Her body bounced on the floor, like it was some latex dummy, life size and realistic…

It was real though – so very real. The red paint flowed out of her neck, like a budding rose that could no longer maintain structural stability. I suppose the life had fled from her eyes; eyes which were mere seconds ago alive with fear. The fear came from the cold metal pressed against the left side of her neck…

Oh how she fell. How the blood poured and life just left her. How God showed me there was no justice in the world; all things were limited and precious. Such dark poetry bestowed upon a young child. It has fucked me up for the rest of my life. I saw no evidence of heaven or hell, just that which was here and that which was no longer here. I knew she was gone from this world; I felt it deep within.

The ringing in my ears from the sound of the three shots the asshole emptied in her neck sang loudly in my ear. I couldn’t process any of this. I was too young and I hadn’t a true concept of death, though I supposed this moment changed that; life is the thing we go through before it all means nothing.

The night before I had a dream relating to this moment; how fucked up is it that an 8 year old is having dreams of shit like this happening before the events unfold before his eyes? I’m like a cheap rip-off of The Shining. Imagine a sewer-like environment cleaned up as much as it could be for people to live in. People were depressed in this unseen, but clearly felt, miasma of depression and boredom. Through some less travelled passage ways dark men in hoods who looked like black Klu Klux Klan silhouettes with red eyes stood ominously in the background. One such man came up behind this beautiful blonde woman at the end of the dream. It was abrupt, the terror in her eyes and heart being what I remember most about the dream.

Back to the waking world, and rewinding a bit… I had gone to court with my mother. She was divorcing my father. I must’ve been around eight years old, and a week or so before, we had gone to court prior to this visit as well. Doing anything in court is a process that involves multiple trips, lot’s of wastes of your time, and money, if even only for transportation. In this previous visit, I saw a young lad drawing Venom from marvel comics, and I thought the drawing was awesome. The next time around, he wasn’t in his spot, or anywhere to be seen, but I liked his idea so much that I decided to take residence in his spot and draw.

This placed me in an ideal position, several feet from the front row of chairs in the waiting room, making me able to see the action first. Life can happen in slow motion, and it has done so for me several times.

He appeared from behind one of the pillars like a chocolate Slender-man; he was tall, black, thin, in a black suit. It hadn’t fully dawned on me that this was my dream becoming reality. My nightmare. My real life nightmare.

I struggle between being agnostic and believing that God is out to get us. He’s out for all of us, but especially me. This is a nagging feeling buried deep inside me from this moment, but he took this woman from the world to remind me that I was next. I see the flaw of this logic, but I am human, and this sort of thinking is how I was affected.

He draws the gun from a shoulder holster, slightly puffing out his left lapel. He is probably right-handed like most of us. The silver cowboy gun is in his dark hand. It moves in a perfect sweep from his chest to his target spot. The cold metal — it must be so cold — kisses her neck. The cold metal wakes her up from this dreary miasma holding us all. Her eyes widen. She knows what is happening within an instant of this instant. Her head turns and she looks at him. Those beautiful eyes stare like a deer looking in headlights. His eyes are cold and barely noticeable, blended into the rest of his dark form. The end is here. Oh God the end is here. The baby she is holding in her arms… her baby echoing her beauty into the future; a physical memory of a woman who is no more.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

My angle of view changed. Somehow, I knew what was happening. I gathered my things and ran, taking a step for each release of hot lead. When I had made my way some small steps to the side of the room, she fell in front of me. I already told you what that was like. I have to relive that moment in my mind often.  I’ll spare you from the repetition. The moment is gone now and I am here writing about it to you. The tenses change in this writing which is a no-no, but I feel that it is appropriate in this piece. The transitions may be weird, as I dance between multiple thoughts and feelings while writing this. I won’t change them so much. I want you to feel like I did; like I still do sometimes. When I relive this memory, I am in the past and the present at the same time (time isn’t as linear as we often perceive anyway). My heart beats faster and breath quickens as I dig deeper for a way to best describe to you the experience. I regurgitate it on this screen for you to read.

What if God is the bad guy? What if this is his venom?

