Clockwork Disaster

When I was thirteen I fell off a roof and snapped my pelvic girdle into a few angry pieces. It wasn’t the worst time, but it was definitely a bad time. To top it off, I haven't had a good strike on a soccer ball since. One particularly abrasive summer in in Tennessee I found myself in a brawl at a small university close to the border. I was dragged away by my friends with a cracked orbital socket and bruised lungs. I was not aware one could bruise something so deep inside themselves. Something our body needs and protects with the best defenses evolution could muster against blunt force trauma. It hurt, but again, I healed. They say we always come back to whole after long enough. I always did.

Except for this time. Except for when you died.

----

It had been a few months since Jean’s funeral. I still find it strange that I can’t clearly remember the ceremony. I know I spoke, but all I can remember is seeing Jennie cry. Jean and her had been dating for only few weeks but she wept like a child learning what pain was for the first time. The hate I felt in that moment could have turned her to ash. How dare she care that much? Surely my psyche was projecting my anger, but it is what it is I guess. Funny how grief can warp your emotions like that. One day I’ll have to ask someone if I spoke well. Today, I have to open this package.

The unassuming parcel arrived late in the evening by courier. A young kid with dark skin and a hawk’s dangerous eyes. I knew there were still courier services but I had mentally adhered the whole concept to high-end lawyers and drug dealers. It had no return address. The whole situation seemed suspect but I obliged and sent the young boy away with a tip. No reason to hold back a few bucks for a kid doing his job. Jean would be pissed otherwise. I walked to my room through foreign feeling hallways while the world blurred around me. Was this from his parents? Did he have a will? Why the fuck are couriers still a thing?

I had expected a note or old pictures. Some trifling attempt to make me not feel so alone. Knowing Jean, it was more likely a flask full of whiskey and a posthumous bucket list of irrational shit for me to do for him. To the dismay of my sweaty hands and reddening eyes, it was none of those things. Instead, I pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills and a worn notebook.

I had been writing short stories and trashy poetry for years in notebooks just like this one. Thin black leather and slightly yellowed pages to make it seem rustic. It felt familiar and warm, alive somehow, but that was most likely my brain fighting back shock. What I was not familiar with, was having twenty thousand dollars in my hands. I counted it several times. Took a shot of whiskey. Then counted a bit more. It was real. I was still mostly sober so I did what I had learned to do when the universe dumps a bucket of strange on me. I called my mom.

“Well what are you going to do with it, bud?” My mother had an unearthly way of making the magical seem mundane. She was raised in a simpler place and a simpler time where people didn’t need answers to unasked questions. Her mind was not overstimulated and diseased with paranoia like my own bowl of noodles.

“You aren’t even slightly worried about getting a mysterious bag of money?” I couldn't help but get frustrated as I replied. It was a pretty common theme of our chats. She would give me love and great advice whilst my irrational self would snap, overanalyze, and make a fool. My sister always called me a clockwork disaster... she nailed it.

“It’s a gift. Don’t make things more complicated than they are. We’re lucky he had time to get his affairs in order.”

“What affairs? He was just as broke as me!” Knowing my mother would not budge, I let my attention wander. My fingers aimlessly walked over the loose bills on the table until they reached the edge of the black notebook. I had not even thought to open it. I delicately pinched the corner and felt instantly overcome with fear. Like I had missed an important moment. I shook back to reality and found my ear still taking a barrage.

“You could even take a take a little trip home! You know we all...”

I hung up. I’d have to call her back but my brain couldn't take any more. The fear I had felt had morphed into something more akin to dread. Luckily I lived in Los Angeles where dread is the primary mood of me and my artistic compatriots. Fighting through the fear, I opened it.

The yellow tinted and unlined paper was bare, but it had not always been. Like the tilled earth of a spring field, the paper was textured and worn. Used but not destroyed. My hands peeled through the book looking for a message. A story or secret that Jean waited to share until after death. Jean’s famously bad handwriting finally showed on the final page..

Be good, be brave, be more. You get three things.

The first line made me smile. It was the mantra we carved into our weary souls while living through our first few years of Hollywood. The latter was less inviting. I knew it must be some strange joke but the well read nerd inside me went off the rails. Magic books tend to be a staple in much of the fantasy and anime I had voraciously ingested over the years. Was Jean trapped in the book? Was this a Death Note situation? Maybe it is some form of grimoire? Probably not... Probably. I went to find a pencil.

