Your Ghost

I ran to my car and rushed to the liquor store after work, but the traffic lights slowed my progress. Those damn cameras they've been installing on all the traffic lights around town have me paranoid every time I get behind the wheel now. The owner was locking up the store as I pulled in at 10:08. I started explaining my false situation.

Do you think I can make a quick purchase? I just got off of work and my grandfather is in town. I promised him I'd pick up a bottle of Jack on my way home.

Sorry, Kid. I'm not allowed to sell it after 10pm. Your grandpa will have to wait until tomorrow.

Please, sir. Just this once.

He must have seen the desperation in my eyes. He took me inside and let me pay in cash, said he'd run the transaction through the register in the morning. He didn't even check my ID. Nice guy.

Thank you so much. My grandpa can't live without his Jack.

Be careful, son. Have a good night.

My eyes widen at my transparancy. Thank you.

I'm breakng apart and I know it. I feel the tears start to rise on my way home from the liquor store. The headlights of the passing cars begin to form pretty lines and multiply across my line of sight. I don't want to go home. I don't want to stare at those ugly beige walls we painted together. I don't want to smell the remnants of your perfume. I've littered the house in air fresheners. I've sprayed the bottle of heavy scented Stetson that you hate so much dry. I even washed every piece of fabric in the house with the fancy detergents and fabric softeners I always refused to let you buy. Still your scent haunts those empty rooms.

I pull into grocery store parking lot that is nearly empty save for the few employees that get paid minimum wage to restock the shelves and buff the floor overnight. Rangers by A Fine Frenzy starts playing on the radio and the welling tears start a steady flow from my light green eyes down my ghostly cheeks before sliding down my scrawny throat. The song that was playing during our very first kiss. The song that I listened to you sing off key in the shower every morning while I lay naked in bed bathing in the soft yellow fluorescent bathroom light waiting for you to come press your wet naked body against me and sing silly good morning songs in my ear trying to inspire me to wake up. The street lamps lighting the vacant parking lot wash over me in a similar fashion and I get lost in the vivid memories.

The tears continue to flow as I quickly kill the fifth. I gag for a moment as a powerful shiver takes control of my body. My thought process shifts to what you would say about me wasting good whiskey. It's a sipping drink. You're supposed to take time and enjoy it. Something like that. You were always trying to sound grown up.

Eventually my tear ducts run dry and the alcohol calms my nerves enough to gain control of my pitiful sobbing. I start up the engine and drive your beat up Chevy Custom Deluxe home. I remove your bottle of perfume that lies hidden behind air vent and mist the body pillow we used to share. I swallow several of the pills I found hidden in your purse that you used to take to make the pain go away, then I curl up on the couch..

And wait for your ghost.

Oxygen Bar

"Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.." were the words my ringtone serenaded me with this morning. But, unless P. Diddy generally feels disoriented and groggy I'm not sure my ringtone fit my theme for the day too well.

"Hello?"

"Is this Nick?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, Nick. It's Heidi from work. I was just calling to let you know that we're not working tonight. There's not a whole lot of work for the next couple weeks."

"Okay."

"There's no work tomorrow either. Next week we have you scheduled for Tuesday and Friday. You're off the rest of the week."

"Jeez. That's sucks."

"Yeah it does, but at least you weren't laid-off. We had to let 15 people go this morning."

"Yeah. Thanks for that. I'll see you Tuesday."

"Bye."

So, that was that. Great. Now I'm going to have to be frugile. How boring.
My best friend called not too long after that.

"What's up, Bro?"

"Hey, you wanna go to the oxygen bar with me in a few minutes?"

"Well, I'm supposed to be being frugile and junk, but why the hell not? I need to de-stress."

"Sounds good. See you in a few."

"Later."

Neither of us had ever been to an oxygen bar before but, we'd been talking about it for a few days and he couldn't have picked a better time to call me. I don't particularly enjoy my job, but money is a convenient thing to have, and I have a couple somewhat pricey investments coming up in the next few weeks. I have an anxiety disorder and the thought of losing an entire week of work weighed heavily on my mind. I don't take medication. I refuse to regulate my emotions via swallowing a pill every day. I hoped the oxygen bar would take some of the edge off my nerves.

