Walking In.

I’m standing outside, several strangers and I huddled around this white door and no one’s ringing the doorbell and I need to go inside but I don’t want to go inside because I don’t like the guy inside somewhere, the one I’m here to, ahem, visit. My arm is stretched and my finger pointing but before it makes contact with the doorbell button some girl with bleach blonde hair and a drunken slur opens the door, scaring everyone on the porch who want to go in but don’t really want to go in. There are things I could tell her but I know she wouldn’t listen.

I hesitate but someone behind me pushes someone else who forces me forward. I go in and pass a collage of faces, many of which are interchangeable in my mind for the walking clichés people expect at parties like this: the E-tripping raver without the rave, the drunk blonde wearing her clothes painfully small, some guy smashing beer cans into his friend’s forehead in front of a television playing Wizard of Oz, probably because someone hours ago wanted to see if it could sync up to Dark Side of the Moon even though Pink Floyd swears it’s unintentional. At least I hope I don’t personally know anyone here, but I’m not stopping to find out. I’m moving through shadows and ignoring everything in them. Someone suddenly blocks my way and tries to hand me a bowl of something. I throw my arms up like I’m being mugged but keep walking, leaving them in the sea behind me.

I’m crossing the kitchen floor and it click clicks under my shoes, reminding me of junior high school hallways and the awkwardness of bathroom breaks in the middle of class. There’s a bedroom in the back and I can smell it before I can find the door. The guy I came here to see is standing in the doorway, watching two girls twenty years his junior take turns snorting lines on a futon turned bed. He’s sweating profusely and the sour stench coming off him makes me want to gag.

“You want a dime?” He’s asking me without taking his eyes off the pair who could be his daughters. It’s about the drug I’m here to collect and for a second I don’t hear him because I’m too busy wondering how I ended up here in the first place. I didn’t even get a chance to ring the doorbell on my own. Where, again, was my choice?

Grinch.

Christmas at Walmart. Yay. I was there today and I noticed an abundance of people being entirely shitty to one another. Like shopping at Christmas already makes people snap at each other, but being in Walmart draws that feeling out to the nth degree and then takes kerosene and a match--make that a blowtorch--to it.

And when you aren't running into people being ho-ho-hateful to each other up and down the aisles, you're passing someone on a cell phone calling someone else in a huff, sarcasm spewing forth, muttering, "Hey, what did what's-her-name want for Christmas? Oh yeah?! Well I'm here and I need to get something because I'm not going back out, dammit! I don't care what it is, just tell me something to get!!!" Talk about the spirit of giving...more like the spirit of not giving a shit. Are we all just saving face? Has Christmas become a hollow gesture which amounts to a little more than keeping up appearances for the sake of the season?

Then, of course, there's the Black Friday horror story. Some young clerk at a Walmart got trampled and killed when he went to open up the doors the day after Thanksgiving. He was a temp even, hired specifically to work the event! And an eight-month pregnant lady in the crowd lost her baby in the madness. I say madness because two people died and when the officials at Walmart tried to go through and kick everyone out to close the store down and oh, I don't know, investigate a freaking MURDER, people got angry because they stood in line, dammit, and Walmart owed them a discounted flat screen!!

I remember one year I worked at Toys-R-Us and I about wanted to slit my own wrists by the time I quit. People would bring in their young children and do Christmas shopping for other family members, then not buy their own child anything. Recipe for disaster much? Then they'd get really pissed off at their kid for crying or throwing a fit because he or she wasn't getting a toy. What the HELL do you expect? Your six-year-old isn't the paragon of self-control! You can't pull a little child into the Heaven on Earth of Toydom and somehow expect them to keep it together when you buy all kinds of crap for everyone and don't get them one measly little toy. Uh, duh.

Anyway, some lady actually bit another lady's hand to get the last Barbie from her. She BIT her. Hard enough to draw blood. Forget entirely that we live in a society where biting someone can give you a disease, but for Christ's sake (pun intended), WHAT THE HELL? Who wants to give their kid a gift they had to physically assault someone else to get? "Here sweetie! I know how much you wanted this Barbie. Be careful though, there might be a little AIDS on it..." That chick was arrested, by the way. Can you imagine having to tell your child you got arrested for that? Has everyone lost their damn minds???

If there is anything religious or spiritual or good still tied to this holiday, someone (many someones) has (have) apparently forgotten it. The point isn't buying shit and making sure everyone gets some shit so they'll STFU. At least, that's not what I thought the point was...

And when I went to check out at the grocery store (not Walmart), I noticed myself getting snappy with my husband, too. Perhaps it was the general tension in the air finally osmosing into my bones. After that, we had to make a pact with each other to be respectful no matter how annoyed we got. Who has to make promises like that when they do something so simple as go to a store in December?

We haven't just lost sight of what is important; we've replaced it with something so terribly unimportant, all it can do is piss us all off.

So about 92.6 percent of my shopping this year was done online...come to think of it, this is probably why a lot of things can now be done online--ordering pizza, refilling prescriptions, getting photo prints made--so we can remove the 'dealing with other people' part of the equation. Pretty soon we won't have to make physical contact with anyone else ever. I can't decide if I'm sad about the way things are headed in our society or not, truthfully. Thank God's brother Bob we don't slather any other holidays with our putrid "spirit of giving"...

My father hasn't celebrated Christmas for about six years now. I used to think he was some kind of Grinch. It hurts me to say this, but today I think I finally understood him.

The Beam.

I had the most unusual dream last night, and I woke up feeling ashamed that I was in it. (Don't you hate it when that happens?)

