I Woke Up in Pittsburgh

Hiatus

2009-06-11T15:44:00.005-04:00

Pittsburgh is going down for a little while. You may have noticed the updates petering out.

I started this project as a flash fiction in action sort of site. There was an over arching story but no finite plans on execution.

So in short, I've gone to a place I didn't want to go and instead of writing my way out everyday, and presumably digging myself deeper, Pittsburgh will go silent for a while.

For updates on the Pittsburgh story and it's bigger parent story please visit DEFCON Whiskey.

Sam will be back...

Awake

2009-06-03T15:18:00.001-04:00

I wake up covered in sweat.

I am still in the hospital. Tubes and straps hold me in and down. I have become more machine.

A nurse with kind eyes comes into the room.

"Oh, your awake. I was afraid you were thrashing around again."

"I'm thirsty..."

"Let me get you some water."

I've been in this place for two weeks since that strange stabbing incident.

I've been doped on so many painkillers I'm not even sure I really know what happened.

Something about different faces.

And then that dream about a field. It seemed so real. My shoulders throb.

An orderly named Mikes comes in and starts prepping my dinner. He undoes my safety straps and I happily start chowing down.

"Hey did you finish that book I gave you?"

He's talking about Blindness by Jose Saramago. An entire world blinded by a disease and the trials of the one woman left with sight. It was very hard to read and a little long.

"Yeah, I finished it, pretty good, the movie was better."

"I got another one I found down in the juvenile cancer ward."

He hands me a well worn copy of a book called The Losers by David Eddings.

The cover is purple and in the middle is a man stepping out of the darkness with one leg forward and one angelic wing stretched toward the sky.

I can feel my heartbeat in my back. My shoulders shift uncomfortably.

I read the book that night, devouring in it's entirety. It is glorious in it's ugliness.

I sleep the sleep of death. No angels await me tonight.

The Field part Four

2009-05-28T15:40:00.000-04:00

I explode into pain...

Endlessly the crows dive at me. Cutting me. Shredding my shirt and skin.

I fall to the ground again, ambushed, attacked.

Murder by Crow.

The Angel Michael strides ahead of his host. He is beautiful, like God himself.

"The pain you feel is nothing compared to the agony in our hearts since you left us, Samuel. Come home."

I stammer out the word "why?"

Why is this happening? Why am I being attacked? Why this hill, why this man?

"Samuel, come home, send this man and come home. Take the Flame..."

Michael extends the sword to me again.

I reach out for the hilt just as a large crow hits my elbow square. Sinew is exposed.

I try to reach again and a larger bird lands on my back driving me into earth. The birds attack my naked shoulder blades, pecking and devouring.

With one last breath of energy I lunge toward the sword.

I make contact with the hilt and my pain leaves.

The crows cry fury and all stream toward me. My back is covered with feathers and talons.

As I rise, with ease, the voices of the crows are silenced one by one. They melt and combine. Bubble and form.

They are my black wings. Dark and with a thousand eyes.

I am Samu-El, the Angel of Death.

I lock eyes on Micha-El, my brother.

"Yes, Samu-El, complete the ritual, take up the flame and send that soul to us. Reclaim your rightful place at my side!"

I step to the man. Every step is lighter than air. Every breath is the deep drink of a million souls.

I hear a millennia of pain and relief.

The man is crippled with age and a degenerative muscle disease. As I see him shaded by a grand oak, I can see him in a hospital bed surrounded by family.

Tears.

I lay hands on his shoulder and I receive his memories. Thirty years locked in the prison of his body. Every year he loses more of the man and becomes a diagnosis.

Micha-El comes next to me, "Cut him free. It is our Task. You will be my Lieutenant, proud and dutiful when He shall return. Already the signs are in place. Brother, it will not be long. Come home and serve me."

I remember too many years and centuries and eons at this point. Micha-El is begging me to return to him. To cease being who I am and become a servant.

The memories return so fast. It is a grand thing to serve under the Light and He Who Shall Return. It is my Task. My compulsion.

My memories and the memories of the man, mingle in my brain.

I turn to face Micha-El, I will return.

Suddenly one of the man's memories penetrates the battle in my mind.

"Don't accept what they say you are. Be who you dream you will become..."

"Michael," I look him dead in the eyes, "go fuck yourself."

The crows awake and rocket from me, clouding the sun.

Everything goes dark.

The Field part Three

2009-05-26T15:47:00.001-04:00

The crows grow louder...

