The Sound and the Anxiety

In the back of his mind Michael didn't like the way they were looking at him.  As he moved through the crowd he noticed the strange stares that everyone kept putting his way but he kept upon his own face a faint passing grin that did not give away his disdain for the crowd.  In this way he was safe to pass judgement without retaliation from the unsuspecting crowd.  The band was playing loudly and chaotically but Michael did not notice.  His arms were set forward with little indication that he was judging with his peripherals.   His B line was slightly blocked by the the people jumping and nodding to the junk of blaring amps that emitted the screeching of guitars that were barely played properly.  At times he turned sideways, at times his arms were plugged in tightly at his side at others he felt like his arms were wings and he was prepared to flap them up and down in order to fly away.  His mind was heavy with thoughts that were only hammered by the vocals that clawed out of the speakers.  The lead singer was screaming a throaty type of guttural noise and if he cared to Michael may have been able to discern actual words but it all sounded like an animal dying or killing he figured it didn't matter which one.

It took some time but eventually Michael reached the other side of sweating crowd.   The mists and fountains of body odor had landed at him in various degrees and he desperately wanted to shower.   He felt suffocated. He felt unclean and smothered in spit.  It was a reproachable sort of event, but he had endured as much of it as he could.   In his head the thoughts stabbed at his worries with meticulous malice.  The people with clenched fists and mouths open to scream out lyrics with the audacity of a predator animal.  It felt angry and ready for violence.   It never usually came to that, and Michael of course knew that some of his thoughts bordered on ridiculous but he couldn't help but feel that fear and anger permeated the event.  He stood alone against the wall in the back and he folded his arms, wanting to make no sign that he was enjoying himself.  If he looked like he were having fun they may see him and force him into the center of their mass hysteria.  If he kept his arms folded, and his eyes to the floor and if he looked bored no one would suspect that he was terrified and unable to breathe properly.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his smart phone.  He flipped up his lock icon and opened up his text messages.  I'm here where are you? It was the last message sent and that had been forty five minutes ago.  The name above said Heather and he was beginning to think she had lied to him.  She had said she was going to be here no matter what, and he had wasted the money to get in for no reason.  He wasn't here for the music, he was there to spend time with her.  It had happened before.  The two had met up to go to a concert and he hated the music but he enjoyed watching Heather having fun and in turn he pretended to be into it and in his way he began to enjoy himself.

Michael stuffed the phone back into his pocket and there was a brief pause as the band adjusted their instruments for the next song which he figured would sound nothing different than what they had just played.  The noise pollution was slowly killing him the way smog destroyed the ozone.   All of these peoples minds were being poisoned by the posers on the stage pretending to be muscicians but really just being good looking trend setters.  The type of people that influenced the masses because they were brave enough to be stupid or different.  They defied conventions and somehow Michael thought flabbergasted that this defiance granted them elevation to artist.  He wanted to throw a couple trash cans and a soup pot together with a wooden spoon and make millions of dollars by making noise.   The people ate it up though, poison or not, knowingly or not they bit into the apple defiant to its rot.

The phone vibrated in his pocket.  Almost there,  her text messages black letters informed him.   It was going to be okay in a few moments.  He began typing back and sent the message: I'm in the back.  He felt that maybe it sounded to blunt so he typed in the appropriate characters and sent a smiling emoji.  He studied the message for a second and then clicked off screen and looked around the room again.  The room began to get brighter, and he nodded his head and tapped his foot.   In truth nothing had changed, but only hope that it might and it seemed for Michael that was enough.

Artificial Sweetner

Powered by his artificial heart
Taking small steps with his natural legs
Demanding in not so many words
To be allowed to live as he need be
The artificial heart functioned as the norm
It pumped his blood clearly
It pumped a steady flow
When he announced his fabrication
The people took steps back
They gathered up torches
They gathered up pitchforks
He was burned and he was prodded
Shooed on like cattle
And the people were satisfied
Powered by his artificial heart
He took a moment to gather his thoughts
Demoralized and distraught
He lived amongst the alley trash cans
Sipping out of drainage pipes
The artificial heart was laced with poisons
The artificial heart was laced with bacteria's
And the man slowly died
The people moved in closer
They gathered up his arms
They gathered up his legs
He was carried and he was laid
Like a victim upon the gurney
And the people were satisfied
Powered by his artificial heart
He took a small and labored breaths
His body demanding him to live 
To gather up the strength to soldier on
Then the hushed voices of nurses
The calming pressure of a smooth palm
Placed delicately upon his forehead
They gathered up their bibles
They gathered up their confirmations
He was laid to rest in the solid earth
And the people are satisfied

Any Ending Will Do - A Short Story.