I’ve tried to make peace with this moment. A few years ago I was able to recall that in her final split-second, the blonde woman passed her child onto someone else next to her. The other woman accepted. There is something beautiful there; the human instinct perhaps. It is a mother caring for her child as best she could. I am so sad now. I feel like crying but the upper part of my cheeks punches my tear ducts shut. Don’t you see people? It’s not up to God. It’s up to us. The only thing we know that exists in some mystical sense beyond our full understanding is death. If there is a God then that is what he is. Death. Make no mistake, our time can be anytime. Everything we do can come to a sudden halt at any time. I read a book written by a warrior once, as a way to come to peace with this tragedy. I’ll paraphrase his words: “Death is a big brother standing over our shoulder, reminding us to live.”

I understand now.

We die, because we need to live.

“Due to a signal malfunction at Times Square, express trains will be running local at this time,” the obnoxiously calm voice said over the speakers barely audible enough to hear.

“Fuck,” I replied mentally.

“Due to a signal malfunction at Times Square, this will be the last stop.”

“You bitch.”

“Please transfer to the R,F,D, or M tria -”

“Blah blah blah go to hell you monster.”

It’s bad enough that the MTA dare raise our fares to two dollars and fifty cents, but whenever I take the train from Flushing during rush hour, and even a bit earlier, I feel like I’m being smuggled to the city. Ever have a grandma half your size shove you out of the way? I have, and there’s no way she could’ve done it if I wasn’t caught off guard and I didn’t let her, but I did because what would it look like if I had shoved her back? Plus I’m not generally interested in hurting people either. You have to admire her balls, but then I suppose she knew a dope when she saw one.

The digital display of my cell phone, pale in the midday light on the elevated platform of wherever the fuck I was, showed me that it was past seven o’clock. Calculating that I’d be at least fifteen minutes late on the local, I knew that I’d be at least forty-five minutes late due to the detour. There was no sense in going further. My evening class had been cancelled as well.

I walked toward the stairs leading downward. My descent was surrounded by a miasma of bodies and misery, which I was a part of. I ended up on the other side of the train station, my senses coming back to me more fully when I hear that voice again, “you’re next train will be arriving in nine minutes.” Not more than five seconds after, “you’re next train will be arriving in ten minutes.”

“Bitch.”

It’s just a voice, I know; a person like me or you, but that voice is representing the MTA, the Mass Transit Assholes. I know that shit happens, and things break down. We are all aware that shit doesn’t always work, but God dammit, I’m not paying for this mess.

And yet I am. I already have. Two fares today spent and I didn’t get anywhere.

We lack a desire to hurt one another until generally motivated by some perceived slight or a strong enough desire to achieve or acquire something else. Our instinct holds us in place, preventing us from hurting one of our own species, especially someone from our own “pack” or family. Yet, when we feel comfortable enough with the people around us, we relieve our venom onto them because we know they will not abandon us. We take this dark action toward our loved ones because we fear Abandonment and Rejection. I write them with capital letters at the beginnings because they are our great evils; the human existence is beholden to a base question, “Are you there for me?” This whole matter is a constant source of upset for me on multiple levels, a surprising complex of contradictions, and at heart, prevents us from being honest and able to handle honesty.

The amygdala is an actual part of the brain that essentially constantly asks “are you there for me?” It is a mammalian group of nuclei; a thing in the brain evolved to make us rely on one another for the better survival of the species. How many times have I bitterly wished this was not the case… It creates fear of rejection, the ultimate enemy of mammals everywhere, and even the slightest hint of rejection from our parents at youth can spoil us; make us rotten and ruined. I first really learned about it in a relationship counseling class I took. I was not in a relationship at the time, but because I felt I had made too many mistakes in previous relationships, and wanted to prevent these mistakes from happening again, I took this course to better myself.