I scramble higher up the hill. My hands clawing into the soil. The grass wilts beneath my fists. Bugs and rodents scream in agony.

My shoulders are on fire.

I am screaming wordlessly trying to get away from the heavenly mob.

The boy slowly walks next to me, although he is a man now.

I stop fighting my way up the hill and look into his eyes.

He has a larger branch now that has many many leaves. Some look more wilted than others.

As I hold his gaze he ages in front of me. One of his eyes clouds over and becomes listless.

The crows begin to circle around us.

The man falls to his knees, his right arm hangs loose at his sides. A smile creases his face.

His branch becomes a root and falls from his hands and burrows into the ground. I see the root move under the hill.

I see the tree on top of the hill and an old man in a wheelchair underneath.

The man that was with me is him, distant.

The crows scream with fury.

My shoulder blades are wracked with pain and distort wildly.

I stand uneasy and limp towards the tree and man.

A crow dives towards me and tears my shirt and skin around my collarbone.

Blood and feathers are in the air.

I hear Michael laugh.

I explode into pain...

The Field, part Two

2009-05-20T17:27:00.000-04:00

"Take the Flame Samuel..."

I try to move but my shoes seem riveted to the field. The laces are not tight and I kick them off.

I run barefoot in the grass. The breeze is pleasant.

Every hundred feet or so I see the Angel with the boy. I run pass them but can notice that every time I see the boy he is a little older, his stick has another leaf.

Always the Angel calls out, "You've been running for so long ha-Mavet. You can not out run He Who Will Come."

I trip over a root that is coming out of the hill. My pants are hooked.

I look over my shoulder and I see more Angels. The are thousands behind Seven. They come to me. The Seven are larger, they have a crackling energy around them. The boy walks with them. He is carrying four branches, three with one leaf each.

The one who called himself Gabriel blows into a ram's horn. The Choir sings.

The Angels wings are each made of a different material. Smoke, Flame, Tide, Stone, Light, Wind. Each covered in tattoos. Unbidden I know their names, Gabariel, Remiel, Zerachiel, Raguel, Uriel, Raphael, and the largest of them all...Michael.

He comes to me. He reaches out his hand. It burns. I feel waves of a nausea come over to me.

I retch and convulse, my pants tear completely, my leg, exposed is covered in the same tattoos as the Angels.

I hear crows.

I tear off the rest of my pants and run again.

The crows grow louder and the sun is darkened by their wings...

The Field, part One

2009-05-19T18:23:00.000-04:00

I am in a field.

I am in a dream.

The grass of the field is lush and a summer wind blows like a tide.

There is a hill in the distance with a large tree. The wind does not blow the leaves.

My back itches near the shoulder blades. I am wearing a coat.

The sun is hot, burning, a burden. Every second my coat absorbs another Fahrenheit.

The wind changes directions and blows my hair into my face. I have long hair that smells of Spring.

I start walking through the field towards the large tree. Savior in shade.

I remove the coat. It is leaden and my arm screams as I pull it off. I toss it to the side. The t-shirt I have on now is itchy pulling at something on my back.

The jacket begins to smoke.

The smoke becomes dark and solid. It is an airy liquid. It bubbles and churns.

There is a presence there. A substance. A consciousness.

The smoke begins to draw in on itself. Violently retracting. Violently subsiding.

A shape emerges from the waste, it is a man. A man with black, coiling smoke for wings. He is naked with elaborate tattoos covering everything but his face.

He smiles at me. He recognizes me. I can feel his recognition but I do not accept it.

The Angel, for that is what he appears to be, reaches behind his right wing with his left hand and withdraws a sword.

The sword is flame. The sword is death.

The Angel bends to one knee and offers the sword to me hilt first.

"My lord, the burden is too much. The Choir harmonizes in agony. Return to us, the Heavenly Pitch."

"What? Who the fuck are you, where the fuck am I?"

"I am your brother, Gabriel. I've taken the Flame in your steed. But the time has come, he will return and you must be with us..."

"Huh?"

"You've been away for so long Samuel. So long that you've forgotten who you are. Take the Flame. Dispatch the Justice and return. You are the Apart. The Vision. The Burden is yours Samuel, I can carry it no longer.

"If you want to remember who you are, take the Flame and dispatch this soul..."

As the Angel says soul his wings move to the side and a young, husky youth is in the field hold a small stick with ten leaves.

"Samuel, lead the human home and return to us."

"This is crazy, I'm fucking dreaming."