We chose a great time to go to the spa. When we walked in the only person there was an employee. We paid $11 for 20 minutes on a tank. They had a wide assortment of scents to choose from. I went with relaxation for emotional de-stressing. Being a former substance abuser I was determined to get my money's worth of oxygen. For twenty minutes I breathed in deeply through my nose until my lungs were at maximum capacity and exhaled quickly out my mouth. I felt extremely relaxed and could feel a slight buzz, but mostly I just felt calm. When the twenty minutes was up I looked at my friend and neither of us could quit smiling. We felt good. Maybe this is how P. Diddy feels when he wakes up.

I highly recommend the oxygen bar to anyone who is anxious, stressed, or even just feeling tired. Afterwards I felt extremely comfortable and relaxed, and yet energetic, as well. Breathing normal air again made my brain tingle. The oxygen bar was great. I think I'll get a membership. After I start working again, that is.

I have a room mate. He's weird as hell. His name is Damien, but when he gets letters in the mail that's not the name on them. I think he just decided to call himself Damien because his real name is unpronounceable. He's from Ecuador. I'm not sure where that is, but I bet Google Maps does. Now, that I've filled you in on a little bit of Damien's background, let me share some fun stories about him with you.

Damien's favorite TV show is Two and a Half Men (You know..that lame sitcom with Charlie Sheen.) Not only does Damien find this show humorous, he finds it humorous to the point of belly laughing at 3am in the morning for extended periods of time.

Damien enjoys cooking foreign foods in the kitchen. On several occasions I've come home from work and parked a good hundred yards away from the apartment building. When I get out of my truck I can smell something disgusting and it gets stronger and stronger until I open my front door and consider calling poison control. True story.

When Damien wants to borrow a movie he says "Can I take one movie. Because my friend.." and he points to his friend.

The other day me and my friend were playing my friends Xbox on my TV and Damien walked in with some Hispanic friends and said "Can you get out so we can watch one movie?" Me and Brian just both looked at each other for a couple seconds like "Is he serious?" After a few seconds of silence Damien said, "It okay. We can wait." Brian and I proceeded to play Xbox until 5 in the morning while Damien and his friends played on his laptop in the kitchen. When they were ready to go to sleep they stood in the doorway awkwardly holding blankets and whispering to each other. It was too weird for me so I went to bed.

Damien usually only hangs out with girls and his favorite past-time is inviting like 30 of them over and cooking horrid smelling foreign food while the girls have screaming fits of laughter and shout Spanish jokes at the top of their lungs. Then Damien knocks on our doors while we're in bed and asks us "can I borrow one movie, because my friend.." and offers us stinky foreign food. This usually goes on until Chris starts shouting at them from bed and slams our door repeatedly. It's literally the best.

Damien might be insane. He talks to himself in Spanish at around the same volume most people would read out loud in class.

Damien receives phone calls at all hours of the night. He wakes up, answers them, and talks to the person on the other line loud enough to wake me up in a different room.

One time Damien asked me for some good American bands to listen to, in order to help him with his English. I suggested Brand New, Arcade Fire, Hot Hot Heat, and Matisyahu. Apparently he wasn't impressed and went to someone else for advice and apparently he asked for suggestions at a gay bar because he's been blasting Fall Out Boy, Justin Bieber, and Britney Spears on his laptop constantly for two months now.

One time Damien was doing homework in the kitchen and I was running late for work, so I decided to cook an egg in the microwave. (Honestly, who could have guessed it would explode?) While I was staring in horror at the inside of the microwave and dreading the clean-up Damien gave me this funny smirk and said "I can cook you egg if you want. I know how cook." I guess Ecuador is big on eggs because he cooked me the best egg I've ever had.

Damien owns a Super Nintendo and no TV. So he likes to unhook my DVD player, Xbox, and sound system from my TV on a daily basis, take all the cushions off the couches, throw them into a pile on the floor, flop himself down on them and play Lion King for SNES. It definitely brings me back to like 1st grade.

