Climb the Ladder

-some language

-self harm

I scream, for even my thoughts boil. I’ve gotten too hot. The sweat is gone if I ever had that. I am as dry as the sands beneath my feet, made to be at the mercy of hot wind, winds that feel like licking flames consuming and wearing away their hosts. They’re dry winds and they strafe across me. It’s dark and there's only a single light above, piercing me. This light does not illuminate and with that, I cannot see what is ahead, so I’m forced into thoughts, forced to know the bottom of my feet burn above biting sands.

I move forward, shoved by the wind like guards driving me to a cell. There's a nature within me to go and find shelter, but no nature around to give me hope that there is anything to be sheltered under. The days never end, if I can even call it that, since nothing in the broad canvas above me ever shifts.

I hear others scream over the whipping winds. I don’t see them but I know they’re there and not just my echo. They can’t believe they’re here because who would’ve thought they’d be banished from the comfort of ordinary life, whatever that they were. Perhaps with children, perhaps with none, and children of somebody. Accountants? Husbands? Welders? An assortment that doesn’t seem to have any perfect line that can be traced through them all, an ugly threat for an ugly necklace. As for me, I’m caught in the grip of what was before. Before all this.

I remember.

I remember because I'm forced to or face what is around me.

The ice jingled against a glass of alcohol, a release of stress when I took a drink. It went down bitter and cold when I took a swig. The ice was in large spheres kissing the inside of the glass, spinning when the liquid was gone. I watched them without a care in the world. All of the care had been gone and its soulful sweetness swished under a hundred shots of vodka. Vodka, because it's bitter and strong. Why not? Why not a hundred more? Obviously, over the course of the next few weeks. I would have done that over the next few hours if I could have but I would’ve died quickly which I was okay with but I had wished to extend it, extend my suffering under what pleasures I can deal with. This is what I did, buried my life in what I could indulge in.

Satisfactory in good genes and a sense of humor, I hadn’t a problem with women. I stood 6’ 1”, average build and a few tattoos to my bland and hairy body. I could talk a woman’s clothes off and I got off to that, found part of my purpose with that. I had sex whenever I could and lied to whatever woman who I was done with to get with the next; each hotter than the last as though a challenge to see if I could “climb the ladder”: how I referred it. I don’t care for them, just the next one that would come my way and talk my way into her.

“You’re a horrible person. A user and an abuser.” was a comment to me from someone I don’t remember the name of.

So?

Who are you?

I got what I want and you got what you want so we go our separate ways. We go our separate ways.

“You said you’d take care of my child. I'm pregnant!” was another woman who was a liar so I didn’t mind lying back.

Did I?

Or did I say I’d be there with you for that one night? Probably the latter so go away and lie to someone else.

It wasn’t the women I was with either; they were just the fun buzz which came with a hangover later. I once told my father he could get whatever he wanted with me since he was getting old and his bones were cracking, his muscles liquifying with his skin, drooping to the floor like melting wax, and that coiled brain of his becoming smooth. I told him I’d help because he asked that of me as though demanding because he brought me into this world. So? Did I ask? I wasn’t there with my mother to put a child inside her and inhabit that little fetus. You drunk yourself away and brought up children you couldn’t raise, call my brother. My money was mine, my time was mine, my life is mine and you lived yours so I live mine.

The text came in and I checked my phone.

We need 1000 for your father’s surgery- Kelly

Your sister already gave 1000- Kelly

I ignored the text and flipped the phone over on its face.

Beside the glass of vodka were a scattering of gutted lottery tickets without a prize. Many of them were crumpled. I usually keep a couple in my pocket to save for later as if they'd change when the time passes, playing to some juvenile thought that the winning numbers need time to assemble.

I drunk and listened to the phone buzz continuously while sifting the tickets. I look for nothing but in any attempt to ignore the texts. I had to climb the ladder even if the rung wouldn't hold because maybe at the top, I could be the one to say I got there. I could use that lump sum of money and take care of everything when my bets were all said and done. That's how I rationalized.

Plus, I had a plane to catch in a few days and all the money I had needed to be spent at the destination for a hotel, a rental car, some cocktails, five-star dates with some cute girl, I couldn’t spare a cent for a life I wanted to live.

What if I couldn’t sleep at Caesar’s Palace? They wouldn’t want me to sleep on the street at night on during the hottest days in Vegas? I knew my brothers and sisters would help and maybe they did, I don’t know, never got a text but I believed they did because no matter how much I put of a facade, it gave me peace believing they helped. Many of them were closer to my parents, some even further than I: my oldest and youngest siblings never bothered with them so it never bothered me in the long run when I ignored them a couple of times.

I picked up the phone, swiped away all notifications without looking too long then I shot a text to my brother:

they asking for 1000 to you too?-

The bartender came over, a lump sum of a man that looked more like a cook than a dealer of alcohol. A round belly inflated by food than the typical front side beer belly and clean shaven like he wanted no hair in the food... or in that case, the drinks. I don't know, maybe he was a cook but he was a big man and demanded attention.