I look to the sky, I look to the compass points, I look for an anchor to latch onto anything that doesn't have a naked man with wings trying to give me a sword. What is going on?

"Take the Flame Samuel..."

Ambulance Chase

2009-05-13T17:44:00.003-04:00

Last thing I saw was Deborah standing over me with blood on a pair of scissors. My blood. She stabbed my over me hip and through my liver. Deborah did it hard and fast like a sucker punch. When you get hit in your liver all the toxins it's been scrubbing from your bloodstream suddenly hit you all at once.

So on top of being stabbed, I'm blacked out drunk.

I came to in an Ambulance. There is two paramedics who are staring at me with fear in their eyes. My throat is raw, have I been screaming?

My arms are in cuffs, the leather kind to keep me from flailing around.

The paramedics get over their hesitation and slowly tend to their business, mainly me.

I catch a brief look at myself in some burnished metal. My eyes don't focus that well but I appear to be very very tan. On a good day, I'm paler than the pope's ass. What the fuck is going on?

I drift off to sleep...

Timelines

2009-05-12T11:18:00.004-04:00

I'm in a hospital bed trying to will my body to digest the disgust.

Who the fuck eats tapioca anyway?

What the fuck is tapioca?

My updates have been pretty weird time flow wise. But I'm trying to tell a story, and that shit will happen. You should be more forgiving. Make a better person out of you.

So way back on April 20th I posted that there would be no post because I got stabbed. Well this is true.

All the post that came after was stuff that happened before the 20th.

I was stabbed in my back but deep enough where it punctured some of my organs.

I've been in the hospital since. And I've be relaying the information to you.

All caught up?

Good.

I get discharged later today. Some strange stuff went down when I was laid out.

Peace and chicken grease as they say

Sam

Deborah Pt. 7 Sunday

2009-05-07T12:01:00.000-04:00

I wake up in a bed.

I smell sex.

I am naked.

A cat is looking at me disapprovingly.

My back and knees scream as though they have been locked for hours. I feel dried up and used. I feel dirty.

Last thing I remember is...what? Passing out? Getting shrapnel in Iraq.

No that last thing was a dream. But it seemed so real.

I hear breathing. I look to my left and see a woman wrapped up in a sheet. There is a sheen of sweat on her naked shoulders and back.

Where am I?

Moonlight is coming through a window but a tree branch is attempting to block it.

A branch covers the girl's face.

I fling the covers off of me and discover I'm naked as well. I assume that explains the sex in the air.

Great, first time for sex in a long time and I wasn't even present.

Why did I blackout again?

Last thing I saw...was that camera picture. Me, an African-American. I wouldn't mind except that I until that moment always saw a white guy in pictures and the mirror.

I get out of the bed and bash my knee against a dresser. Somehow I navigate tossed clothing and baby toys and that judgemental cat and make it into the bathroom.

The woman is mumbling on the bed, she is waking up.

"Ricky?"

That was Deborah Conners voice. Ricky is the person she thinks I am, and the person I was in my dream.

I flick on the lights and in the mirror is a black haired white guy. The me I remember. Sam the bartender. Not Sam Conners, not his friend and certainly not Ricky Davidson, the black solider killed in Iraq.

"If you are going to take a shit, light a match. And come back to bed, Ricky, I'm getting cold."

Her purse is just outside the bathroom door, I grab it and look inside for her camera.

I take a picture of myself and I am white in the picture.

This is so weird.

I have to get out of this bedroom.

I turn off the bathroom light and try to walk carefully. My clothes appear to be near the bedroom exit, but that damn branch is making it hard to see.

"Ricky?"

A lamp clicks on.

The woman screams.

I go to calm her down, try to explain.

Just to shut her up for a moment. I picture in her head her confusion. She sleeps with Ricky and wakes up to a naked white guy pinning her down.

She screams rape.

Her arms flail around, clawing at a nightstand.

I feel panic and pity for her.

She rakes her hand down my face.

I feel a sharp pain in my side.

I fall to the floor.

She stands over me with a pair of scissors.

The branch moves and I see blood in the moonlight.

Welcome to the Suck

2009-05-05T17:24:00.003-04:00

I hear a piercing.

My body is not with me, I am behind myself north and to the left. There is dirt everywhere.

My ears and eyes are bleeding. I cannot see more than a foot in front of me, the world is blurred.

There is a hole where the barracks used to be, I try to rise but my bare feet slip in the puddle where Carlos used to be.

My hands are numb, I can't see them. I can feel...loss.

