A Place Called Tomorrow, a novel. Rough opening, free write.

One

I’m not exactly sure how I should proceed.  For starters I’m not very fond of admitting to my crimes.  Not that I’ve done anything that would result in any prison time but for the fact that I just don’t like feeling ashamed of myself.   Once you let it all out every one knows, even if you swear your best friend to secrecy and even though you swore you wouldn’t tell him for the very reason that you know it will some how come back to bite you in the ass.   That’s how I feel now.   Sure, I know he knew I was unhappy with Lindsey but the problem now arises that I admitted to a plan to break-up with her.   He’s going to hold me to that.  It’s as I was driving home that the dread hit me.  I mean what if I couldn’t go through with it.  What if I arrived at her doorstep and the words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth, or she kissed me suddenly, or was upset about something and I just couldn’t say it.   I was really hoping that she would be upset or in one of the foul moods she tends to find herself in on more than one occasion.  That would make it easier to bare.   I also promised her that I would never break-up with her on an angry impulse.   I wasn’t going to be one of those guys who got in a fight and used the opportunity to break it off with their long time girlfriend.  That just seemed cold and far to impulsive.  I’d feel bad because I know she would blame herself.   She would constantly beat herself up about it, and she’d beg for my forgiveness.  I didn’t want that.   Yes there was a laundry list of things that bugged the hell out of me about her, but I wasn’t about to let her know that.   It had to kept a secret, I couldn’t let her know that she was bat shit crazy.

While I’m full intent on going directly to her house I take a moment and decide to get gas even though my meter puts me only a centimeter away from full.  I check my phone just in case she’s called me or texted me, and I hadn’t heard about it.   There’s  nothing, and then I find myself typing some words.  I think we should see other people.  Don’t worry I don’t send it, I do gather how that can be a majorly dick move and I’m not really interested in being that guy either.   I delete the message and slide my phone back in my pocket.   A sigh escapes my lips and I truly wish it could really be that easy, but before I can reconsider that stupid idea the gas nozzle stops in my hand to let me know that my car is full.   I return it, and head inside to pay.  

In here I delay even more time.   I ponder between the taste I want in my mouth other than the taste of betrayal.   There’s already a bottle of Coke in my hand, and I look through the mass shelves of chocolate bars, and peanut butter cups.   I decide on an almond joy, but as I head to the counter, I change my mind and take a few steps backwards and turn and place the candy bar back.  I don’t deserve chocolatey coconut goodness right now.  I pay for my gas and my drink and return back to my car.   Again I take an extra moment before turning the keys in the ignition.  The car roars and shakes, and I say a quick prayer hoping that the vehicle will explode  on my before I leave the lot.   Sadly, it does not.

I’m barely on the road a minute when my phone sounds.  I’ve received a text and I’m almost sure it’s from Lindsey.  It’s not though, and my best friend and confidant Dennis writes:  Dump the bitch yet?  I put my phone in my pocket and I shake my head at myself.   This was a stupid idea.   He’s going to pester me now, and when I don’t go through with it he’s going to pester me even more.  That’s what I get for bitching to him all the time.   People do that though right?   They talk about their boyfriends girlfriends behind their backs.  They complain about little things, but it’s just to get if off their chests.  People do that.  I’m sure of it.  Yes, I do want to break-up with her, but just the idea that he’d hold me to it, and torture me about it is just ludicrous.  He’s such an asshole sometimes, and I don’t even know why I’m friends with him.

Then as I drive I start thinking about all the things I liked about Lindsey.  She’s a complete nerd for one.  She knows more about Star Wars than I do.  She plays video games all the time, and loves to go out dancing.   She likes these great indie bands, but really she likes all sorts of music.  I think that’s one of the things I liked about her, she could get me to like music even when I was dead set on not liking it.  She would describe the lyrics to me, or the behind the exodus the singer/song-writers went through to make it.   How the musicians dreamt up the bridge and rememberd it when they woke.  There were these laundry list of things she could describe about her favorite bands that just blew my mind every time.   In the end it also bugged me about her though, but that’s on my end it wasn’t anything she really did, other than being her nerdy self.   There’s more than that but I have a feeling I’ll be thinking on those once I do the deed of destroying her life.   Supposedly I’m her first real boyfriend.