Damien is a pretty weird kid. He throws loud Spanish parties on weeknights, his food smells like sewage, he is rather inconsiderate of people's sleeping schedules, and he talks to himself extremely loud. But, he cooks me food all the time and we have some pretty interesting conversations on occasion. Damien is the weirdest room mate I've ever had. But, he's a good kid. I like him.

He said it was a hole in the ground. I've never seen a bomb shelter before, but a hole in the ground was too bland for my mind's eye. In my head I pictured an underground building fortified with steel walls and long corridors that stretched into the dark beyond. The shelter would have multiple rooms with vaulted doors and graffiti canvased walls. The shelter would would have rusty hinges and every sound would reverberate for heartbeats into the future.

..and then I found myself looking at a hole in the ground and forgot about what a bomb shelter should look like. It was 2am and this hole was more frightening to me than the elaborate bomb shelter blue-print I had constructed in my mind.

In the dark on a hill overlooking the city lights of Orem I stood with my friends and stared into the hole with the old, vertical re-bar ladder leading into the shadowed cavern below. A conversation similar to this ensued:

"Well, get down there, Nick. You're the one who's supposedly not scared of anything."

"My back is completely exposed to any hobo that wants to jump out of nowhere and shank me to death while I climb down the ladder, Dill Hole."

"You're the Dill Hole, Dill Hole. You said you would go first on the way here."

"That was before I knew it was the perfect setting for a hobo stabbing scenario!"

"I told you it was a hole in the ground, dude."

"Yes, you definitely said that. But, you neglected to mention that I would be turning my back on a hoard of blood thirsty hobos for the fifteen foot descent into the shelter!"

"We could have a gun, Bro. They don't know that we don't have a gun. Hobos aren't stupid. They survive by assuming every punk on the street is packing heat."

"There's fifteen hobos crouching below us right now that just heard you say we don't have a gun, genius. You're going first now."

"I didn't say we don't have a gun. WE HAVE A GUN, YOU FILTHY HOBOS!"

"Now you've got them all riled up, Brian. I'm definitely not going down there now."

"What the Hell, dude!? Just grab my legs so I can lower my head below the lip and look around."

...

...Brian was stabbed 13 times in the face that night. He died instantly...3 days later.

Or at least I wish that's what happened. The truth makes a far less entertaining ending.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!!!:
We all pussed out and went on a different adventure that I will tell you NEXT TIIIIIIME!!!

THOUGHTLESS

My mind is a tomb,
Thoughts form and die
Behind my eyes,
Because i realize
Thought process
Just might possess me.
A brief confession,
This thought repression
Is obsession.
Don't get the wrong impression.
My mind is my enemy,
It's the part of me
That triggers my depression.
When these memories
Get ahold of me
I get hypnotized
By the pretty lies.
In the magic of
Those sights and sounds
I drown.

"God or Jesus, Please, Let me know
When my heart beats it's last
Where will my soul go?"..


While the light leaves my eyes
And my blood ceases flow
I watch from the corner
Til I'm dead then I go.
Slowly, so slowly
I slip through the ceiling
And watch the world drift away
Like a kite on a string.
I slide through the clouds
And watch that ocean of white
Grow fainter and fainter
Then fade into night.
The sun fades from view
And I float in the dark
Like a buoey in the ocean
surrounded by sharks.
I'm alone with my thoughts
And my soul starts to fear
Then an echo through space whispers,
"Be still. I am here."
The stars begin to shift
As my soul starts it's race
Past nebulas and galaxies
Through wormholes in space.
Lightyears fly by
Like headlights at night
Then my momentum slows
As the horizon gets bright.
As I break through the clouds
My vision is blurred
By tears of pure joy
And a whisper is heard,
"Your journey has ended
And a new one begun
Welcome back home
I've missed you, my son."

He's like the moon, I know
He's watching me, Carefully
Inspecting me
From far away
I feel his gaze, Holding me
And penetrating to my soul
Ceaselessly, Yet patiently
And lovingly I sense him
Watching, Waiting
From somewhere deep in Heaven
From a different plane of space
With billions more to tend to
I can sense his warm embrace
When it's quiet in my heart
And my mind is calm at ease
I can feel the deepest love
So strong it drops me to my knees