The ringing is abating and screaming is the replacement.

"Everybody stay down!!"

"Fucking Maclin is hit!"

"Medic!"

I hear distant impacts followed by a whooshing sound. Followed by heat.

Slowly my vision returns.

"Jesus Christ, Ricky, stay the fuck still." The voice belongs to Carmichael the overly Christian Medical Officer. He's speaking to me, or rather the bloody mess that was me.

I see my body rolling away from the pain, the fire inside me. I do not see hands, or the top of my head.

I can see a face, the face that was in the camera.

The name on the shirt is Davidson.

The morphine hits, the world becomes still.

"Ricky, can you feel this?" Carmichael begins to poke my body, it's too late the spine is severed.

A big burly Sergeant walks over to us. "Carmichael go help Juarez, you can't do anything more."

Carmichael lowers his gaze in shame, he squeezes my shoulder softly.

"Ricky, can you hear me?" The Sarge asks with compassion. This is the guy that would make me do pushups underneath a bayonet to get my ass down.

I mumble something, I'm having trouble doing anything but sob.

"It was the goddamn Haji's. Hit us with mortars. I'm sorry son. Is there someone you want me to notify?"

The implication is clear.

I struggle and plead and mentally scream. It's a low hum, a bloody bubble of a reply. A puzzle of vowels and consonants.

It's a name. Stammered and palsied. It is my last words.

"Deborah Conners..."

Deborah Pt. 6: Saturday

2009-04-30T18:43:00.001-04:00

"What do you mean I'm black?" I look down at my hands, they are white. My arms white.

"I've taken some drugs in my day but your black ass must really be soaring right now."

"Do you have some sort of compact or something?"

She looks at me like I'm about to attack her. She digs in her purse and takes out a camera.

"I don't have a compact but I do have this. Smile motherfucker."

Click.

She hands the camera over to me. My hands are shaking almost to the point of palsy.

I look at the viewscreen. The man in the camera is about six feet five. He has dark hair and

dark eyes. His expression is...confusion? Bewilderment?

The man is not me. This man is indeed an African-American. I've never seen him before.

As the possibilites fill my mind, I feel dizzy, then a sharp crack on my head.

Groggily I hear Deborah asking me if I was ok. I'm lying on the ground.

As she kneels over me she seems further away. My vision is growing darker.

"Everything will return to the start...it is almost over" a whisper on the breeze.

Deborah Pt. 5: Saturday

2009-04-29T15:18:00.002-04:00

"You are really starting to freak me out..." Deborah eyes are wide and her arms are crossed. She is scared.

"I'm sorry, let me explain. Um, where to start?" Here we go again. Explaining this situation never gets any easier. "A couple of years ago I came to in an alley. I have amnesia. The bad kind. So I can't remember who I am or where I'm from."

"Yeah right. Dipshit."

"I'm serious, I'm here because somebody came across the name Sam Conners and his missing persons report. They say I look just like him, and I was hoping, somehow some way, I am him. Can you possible understand what it's like being me? I wake up every fucking day and I don't know anything. I had to relearn what the fuck toilet paper is. I just need something, a name, an identity and all the dominoes will fall into place. I have to believe this otherwise I will go crazy. Does this make any sense to you?"

"You ain't making anything but nonsense. What the fuck makes you think that you are my brother?"

"I matched a police profile that sent me to Bethelhem. His old girlfriend said she thought I was a friend of his she's seen around. But then I went to his old bar he hung out in and the bartender said I could be a twin. Then I saw a picture of Sam and it looked just like me. So I went to find the sister, to get some validation."

"Mmmhmmm. Look, Ricky, I don't know what kind of bullshit you are playing at. Last I heard you were supposed to be going to Iraq. Is that what this is? You playing crazy? You scared of fighting for this country?"

"Please, just tell me, am I your brother?"

"No."

"I don't look anything like him?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"How? I look just like him in this picture."

"Look again."

"Why?"

"Because asshole, my brother is white."

"What?"

"You are black, dipshit."

Deborah pt.4: Saturday

2009-04-27T15:13:00.001-04:00

Deborah Pt. 3 Saturday

"This may sound weird, but what's my full name, Deborah?"

"Fucking Retard." She laughs and snarls smoke out of her mouth.

"Seriously, humor me."

"Ricky Davidson."

It just hangs out there. Growing and mutating. A snapping snarling bastard, eating calm and harvesting discord.

A name only.

Two words, that don't even smack of originality.

A small sentence.

A great divide.