As her first real boyfriend I guess I’m going to be the one to ruin men for her.  I’ll break her heart and she will never be able to forgive our sex for the rest of her life.   I wouldn’t mean for it to happen, but in essence I would become the newly appointed anti-christ to the religion of her mind.   Her thoughts would form sects and these sects would demonize me, and place my face on any body with a penis.  And when she did succumb to a new lover, and he turned out to be an asshole too well then it would all still point back to me.  She  will claim that she should have known, after all Roger Alan did this to me already, I shouldn’t be surprised when what’s his face stomps on my heart.  Wait, that’s not dramatic enough, when what’s his face cuts open my chest, grips my fleshy life force in his hands and pulls it from my chest cavity and then proceeds to stomp on it with steel toed boots until it’s a pile of indiscernible mush upon the concrete earth.   I’m fairly certain that’s how Lindsey would describe it.

She can be a tad over dramatic, but only a little bit.

Marked Graves

A worm at the end of the line,
With the barbed piece of metal pierced through it's belly,
A young boy sitting patiently in a small little row boat,
With a small little cap on his sweaty little head.
The crime has been done,
The line is cast out to the sea,
And now both parties wait patiently.
The worm is afraid,
It jimmy's and jangles,
Trying to loosen itself,
Trying all angles,
It hollers at itself,
And itself hollers right back,
Panicked and alone,
With a gaping hole through its abdomen,
Awaiting its soul to be sent,
To a far off plane,
A temporal distortion,
But first waiting to be digested,
First swallowed,
First marked,
Here comes the pain,
Here comes the after worst,
Simplistic worm on a hook,
Just so the boy can have a fish to cook,
And the boy takes a sip from a beer that he stole,
And he pulls his coat around him tighter,
The cold air slicing through his skin,
The red bruises of ice cold knives,
A shallow breath floating through air,
Sacrificial worm in the water that he has no care
For, after all it is only a worm,
He has a whole bowl full of more cover in mud,
Sitting there,
With the chill autumn air,
In the middle of nowhere,
No one to pass judgemental stares,
No father to punish him,
No mother to scorn,
No wild bruises on his arms,
On his legs,
Free to catch fish,
Free to sit quietly by,
Free to think on his supposed sins,
Free to drink the pack of alcoholic drinks,
Four empty cans sitting around his feet,
Inside the little row boat in the middle of the sea,
The worm see's it coming,
Only at the last moment,
The big ole' fish mouth open up wide,
And fairly quickly the worm discovers he's died,
And up above the boy finds it out too,
The fish catches him off guard, and he stumbles on in,
And finds a bunch of sharks waiting for some din din.

Granting Wishes

There's  a hole in this soul
A hold on the door
A fabled snake that glides at my sole's
Snapping at my heels,
Trying to crack deals,
Featuring a state of the art hybrid of intelligence and fool hardy ambitions
Decidedly deceptive under the pretense of kind boastfulness
The contradictory nature of the bearded dragon
Spine tingling mysteries set to period music in elevator shafts devoid of floors
There's a way back out
A trapeze artist all tapped down
Figuratively falling through space
To that imagined resting place
God forbidding the drink to be passed,
Sliding through stars on their bare ass,
Incorporating treatments to the festering wounds on the hind legs of chimpanzees
Flipping the cars because they want their bitching voices to be heard
Conducting the last known testament of Jesus Christ in the back alley street deal
As money exchanges hands and the heroin is snorted through the holes in their faces
It's not a common occurrence
It only happens without insurance
And for a small fee the animal control will deal with this out of control
Spraying fire at the masses of festering ants,
Burning the bodies and then excessively burning the ashes,
Tree stumps protruding to trip up his steps,
Sending him barreling to the floor,
Where he'll be consumed by the snakes and the dragons,
Let's pull out the race card,
Let's all pretend to know more,
Let's go to the movies and watch some crap to make us angry
And get in bar fights,
And then let's say we are not from monkeys
Slicing off the hypocrties hypocrisies
Is like accusing another human being of having skin,
While pretending that they don't,
Metaphorical speculation is on a decline after an incline,
But the ramp will send it skiiing out over the vastness of the slopes,
Where the hopes will be scattered about like several gold coins,
But they didn't jump high enough to absorb them in themselves,
As the tables are turned our seats are not moved,
We cry foul,
Even when our cowl,
Won't hide our mistakes.

