell. "And you are?" Maxwell asked with a grin to match hers.
    "Rebecca" she sighed. She slightly bowed her head towards the drink in her hand. She finished the last drink of it and rattled the leftover iced in the glass. "Buy me a drink?"
    Maxwell's eyebrows raised deviously. "Let's find a table Rebecca."
    She was all over him after the third drink; vodka and soda with a splash of ginger syrup. She was quietly murmuring to him with drowsy eyes. Her arm was around his shoulder and his arm was around her breast waist or hip depending on where he was groping at the moment. She rested her face on the nape of his neck. She turned her head towards the hot and balmy flesh of his neck and kissed it with her blushing lips and slightly smeared mauve lipstick. She tasted the salt of his sweat on her lips as she pursed them against her vodka soaked tongue. He grabbed her upwards to catch his eyesight with hers. He was staring at her. Those devious eyes of his. She pushed upwards to finally kiss him on the lips. All the groping, all of this subtle pawing. It was finally time that they kissed. He pulled her head back. "I'm not going to kiss you. Not yet."
    She stared up at him for a moment with a dull and annoyed look on her face. His cocky smile had fallen away, but his eyes still stared into hers. Then his eyes dropped for a moment, staring at the cleavage of her breasts, pushed together by her shoulders in a voluminously ample manner. The were bare nearly to the nipples in her low cut dark green dress. He looked at her hips stretching against the elastic fabric of her dress, then scanned back to her breasts. She didn't have huge tits, but she did use hers to her advantage. She knew they could work nearly as well as a supposedly winning smile. She had a good smile, but she was too drunk to care at the moment. It would have been foolish not to take advantage of those tits from time to time. And her hips. Great hips. She smiled when she saw his eyes drop away from hers.

   Maxwell Call was the name of the other victim in the apartment. The shadowy figure he could not put a name to until he saw it on the television. The one that came at him with a knife after this rebecca girl and he had just had sex. Staring at the television screen behind the bar, it was the first and last time he had a clear view of his face. Maxwell. The same name as his.
   Rebecca. He was starting to remember something about that name, but he hadn't yet realized why.

   Maxwell was putting on his clothes with the intention of leaving the apartment while Rebecca slept (or pretend to sleep.) He was quiet, as he was always quiet in attempting to leave a random hookup from the night before. But while he was lacing up his shoes he had the since that he and Rebecca were not alone in the room. A barely audible shuffle. A bend in the flat darkness and the minuscule midnight light in front of him. The darkness had augmented the keenness of his senses.
    "Motherfucker!" The dark figure yelled as he lunged towards Maxwell.
    Maxwell side stepped the shadowy arm holding the glinting white blade moving towards him. He chopped the arm down and grabbed hold of the head neck or torso of the dark figure and pushed it down towards the bed. The blade, with the man, fell into the bare right leg of the nude Rebecca Figg, laying on her stomach in the bed.
    She screamed.
    Maxwell stood straight up and stared into the murky grayness of the bed in front of him. He was beginning to see a deep crimson spot in front of him.
    "Goddamnit!" She shrieked. "Maxwell!"
    "Motherfucker!" The other Maxwell screamed as he pulled the knife from the back of her thigh and swung it towards him.
    He jumped back and threw a hard right into the darkness that had the chance of being a merciless human sneer of a face. His fist connected with a no longer hypothetical face. The other Maxwell dropped the bloody knife and fell to the wooden floor with a rattling thud.
    "I'm bleeding." Rebecca cried, grasping the wound with her right hand, feeling the wetness of her own blood ebbing and flowing with her heart rate. "Badly!"
    The other Maxwell grabbed his legs and dropped him to the floor. Before him, on the ground, shined the knife that so recently rattled out of his opponent's hand. Maxwell took hold of the knife and slammed it into the other Maxwell's upper back, pounding his fist against the other Maxwell's ribs and spine and shoulder blades as the knife split the skin and fatty tissue and muscle and organs of the man grappling him by his legs. Every time he pulled the blade from the other Maxwell's back it made a wet sucking sound; it was a quiet sound, but the keenness of his hearing in the darkness heard it.
    The other Maxwell was laying limp. He and Rebecca were quiet, breathing heavily for a moment.
    "Motherfucker!" She screamed, then jumped on his back and grappled her arms and legs around him. Her right leg was still oozing and pumping blood.
    Maxwell took hold of her and wrenched her grip of him. She dug her finger nails into his sides with enough force to tear his shirt and in some places leave scratches. He threw her to the bed.
    "Motherfucker" she muffled. His free hand grasped her face and was pressing it into the bed.
    There she is, that bitch. He raised the knife. Then he heard the baby cry. There she is, Rebecca Figg. Maxwell Call. He heard the baby crying. Had it been crying the whole time? He slammed the blade into her chest. Not like a knife. Not like a careful incision. Like an ax, over and over. And then Maxwell heard the baby crying. He panicked. He didn't close the door.

    Maxwell sat at the bar. His head was down. He didn't what to look up at the television. He never thought he would not know what to do next.

Aaron C. Molden 




   

Absurdism

Here in lies the problem:
You think you have friends,
but they are putting up with the same shit you are,
day after day and disappointment after disappointment.
No matter how trivial or profound they may be,
your friends or lovers or family members
-genetic or otherwise-
are not thinking about you.
They are not thinking about you all of the time.
They maybe thinking of you rarely or barely
or, depending on the circumstance, never.
If someone were to take a statistical inquiry
they would probably find that the ones
you were hoping and praying are thinking about you,
because you hoping and praying and thinking about them,
are, in fact, not thinking about you at all, at the moment.
These thoughts can be toxic.
Toxins brought on by totally rational
(or irrational) emotions.

But it is okay.
This is only this moment
and it is not true all of the time
because you are you
and you have made some kind of memorable impression,
possibly on someone that you may have never expected.
You must take this all in stride.
It is the only choice,
even if you know,
at your most nihilistic and suicidal inevitability,
that it is not the only choice.
Feel free to kick up a mess
in your path of refinding your stride
or discover a new and improved stride,
but please find your stride.

Save most of your metaphors for poetry
or stream-of-conscience writings such as this
and/or other personal or rational examples of the written word.
And maybe save it for a less self-reflexive exercise.
I just made myself smile
because I know I am talking to myself
as well as you, whoever you might be.

Honestly, take a look around.
Get the fuck out of your own head
and pay better attention.
I'm addressing you Average American
man or woman
black or white or anywhere in between.
History; social justice (or lack there of.)
Media; honesty.
Science; art: all the subdivisions.
Math; writing: all the subdivisions.
Forward thinking. Love.

Backward thinking
Choosing the option of not thinking.
Choosing to stop translating.
Believing you have learned enough.
Believing others have learned enough
because you believe you have learned enough,
and that is that.
Eras of mental, physical, philosophical
and psychological terror.
Eras of wars on terror.
All Awful! Rise up against it!
But who?
See, you have a reason.

Aaron C.Molden