To the police officer in Pittsburgh, I am Sam Conners.

To the jilted ex I'm some friend of Sam Conners.

To the bartender I'm his twin.

To the sister, I'm somebody completely different.

I'm struggling for a throughline. Something to grasp onto. Some dark shore to collapse after beaten by the storm.

Who am I?

Who really is that bastard in the mirror?

Deborah pt 3:Saturday

2009-04-24T06:58:00.002-04:00

I don't know a lot of things. Most of which is my identity.

I know a girl back in Pittsburgh that plays guitar. Once she was setting up in Angels for an acoustic show, before the main crowd got in. She futzed around for a bit, picking up things, plugging things in. She seemed at peace with a myriad of tiny details that made the hobby she loved so very much.

I tend to be inquisitive and fascinated with process of things. You get to be that way when everything in your life is a fucking mystery.

So I made my way over to her, slowly, non-directly. I didn't want it to be obvious I was checking her out.

She was tuning her guitar. We have bands here all the time and they all had tuners and what not. She was doing it one string at a time and letting it ring out while she turned the machinehead.

She caught me looking at her. "Hi, what's up?"

"I've never seen anybody tune a guitar like that. How does it work."

"I'll show you."

She stood and motioned me over to the stool. She sat me down and gave me the guitar. She pressed it tight against my sternum.

"Now focus your attention at your chest. Can you feel this?"

She plucked a string and I felt a tiny continuous wave of sound hitting my solar plexus. A pulse.

She turned the machinehead back and forth and changed the frequency of the wave. Faster and slower.

"So how do you know when it's in tune?"

She smiled and turned the knob just a tad.

The pulse stopped being an object that was passing through my body. It became my body.

The wave rocked me from my feet to my hair. My body became rhythm.

She saw the surprise in my eyes.

"That's how you know it's in tune."

And that's how the name Sam Conners fucking felt to me. Part of me. A rhythm, a channel for my identity.

Ricky Davidson is not a pulse in time with me.

Ricky Davidson feels wrong.

Deborah pt. 2: Saturday

2009-04-23T18:59:00.000-04:00

"Are you Deborah Conners?" I repeated the question as clearly as possible.

"My dick, you fucking cut my dick!" It looks really painful. She squeezed him so hard her nails dug into the flesh.

"Shut the Fuck up Johnny. You," she points at me, "outside, now."

I do what she says. You never argue with a woman during her emasculation of another man. Never.

The weather is turning colder outside. My breath comes in clouds. The two bars I've been around are right near a riverbank and a slow night fog is starting to roll in.

The door bursts open and Johnny stumbles out. She follows slowly, calmly pulling a tissue out of her purse.

She eyes me up and down like a predator and she cleans the blood and cum off of her hand.

"Follow me."

We walk down an alleyway between the two bars and end up on a walking path that Mick had told me used to be an old coal train track that the city paved over. Supposed to be cool exercise trail for Morgantown, instead it became a homeless and hooker mecca.

We walk in silence. Deborah lights a cigarette and walks ahead of me a few steps. She constantly looks over her shoulder.

"So, Ricky? Why do you honor me with your prescence after all this time?"

I stop dead. "What did you call me?"

"What are you high? I called you Ricky. That is your fucking name? Dipshit."

I find it difficult to breathe, to think, to feel anything other than panic.

"I swear, you can be such a dumbass."

"This may sound weird, but what's my full name, Deborah?"

"Fucking Retard." She laughs and snarls smoke out of her mouth.

"Seriously, humor me."

"Ricky Davidson."

Deborah pt 1: Saturday

2009-04-22T18:29:00.001-04:00

I've been in and out of the one bar in town everybody who knows this bitch is telling me to go to. No fucking dice.

Disappointment tempered by the start of epic alcoholism.

I don't know why I stay and wait.

I don't know.

Tonight there's a couple of bands playing on this weird porch like grandstand that's inside the bar. Complete with railing. Decent enough music but nothing to get my dick up.

I'm sitting in the rear of the bar, sipping on some beer when the bartender, Mick, shouts at me.

"Hey, Sam, there went Deborah."

I turn in the direction he pointed, I saw a fleeting image of a redhead rush out of the bar on the arm of some skeevy looking hillbilly.

I thank Mick and rush after her. I see her enter into a bar across the street, The Irish Way.

It's empty except for a few couples.

Deborah is in the back with her "beau."

She's giving him a pretty blatant handjob.

"What are you staring at faggot?" She's noticed me looking.