A Link to My First Novel

http://www.amazon.com/How-to-Disappear-Completely-ebook/dp/B00DTGU3KY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373256403&sr=8-1&keywords=How+to+Disappear+Completely+Aaron+Ponce

Cruelty - A short story

Thomas removed his bike helmet, uncoupling the strap around his chin as the bicycle at his side toppled over unsupported by the kick stand.  His eyes were locked to the sight in front of him as he let loose the helmet from his fingers letting it role down the small embankment at his side to join the bike which was slowly sliding down the sound of loose stones clanking against it in resistance.  One step after another he took forward.  His eyes glued to the sight in front of him, and when the sight arrived at the tips of his toes he knelt down and covered his mouth with his gloved hand.
The cat was dead.   Mangled under the tires of a passer by.  This was not done by an automobile, but clearly the work of a fellow cyclist.   The poor thing looked onward as if hoping for one of it's nine lives would bring it back to the land of the living, and Thomas knew that this wasn't true.  The lifeless body of the cat reminded him of his childhood pet Mr. Tumbles who had wandered into the road when Thomas was eleven.   The puppy was a pure bred German Shepard, and Thomas had brought it outside with him against his father's instruction.  Thomas was convinced he could control the beast, but when a passing dog darted across the intersection alongside Thomas' house there was not much that could be done as the playful puppy gave chase.
A few tears gathered up in the ducts of Thomas' brown eyes and he took the hand that covered his mouth and patted down the fur of the victim.  It's body had been there for quite some time, hard and cold.  Flies had already began swarming around it, no doubt already laying their eggs upon it's corpse in the sweltering summer sun.  Without thinking of disease Thomas lifted the animal into his arms, and made his way down the embankment that his bike and helmet had gone down and he found a soft spot in the earth.   He placed the body down and dug furiously with both hands as he thought upon the numerous people who must have walked by on foot, or road by on their bikes, skates and boards.  The numerous people who saw the corpse of a living thing and left it to be stared at and mocked in the light of a cloudless sky.   He dug quicker scooping out dirt all about him, and when he was satisfied with the depth he placed the victim inside the hole, and covered it.
When he was finished he removed his dirty gloves and laid them atop the sand mound to serve as a marker for the animals grave; after which he retrieved his helmet and walked his bike back up to the bike path.  He didn't have the strength to continue on with the ride that he had barely commenced so he turned back toward his home, and road the few minutes back.  His thoughts continued on, trying to place faces that he'd seen on the pathway, anyone that regularly took the time to exercise or commute through the cemented passage.  There was no one in particular that he figured could do such a thing.  It had to be someone new, someone who purposely murdered an innocent life, a monster fresh to his paradise now polluted with this travesty.   He was becoming bitter, and angry beyond reckoning, and he had to figure out who the assailant was.
Then he thought about the family of the animal, the children who teased it, the parents who fed it, and all who loved it.   It was a young caught, barely an adult.   In his mind's eye he saw its orange striped fur, its little pink nose.   In his mind's eye he saw his poor little puppy through the eye's of his eleven year old self.   He hated the man who had hit him.  An old man grey in what little was left of his hair, wandering eyes full of tears.   The man was heartbroken, the man had said he loved animals, but Thomas couldn't see it, not when his friend was gone, at the hands of the old man.