Warren kept his hands close to the his face in hopes that the blood wouldn't flow too loosely down his chin.  It instead climbed over his fingers - even those spaces tightly locked - that it flowed anyways upon the forest floor.  He hadn't expected the gunshot.  Just moments ago he had been strolling in front of his wife Isabella and hadn't really felt the need for concerns that she might be conspiring to end his life.   They had been happily married for several months in a beautiful and ideal ceremony.  These thoughts and panic were permeating his thoughts.  The blood was cold on his hand and he could feel air passing through the hole in his cheek.  It was meant to be a kill shot.  The terror had spun him in circles, the click and blast of the powder had disoriented his direction.  He turned back about to her general direction and Isabella looked dire.  The pistol had but one shot and she stood still with her arm extended to brandish the pistol at his face.

Never had he seen her so terrifying.

"How am I alive?"  He mumbled out loud though he had meant to only think it.  She clicked in the trigger of the pistol and that was all that happened.  Her face was frantic and savage.   "How am I not dead?"  He asked.

She shrugged as she lowered her arm and the pistol landed among the foliage underfoot.  It was now such a useless thing - a dead weight.  The mortification on her face was not befitting her youth and beauty, and Warren thought of his first wife who had attempted to smother him late at night with a pillow.   He wasn't a terrible man as all of that he was certain.

"Why?"  He asked her.  He felt an anger in his bones, and he could swear he heard them rattling.   He dropped his hand and the air passed freely into his face and it stung.  He winced, and it made his blood boil more.  "Why would you do this my love?

"Why wouldn't I?"  She responded.  She had been wearing a rather frumpy dress and it had been her idea to come out into the woods after the gala and the full moon had provided enough light that they mine as well have been conversing under the luminescence of a dying candle.  The dress sat around her in bunches as she collapsed among the leaves and just before her pistol - which was his pistol as he noted its silver handle and an engraving of a lions head that he had requested for his birthday present.

He stormed toward her  wanting to both choke her and to hug her.  It was an odd feeling, and that was the problem Warren was having.  He loved Isabella dearly.  She had taken great care of his children from his previous marriage and was calm and direct when she spoke to him.  She lived in squalor and each time the carriage dropped her off at that shack of a house Warren had felt it his duty to rescue the damsel in distress.

He shook her by her shoulders the blood drying into dark splotches on his neck elevated by pooling mounds.   "Why would you do this to me Isabella?  Why would you wish to dispatch me from this world?"  It was not fair to Warren that she should be so ungrateful to him for he had rescued her.   Her father had beamed with confidence and respect when he had agreed to allow his only child to be married off to some one as well to do as he, and yet she was ungrateful for her father's sacrifice.   She mocked the arrangement and meant to cause her father more anguish than was necessary.

"To hell with you."  She said in quaint sobs.   There was something in the way she cried that crushed him.  He had done something needlessly wrong.  This was somehow blamed upon a shortcoming of his own.   He had sent his first wife away to the asylum, and was free of those bonds, but she had meant to smother him out of her mental illness.  It was not something he had done, but as far as he could tell Isabella was of sound mind.  He hugged her tightly and she sobbed harder.

"I will fix this my dear."  He felt his gray beard scratching against the youthful flesh of her neck and she cried louder.  The pain she must be feeling, the regretful anguish she was feeling at that moment it was breaking his heart.  That he had somehow pushed her into this, how such a young and beautiful thing should be so distraught into an act of violence, "I'm so sorry.  I will fix this."

He pulled his head away to look into her eyes.  Some of the blood had smeared up on her own cheek and stuck there like pulled apart paint.  He attempted to smile his reassurance but the wound stung when the muscles moved and he simply smirked instead.   "I will call upon the doctor to examine you.  They have methods you know.  To help the mind."

The make up on her face was running down like blood.  And the black of her mascara pooled and mixed in layers with the red.   She looked disastrous and apologetic.  "Yes, yes, that is good.  Send me to the hospital.  They will save me.  I am a mess.  I am a  monster."

Warren struggled up to his feet.  His knees cracked as they bent and he shook as though he were going to loose his footing.  She quickly rose up to him, and helped him stand.  She sniffled back some drooping snot, and chuckled, "Oh how silly this was of me."  She admitted.  "Please send me to see the doctors.  They will cure this madness out of me."

The pistol laid in the brush, silent and content that its purpose was done.