"You Deborah Conners?"

Her eyes flash with rage and the hillbilly screams.

No Post Today

2009-04-20T18:55:00.002-04:00

No posts toady.

i'm in a hospitale

fcukin bicth stabbed me

Elias

2009-04-17T18:13:00.002-04:00

I've been down in West Virginia for most of a week now and still haven't found that woman. I think my liver is about to explode.

I spend my days walking up and down the main thoroughfare of Morgantown. It's not a big town, quaint I suppose is the word.

There's only about 30,000 people here and 70% of them are college kids. So, in short, it's full of assholes.

There's a poolhall underneath a renovated theatre called the Met. It's at the bottom of this long narrow staircase. And it's as cliche and wonderful as a poolhall could ever be. I fell in love.

An older woman is always posted at the 50's era cash register. Behind her is the low hum of four beverage displays full of cheap American beer. For a quarter you can buy some Doritos.

The tables are old and lopsided. The sticks are bent. The sitting is ratty, reclaimed theatre seats. It is in every possible sense of the word perfect. This is a kingdom of American hopeful abandon.

It's king is Elias.

He's not from around here, at least that's what the old timers say. He showed up a couple of days before I did and set up shop at table number fucking one. When he is not playing he leans against the wall with his elbow resting on the chest high ledge, installed only for beer and cigarettes.

He is a dark black man, large in every sense of the word. He has a scar from the back of his bald head running through his milky left eye and ending in his lip, giving him a look between Elvis and a harelip.

I tried to play against him a few times but he's just too good. A hustler.

The only thing he's ever said to me was, "Figuered you be coming around, but I'm waiting for another."

He eyes me like I'm a meal. He makes me very nervous.

I think I like him though

Morgantown, West Virginia

2009-04-16T11:44:00.002-04:00

The Brew Pub is a small dingy, damp smelling bar that has a swampy river as a back yard.

The place is dead at noon but pack with wall to wall college kids at night. The popularity of this spot is a combination of the fact they brew their own beer and it's the one bar in town where you have to be 21 to get in. Every other bar apparently allows 18 year olds to drink so not having so many freshman around is a pleasure.

I showed up around 2.oo pm. The lunch crowd was in but it's a little early for the hard core drunks. I ordered a sandwhich and a pint of Appalachian Ale. The beer was fantastic, refreshing with a horribly bitter bite. I'm going to have to talk to Logan about trucking it in.

Ever since I talked to Sergeant Rosenbaum I've been on this roller coaster of hopeful disappointment and I really hadn't the time to comtemplate what it is I've learned.

The Pennsylvania Police Department unofficially believes I meet the profile of a five year old missing persons report.

The former girlfriend of said missing person says I look nothing like him.

The bartender where this guy hung out thinks I'm his brother. And he gave me a picture that shows me, well...me or at least a twin.

And now I'm in a shitty little college town in West by God Virginia looking for his/my sister.

I never even called in sick at work.

I asked around the Brew Pub and they said the sister comes in after work.

So I have nothing to do but try some more of that delicious beer. I ordered a tall Blackwater Stout and looked out over the muddy river...

The Manger, Bethlehem

2009-04-15T12:28:00.003-04:00

After leaving Naomi's I headed towards that bar she mentioned, The Manger. She said that the night before Sam Conners disappeared he was talking to somebody dressed in black.

I walked through the door and I was home. The Manger looked almost exactly like Angel's back in Pittsburgh.

Complete with the unwashed noontime masses.

I sat at the bar and signaled the bar tender. When he saw me his face goes white. He turned to the mirror behind the bar that is covered with snapshots. He found a particular picture and goes even whiter.

He walked towards me as though he trudged through glass and lava.

"C-can I help you?"

"Yeah get me a beer."

"No problem."

His entire body relaxed as though a huge weight had been lifted. When he came back he avoided eye contact.

"Thanks, hey, I was wondering if you could help me?" The bartender stiffened up. Something strange was going on.

"What'cha need, friend?"

"I'm looking for someone..."

"Who's that?"

"Sam Conners."

Ever see an old western, when the Stranger comes in and says one name and everything just stops. The music, the laughing, everything just hangs on that breath.

I quite suddenly had many sets of eyes on me.

"Why are you asking about Sam Conners?"

"I heard he hung around here a lot. In fact I was told he was here the night before he disappeared."

"Are you a cop or something?"

"No, just a...friend."

"Well if you are a friend of his, you ain't real close. Sam's been gone for five years."