When he arrived back at his home Thomas didn't kiss his wife or respond to her when she asked why he was back so early, instead he sat at his computer desk.  He had left his helmet on on purpose as he brought up his browser, and he typed in words, and he searched for cat murderer's but nothing came up.  Not in his area.  Surely the person in Florida hadn't made their way to western Michigan to slay a cat on an obscure bike path.  There were cases in neighboring cities as well, but nothing close enough to commit to a connection to his incident.  He pushed himself up violently from his chair, and his wife made a comment, and even hollered after him but Thomas did not care to respond, did not hear her.  His rage was absolute.  The poor animal bewildered at it's sudden demise, the sweet little whiskers never to twitch again.
Then he thought about the humane society, he thought about the unclaimed felines crying and begging in those cages.  Animals that did nothing wrong but only what nature had intended.  He saw the hands pressing in the needle and he saw the sleep take over, and then the nothing.  The stillness.
That was all Thomas could see, and it was poisoning him down to his core.  It frightened him, the stillness, it scared him out of his wits.   The animal probably felt it come over him, probably felt the stillness creep up as it slowly froze.   Like a human being might feel in the final moments, like air being squeezed out of a bag.   Like ice creeping up to consume them.
Outside he walked to the neighbors and pounded on the door.   He demanded they tell him if they knew who had done it.  They told him to screw off, and slammed the door in his face.  To the next house he went, and said the same things.  He had to know the truth, he had to bring justice.  If he didn't do it, who would?  He went on a few more houses, and the answers were still similar.  He tried to restrain his rage, but it was too hot to hide.
Soon he had walked his entire block.   It was then that he decided to return to the path.  As the cellphone in his pants pocket vibrated he didn't bother with it.  He knew it was his wife, and he could not speak to her or show his face to her again until he saw this finished.  When he came to the spot, the sun had come down, and the moon was in it's phase, and he sat down.   In the center of the bike path he sat, staring at the blood stain on the cemented walkway as it was illuminated in moon light.   He nodded off only for a couple hours and as the sun came back up at dawn he rose to his feet.
One commuter came by simply walking, she tried to avoid eye contact with him as he stared her down hoping to see the guilt in her eyes, or in her stance.  He asked a few questions, following her only for a moment, until she relinquished that she didn't know anything about the cat, only that she had seen it on her walk home from work.   He didn't apologize after he was finished with his inquiry he simply returned to his spot.  The next to come were a couple skateboarders, they hurled a couple insults at him, and when he frightened them back grabbing on his friends by the arm forcefully they panicked and hollered that they didn't know what the hell happened to that cat.  And Thomas believed them.
It was a few more after that a lone biker, a boy maybe of seventeen.  Who was walking his bike slowly that Thomas immediately placed the blame.   This of all people had to be him, but when the teen reached the spot, he simple looked around and up at Thomas and said, "Where's my cat?"
"It was yours?"
"Yes."  The boy admitted.
"How did it die?"  Thomas asked.
"I did it.   I had to."  The boy said.
Thomas felt the hairs on his arms stand on edge.  He felt the muscles in his arms tense, he felt the hatred building up inside of him and through his teeth he begged, "Why?"
"I don't know," the boy said, "I just had to."
Before he realized what was happening Thomas had his helmet off from his head, and he smashed it into the boys face.  Teeth fell to the path scattering about their feet, and the boy was falling back smacking the back of his head against the ground.  Thomas wasted no time, and like a rabid dog unable to control it's aggression Thomas brought his helmet down hard, several times.  As only the wrist in the once alive teen's body twitched, Thomas felt a sense of relief come over him as he straightened himself up and returned back home.