Among the things discussed in the class, insecurity was a great focus. Insecurity of self stems from insecurity with parents and people close to us. We are intrinsically tied to others. Our ego, no matter how much we indulge it, therefore, is not simply our own.  I learned about several “dances” that couples perform psychologically. For instance, Mary asks John to do the dishes, and John says yes, but does not do them. Hours go by and Mary eventually confronts her husband about this. She is angry at him, and yells at him about the dishes. John in response to her yelling, remains quiet, and when the argument is over he simply goes out for a while. Mary feels completely ignored by his lack of communication. She feels John doesn’t want to talk with her or care for her. John feels similarly; that Mary hates him so she yells at him, but he actually does care and he’s hurt, so he’s gone away to go lick his wounds. When Mary is asking John to do the dishes, she’s actually asking him “are you there for me?” When John goes out for a while and remains calm, it’s because he’s afraid to get upset at Mary and hurt her emotionally, so he retreats until he calms down, but to Mary this means “No, I’m not there for you.” Likewise Mary yelling at John means to him, that she is not there for him either. It may seem silly, but this is the source of most arguments in a relationship. To cope, this couple may begin to lie to each other to prevent further upsets, rather than engage in healthy and necessary introspection, as well as healthy confrontation.

The ego is such a fragile thing, and it makes us humans afraid to be honest with one another. We are afraid to damage someone else’s ego, mayhaps as much as we are afraid to have our own damaged. Consider this: A man is flirting, or attempting to flirt, with a woman. It starts out friendly, and she is unaware of the flirting until talking to him for about thirty seconds. She is made uncomfortable by the process, but rather than simply say she’s taken or that she is uncomfortable, or not interested, she instead keeps talking with him and throwing hints at him. These hints are designed to indicate disinterest, and may even be considered normal everyday hints that people should pick up on. The man, clueless, continues to flirt. She’s still talking to him and he takes this as a good sign. Innocently, he pushes forward, eventually getting to the point where he asks her if she’s single. She smiles wryly and shows him her ring. She’s engaged, then her fiance shows up, and the fiance happens to be an acquaintance of his. The man laughs about it, thinking the whole thing is funny, and he’s a little nervous too, so he apologizes. The couple acts like there’s nothing wrong, and thinking everything is okay, the man simply abandons the flirtation and acts politely towards them, not that he really wasn’t being polite in the first place.

Months later, the man finds out from someone that the woman he was flirting with complained about him. The man, seeing her fiance, attempts healthy confrontation. “Excuse me,” he says, “but I found out from someone that your fiance complained about me. I wasn’t given her name, but since she was the only one I hit on I know it must be her.” The fiance says “Yes, she was giving you all these hints. “You should’ve stopped.” The fiance further states that the place where the man was hitting on his fiance was not an appropriate place to hit on someone. Bear in mind, that the flirting occurred at a recreational event.

The man sees only conflict if he continues arguing his point. If “it is not a place to hit on people,” then no place is. People are at a bar to drink, not be hit on. People are on a subway, not to be hit on. People are at a club to dance, not be hit on. The list goes on indefinitely. The logic is disturbingly incorrect. The whole thing is a mess.

Healthy confrontation would involve the woman in the scenario firmly stating that she is not interested. If the man persisted beyond that, then he would be at fault; however, not being able to recognize “hints,” while being a personal flaw of his, does not actually make him wrong in the situation. No means no, and this is true, but using hints when what is intended to be said is “no,” is going to lead to confusion. This experience was a personal one, and I continue to feel frustration at this issue to this day.

There is not only a disturbing lack of empathy in this country, but a vast inability to communicate directly with or without fear of hurting someone’s feelings. The backwards actions can lead to drama and serious repercussions, when all that could’ve been said, all that should’ve been said, in any situation, was the truth. A person is not responsible for someone else’s inability to handle the truth, only for their own expression of the truth. To assume such a responsibility, is to consider the other person a child; a being incapable of being responsible for their thoughts, emotions, and self. It is a great insult. Furthermore, to then complain about a “child” that a person assumed such responsibility for, is tantamount to a parent complaining to someone uninvolved in the situation about their child, and expecting them to take responsibility. The shirking of responsibility, the response to perceive threats of the ego, and the lack of recognition of our responsibility for our own communication combine to create a dangerous ocean of treachery. We are all sharks swimming in our collective waters.