"I know, I talked to Naomi Rose before I came here."

"Well, that bitch ain't all there." He scoffed and started cleaning a glass.

I was losing his interest, they weren't going to tell me shit. "Well, if he hung around here a lot, I see you have a ton of pictures on the mirror, any of him?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"What was that picture you looked at when I first sat down?"

"None of your fucking business." He moved down the bar away from me.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fifty. "What do I owe you for the beer?"

"Three seventy-five."

I waved the bill in the air, he relunctantly grabbed it. I tell him to keep the change.

He stood for a moment, as if his next movement was the most important thing in the world. The bartender turned and grabbed the picture he was looking at earlier.

"Here, this is the only picture I have of Sam. Though if you really wanted a picture that bad you could have saved us all time and looked in the mirror. You two could be twins."

I looked at the picture. I looked into the mirror. It was me, but something was different. I wasn't Sam Conners, but I had to be a brother.

"Why didn't you give this picture to the police? His sister put in a missing persons report but didn't have a picture..."

"Sam's sister is a bitch. She drives up here all the time for some ectasy and oxycotin. No one took her seriously. Sam had a habit of disappearing from time to time."

"Where is she now?"

"Morgantown down in West Virginia. Some place called the Brew Pub is where she drinks every night."

Publicity

2009-04-14T18:54:00.001-04:00

I'm hungover in Morgantown right now.

Rog is a big geek piece of shit. He said that trailers are all the rage when promoting your blog. So he and some other dick in California, conspired to make an overly dramatic commerical thing for this ugly, blog.

Dreaming Awake

2009-04-13T15:05:00.002-04:00

A while back I had this dream.

I got a call from Clover earlier today. Some guy that comes into the bar every once in a while, usally with Michigan was shot in a gas station robbery last night.

I didn't get why she was calling me until I saw the news report later.

That guy, Charlie Bunk, was the dude from my dream.

They showed the security camera footage and there he fucking was in grainy black and white. Huddled against the chips and tic tacs to the immediate right of the door was a small dude fumbling in his pockets.

After thirty seconds or so, I walk in.

What in the name of puberty Christ?

Last night I was in West Virginia. The television is reporting Murder in Lebanaon, PA. That's like 250 miles away. Check for yourself.

I watch myself on tv and I look into the security camera square. After a beat I turn and brush my hand against Charlie Bunk's jacket. I exit and a minute later Bunk draws on the clerk who got to a shotgun quicker.

Bunk is shot dead from a slug to the heart.

That's it, I'm off the Nyquil.

Dreams

2009-04-10T17:27:00.001-04:00

When traveling in the Keystone state I suggest you scout out your accomodations before hand. Just hoping an affordable room in Western PA will miraculously open up and be...what's that word...clean, well that just isn't going to fucking happen bucko.

I couldn't get to sleep last night to save my fucking life.

The mattress was lumpy, the pillow smelled like dry...fluids.

The god damn air conditioner/heater made a thumping sound all fucking night and the lack of a comfortable tempature made Gobi Desert in my nose.

But, Son of a Bitch Mitch taught me the secret to insomnia...Robotussin and Old Grandad.

I woke up in the air, singing a sad song, a culling song. The wind is my hair and divides it. A thermal current comes up and allows me to rise on my outstretched wings.

Tonight is the Exodus, and I am Mavet.

He will deliver you and I will destroy.

Mavet and Avaddon

Malach ha Mavet

The streets are rivers and mountains walls. I swoop into alleys and leave tears.

I am The Instrument.

I wake up on the floor. One leg still in the bed. My fucking nose is bleeding.

Mitch is an asshole.

Naomi Rose

2009-04-09T17:06:00.003-04:00

She's around five ten and full of anger. Her lower lip basically chapped in front of me. Her shoulders were hunched and her spine contracted as though she's about to leap right through me.

She is beautiful.

She was going to kill me.

"I'm sorry miss, I just thought..."

"Thought what asshole? You show up with a message from some prick that left five years ago and think I'd invite you in for some cake? My kid is inside the house and you want to come down here and make her go through this shit again?"

Until this point the man had been silent, "Honey, maybe we should call the police."

"Fuck the police, Carl. Get your ass inside, I have nothing to fear from this limp dick cracker. Do I?"

"No...just let me explain..." God, let me explain lady.

"You got five minutes and then I'm going to go in the house and get a gun, and shoot you in your ugly face?"

"Fair enough."

"Clock is ticking..."