I tapped the glass.

"I'll take another." I told him.

He rose his eyebrows in surprise and went for bottle.

My phone buzzed and I checked.

mom is asking everyone- Joseph

what did you say?-

nothing- Joseph

I haven't said anything either-

and I won't-

My glass was filled and I immediately drunk a bitter gulp. The bartender gave me a chiseled look as though casted judgement like he didn't resemble a Swedish meatball. A man who didn't take care of himself giving me the look?

I gave on last text.

he can die for all I care-

they can stop asking me to give them shit-

Before the bartender could fully leave...

"What are you looking at?" I asked him with my chin raised, unable to fully focus on him.

"Hmm?" He was confused.

"You gave me a look you dumbfuck. You think I drink too much?"

In the last 30 minutes of service here, there was many people here. For some reason, it was as though we were both meant to be there.

"I didn't give you any look," he defended but I wasn't having it so I splashed my drink at him, ice and all.

"Take it all back then. Since you think I drink too much."

The alcohol soaked into his already stained shirt adding to the collection of drunkards who had my idea. He pointed to the door and told me to leave and refused, and he told me again to which I refused. He was a big man so he came over, grabbed me and escorted me to the exit.

I killed him.

I don't remember much but I remember he was on the ground. There wasn't much blood, if any at all but he didn't breathe and he lay there on the bar floor. Without a feeling of care, a bitter thing I now regret, never equated to the fact that all had ended then and there. Both in the days ahead and life. A simple mistake I am not allowed to remember but enough that all fleeting things were not enough for me to continue because no matter what I did, I would not climb the ladder. My life would not be worth the weight in regret, only less than.

A careless drive home bridged the gap from there to here.

I know everything now besides names. I know how I made everyone feel and the make up of those decisions for them. A familiar face had become unfamiliar with a self-inflicted 12 gauge into the mouth in an attempt to get out of a cycle of abuse. A woman had a child and she looked familiar; the child had been abused by many men who didn’t stay so now he abuses those he comes across. My father had died before getting on the operating table. He’d succumbed to whatever disease he had and died in pain. There was some medicine which would have gotten him to that day, weeks in advance, for only $500, and from there a jumping-off point to recovery. Maybe I could have sent something… but I didn’t. I don’t think I could find him here and that’s the way of this place.

Regret pulls me; it's the only thing I truly feel with hues of strained hope that'll never reach satisfaction. I reach for things that cannot change. The color of life is vivid with colors we cannot choose, splattered upon our canvas with all that is around such an individual by people and things that come and go. A dog here, untouched love there; and mine is made of the muted value of selfishness. I was but a piece absent of care. Now, I cannot climb the ladder to add what I wish would be there upon that canvas: in the corners or upon the center. The piece is set and cannot be undone.

There are many things a man must account for. Whether by crime of law made up by man knowing full well there will be those who stumble across and be accused so they can be disposed of: to believe in a cross, to believe in more than a god, or to be a child in a womb grown in the wrong time for crime you didn’t commit. Or a crime of natural law; a thing I believe to be such a fictional thing yet here I am: to regret a law never written. I’m piled under a thousand thoughts for a law I didn’t break. Maybe I looked too long, maybe I desired too much for my hands to be upon any woman. I shouldn’t have. Maybe I said what was not true to a true heart that broke because of it. Like sands under rolling stones, what was pure is smeared away and I am what is left; this husk made up by lust, wrath, unbroken greed, and regret.

For now my hands are red with another’s blood, a husband I suppose. Maybe a brother... a poor young woman who didn't know of the monsters of the world. No, all of them. I don’t remember her name anymore and I regret that. I don't remember his name and I regret that. I cannot drink this blood no matter how thirsty I am. I cannot wipe it away, and I am forced to look at it so that I’m pulled and hidden in corners where I should have gone instead of releasing my wrath. I wouldn’t bear this heat. I wouldn’t be forced to wonder without a way, to waste away from nothing to nothing. Here, desire is like hope: a thing which dissolves in my mouth. I walk and walk, with a shimmering light above piercing this immortal core.

My life has been one of chasing fleeting things so now I get what I had wanted: to chase nothing. Pushed by winds that feel as flames that lick me, sands that shave down the soles of what feet I have left. I curse this place. I curse whoever put me here because each day is hotter than the last, for an eternity, always being the hottest day of the year in repeated succession. Yet I will not die, I cannot die. I am undead. Body gone and spirit left to mock it. I am as all others here who groan or scream out the thoughts in attempts to drown them and they will not and I will not, yet I will continue to scream for this is the fate of the damned. The sun will not set and sand will continue for as long as this bitter fate exists for I am in hell and we are the damned.