Locating the pencil proved harder than expected with my whimsical mind doing backflips through hoarded knowledge of the arcane. I caught myself in a mirror meandering through the living room. I looked insane. Mumbling to myself, eyes red and swollen, and hair having seen better days... I would have fit in well under a bridge. What was I doing? It all sounded ridiculous. It was also intoxicating.

I had never wanted anything more to be real in my life.

----

The next morning I woke with bombs going off in my head. I had self medicated ad absurdum and judging by my raw eyes, had a meltdown. Fairly standard of late. There was one glaring outlier gnawing at my periphery though. Jean was standing at my door, very not dead. Charming shit grin and judging eyes to boot.

Well fuck me.

If would be a little deceptive to say I jumped out of bed, it was more like a violent coup against gravity. I launched from the blankets with a scream and quickly plummeted to the hardwood. Shaking pain from my wrist, I caught another glimpse of Jean’s back walking down the hallway.

I raced after him trying to form words but my dry tongue only mustered a few incomprehensible syllables. Reaching the living room brought me to my knees. He was not there... Had I been dreaming? I scanned the room and felt a little ashamed at the mess. I had scattered cash all over the couch like I was in a trashy music video. There was a few hundred dollars of sushi and a mostly empty bottle of pointlessly expensive scotch on the table. Drunk me with lots of cash clearly cannot be trusted. Suddenly woozy, I started to turn to go try and sleep through the worst of today’s hangover but stopped mid turn.

The book was laid out flat in the middle of the room, newly inscribed. Cautiously, as if it might run if I approached too fast, I made my way to the book. Closer now, I could make out the writing. It was my own.

I want to see you again.

I read the line a few times, hands timidly reaching forward without my permission for a moment. It had happened. I saw him. Was that real? Maybe my subconscious remembered more from the blackout than I did and tried to throw me a twilight bone. My head spun. My life spun. I felt myself wretch and darkness took me.

I few hours later I woke up on the living room floor. The stinging smell of old bile made me wince. I felt better, but not good. When I was brave enough to crack open my crusted eyes, I saw that it had been real. At least the latter parts. The mess, the book, and my throw up were all in place. I must have feinted but I couldn’t care. The book was all that mattered.

I felt manic. The reacquired pencil spun through my fingers. I should write something simple but what? I didn’t care about money. I’d probably send all the cash I had received to his sister and her newborn anyway. World peace was too big, I didn’t want to break the thing. More wishes was obviously a no no, we’ve all seen Aladdin. This was harder than expected.

My energy was shifting to nervousness as time crawled by. A photo beside me caught my loose focus. Jean, my ex, and I stood drunkenly in front of my favorite bar in Hollywood. I could smell the street meat and hear the ruckus around us. We were happy in our own special sad way. A feeling we surely shared with other lost artists daring to fight against the crushing weight of existence. A powerful melancholy washed over me. I realized that losing Jean had been the end of my fight against that weight. I felt so weak. Jean would be pissed. He was always the one to slap me when I fell into an episode. Riley, my ex, tried to fill the gap but I ran her off like I normally do. Like the clockwork disaster I am.

My mania was descending into something maleficent. I could almost see the noon sun darkening. Rational thought was fading and my intentions sharpened into a razor blade. I wanted to be better. I wanted to feel whole. I didn’t want to be alone. I tightened my grip on the pencil and carved my desire into the page.

Show me this isn’t all there is.

---

Jesse was confused when the short coffee skinned boy with piercing avian eyes handed her a package. It had been a strange few months however so she took it and didn’t ask questions. Her brother had gone missing a few weeks ago. The police had been baffled by his disappearance, made stranger than usual by the giant sum of cash littering his apartment. She was scared but had not given up hope. He suffered from bipolar disorder but he had never been the suicidal type. She figured he had snapped and gone to Amsterdam or something for a sabbatical or maybe a long bender. Jean’s death really shook him up but he would show up with new scars and a gross beard in a few days. He was a disaster but you could set your watch to his episodes.

She cautiously opened the package and gasped at what she saw. Turning it over on the table she was suddenly staring at stacks of money and a small black notebook. This had to be from him. She desperately combed through the notebook and found his eclectic handwriting gracing the back page. Her relief was palpable and tears welled in her eyes. Through the watery blur she read with a nervous smile.

There is so much more to this world. You get three. I love you. Your clockwork disaster.