Where to begin? Apparently, I'm not Sam Conners, but maybe a friend?

"Do you know who I am?"

"No, other than some skinny ass white guy talking about bullshit from the grave."

"What do you mean grave? Is Sam dead?"

"Shit, I don't know." The tension was broken and she sat down on the porch. "Sam just disappeared. No note, no fight, nothing, just poof and he was gone. I had some friends that said they thought they saw him here or there but no real proof."

"So, this is hard to ask without sounding crazy, I'm not Sam Conners am I?"

"What?

"I have this problem, amnesia. I came down here because I don't know who I am and I just....I guess I was hoping I could fill in some of the margins."

"I'm really sorry for you, but you don't look anything like him. Not that I could prove it. How does a man get to be thirty with out a single picture? I tried getting him to call his family but they were all gone. All he had was the one bitch of sister and she had so many drugs in her, I'm not even sure she knew what she looked like."

"So he just disappeared?"

"He used to hang out at this bar in town called the Manger. The night before he left somebody told me he was talking to a man dressed all in black. They were arguing about some sort of debt. In the morning he was gone and that other guy was gone too."

"Any theories?"

"I don't know the mob? I just told him the week before I was pregnant, so I just assumed he couldn't hack it and split town."

"Well I apologize for bothering you ma'am."

"I'm sorry for yelling at you, I wasn't very ladylike, just a sort spot you know?" A chill wind picked up and we both shivered. "I wish I could help you more, what was your name?"

I snort, "uh...Sam."

"You don't sound sure."

"I'm not really, especially after today. Well I'm not going to waste any more of your time. Thank you again Miss Rose."

I walked a little slower to the car than I had left it.

I drove off. When I looked in the rear view mirror I saw Naomi staring off into the Heavens.

Blessing of the Sun

2009-04-08T12:27:00.005-04:00

It was cold this morning. The fog coiled and filled every crevice of the town, probably the world. My vision is blocked, and my breath is heavy.

Air has become a device.

Every element was trying to tell me to turn, don't go.

Every sense a warning.

My feet were concrete walking up those front stairs. My face was covered in sweat on this cold frigid morning. My hands were palsied, cracking like oak after a frost.

Oddly, my mind was blank. But than again that's the norm for me.

Three smalls steps up to the porch and the front door. Three small steps. Those steps have become my Everest.

As I was standing like a pervert with one leg hovering over the first step, my cell phone rang.

Who the hell would call me at 7.00 in the morning?

Also, you might ask yourself, why would I be going to this house this early in the morning? Because I scouted it out yesterday and around 7.15 is when the people inside go to work. Stop interrupting me, it's fucking rude.

So anyway, my phone was ringing...

The caller ID said Rabbi.

"Uh hello?"

"Sam, Sam my boy this is Rabbi Levi."

"Yes, I know, what can I do for you?"

"I tried to find you last night but you weren't at the bar. Something is going on this morning that I thought you might want to take part in."

"Can you call me later, I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"Actually no, it might be too late already. Just look toward the sun and repeat after me. Baruch atah Adonai eloheynu melech ha olam oseh ma aseh b'reshit."

I repeat the words looking into the newly risen sun. Something began to flicker in my peripheral vision. When I looked directly towards the whatever it disappeared, when I returned to the light it came back.

He said one word at a time allowing pauses for me to repeat. Towards the end of the sentence I heard another voice louder, more persistent, but still yet just a whisper, "Everything will return to start....It is almost time."

When I said aseh b'reshit the flicker seemed to become solid and was a hazy outline of a man with wings.

"My boy, my boy that was the Brikat Hachama, the Blessing of the Sun. Did you recognize it?"

"A little."

"Every twenty eight years the sun returns to it's exact position the day Adonai made the world. Only every twenty eight years, I didn't want you to miss it."

"Thanks, Rabbi...uh...did you say anything else while doing that blessing?"

"No. I have to go my boy, Pesach is tonight and all. Next year in Jerusalem."

My vision was spotty due to the sun and I sort of drifted off in my thoughts.

When I finally returned my gaze to the house, there was a woman and man staring at me.

"Can I help you...sir?" She looked apprehensive as though she was debating helping me or calling the cops.

"Are you Naomi Rose?"

"Yes, how do you know my name?"

"I'm Sam...Sam Conners?" My voice rising at the end.

"The hell you are, that motherfucker didn't look anything like you and if you know that prick and are trying to pull some kind of joke on me, then you and your boy can both go fuck yourselves. You and your mother."