I lived in this self-contained tower--an entire self-contained society inside a large skyscraper type building. Near the apex, beginning on the 84th floor (yes, 84th!) were special penthouse floors where all the snooty rich assholes living in this tower resided. Just below the 84th down to the 64th were hospital floors, and that's where all the rich people worked. The hierarchy just worked backwards from there, with the poor dredges working on the bottom-most floors (closest to the actual ground, the actual world...ironic, no?)

Anyway, these smarmy people lived in what was called the "beam"...that denoted all floors above 84. That part of the building formed what, I swear to God, looked like a gleaming white douche nozzle. The Beamers (yes, like the freakin' BMW even) were so bored with the monotony of life and living inside a self-contained tower society that pretty much owned, so they found ways to do really awful things to all the other people residing inside the tower on all levels...playing with life and death. Evil things. Horrible things. I guess you could call my dream a nightmare, really.

I lived in the beam, and I was trying to kill some other chick who lived there because we were in love with the same man. How petty can it get? She was trying to kill me too. So that was our existence...trying to kill each other inside of a beam shooting straight up to heaven.

To bad we were all going to burn in hell.

Then I woke up.

Watch the Pretty Flowers.

(Something from before but recently updated...thought this would be a good place for it. © Melissa Melton '08)

It's all about watching the flowers for now.

From here, I cannot see them yet. The alarm clock's incessant beeping, signaling my last day in this shitty room just went off and my eyes won’t fully adjust for five minutes yet. I haven’t yet reached the cracked, weatherworn leather chair I sit in from five to five everyday. Not yet. Five more minutes.

I used to hate the daily torture I have inflicted upon myself for so long in that ugly, abused chair. The maid doesn't even bother knocking anymore. The place is a wreck, I know, and the thought makes me smile every time. I take my place in the chair I've come to know so well, still smiling.

Now, near the end, I’ve finally learned to admire the flowers my hotel room window's view affords me. Flowers only ask for sun and rain from the sky and a bee to come along and rub up against their petals every now and then. They don’t want for bigger and better than that. They don’t suddenly uproot and interrupt the pattern and flow of life. They don’t ask for fifty percent of another flower’s stuff and the garden all to themselves to put that stuff in. They don’t suddenly want to grow life-threateningly close to other species of flowers. It takes the whole world to stop turning before a flower’s petal will wilt before its time. Courageous and trustworthy, that’s what flowers are.

Outside the glossy, overdone picture window in front of my thrift store chair, a whole garden of exotic flowers stand strong in their claim for air. When he isn’t out, there isn’t any diversion to take. When I'm free of mind-murdering diversions, I have time to stare at the flowers and blank out the whole disgusting world around me. Roses are my favorite, but not for the reason everyone says roses are their favorite. Roses win what's left of my dying heart because they have both sides: beautiful, majestic softness in red ruby velvet that arcs and dips just so; but underneath those lush petals sprout the thorns, just waiting for thin skin to come and try to pluck. Smaller thorns hurt worse than the bigger, more obvious daggers, but only because the victim doesn’t even realize he’s been cut until he tries to pull his fingers away. Once a rose had been held, it’s the pulling away that makes its captor bleed. I spent so many hours staring through a lens at this man that I deserve to stare at the flowers for a little while longer in peace. The flowers don’t ask for much and they don’t take anything either. I have ten minutes left.

When my wife left me for Bag, at first I was so angry I couldn’t see anything straight for days. Drinking only made the effect worse, so I stopped before I fully opened that Pandora’s Box. These are the times when thinking straight is so much more important than blind anger, but it hurts to focus this hard. Motivation is so much more important than heated revenge. I just have to keep it in the forefront.

I watch them everyday. From five to five, me and the flowers. And them.

It’s funny the details I catch through my lens. Like the sleek scar Bag attempts, badly, to cover with some kind of makeup on his right cheek. The scar is perfect in its own way—almost as if he bought a scar appliqué at a Halloween supply store to build fake character. Too bad his scar isn’t jagged, ugly, and discolored in some shade of plum purple or red, standing out awkwardly against the rest of his faux-tanned skin. I’m sure I could come up with a better nickname for him than Bag if it was. What pisses me off most is the knowledge that his scar wasn’t engraved in anger. It’s too seamless for that. No one tried to hurt Bag on purpose. He probably just had some meaningless accident.

I call the man Bag because he always wears a fanny pack. Never fails to forget it. So far it’s his only flaw. From the way he saunters down the sidewalk, I can tell he honestly believes he is legitimately okay in adorning the brown leather pouch at his waist. I really doubt such a thing can be considered 80s retro, if that is what he’s going for. Fanny packs just do not look right on anybody. Not ever. Not even on country-western city tourists over the age of 70 who never leave the house without a windbreaker and a pair of looming black cataract glasses. There’s no justifiable reason for such a thing. It does not matter if the only item he totes in that pack is a note scribbled with the hotline number of God’s personal assistant or a pack of tissues or a container of aspirin or his house keys and credit cards. Fanny packs are a sign of ignorance, mental decrepitude, and a distaste for society at the very least. Bag has never even opened that stupid ancient waist hugger in all this time as I have watched him, either. But not knowing what’s inside doesn’t bother me at all. Only one question claws at my insides like a rabid animal in the dark: how can she fuck a man who wears a fanny pack?

When Shanna left me, she took everything but some residual carpet lint and the faint scent of her strawberry shampoo with her. If she had a crowbar and one more bad day, she would have been able to get the kitchen sink in with that order too. Luckily, water faucets were not something as close to her heart as scarred, tanned men who wear fanny packs. Either that, or Shanna remembered she will get half of the kitchen sink court ordered to her door in a few months anyway.

At first I was so intimidated by his too tan, well-beyond-chiseled shoulders, I thought to myself that I’d leave me for him to. I could never pull off that $5 paperback romance Latin lover look. I cannot pull off the light leisure suits over ice cream-colored shirts and boat shoes in the fall look. I can't even wear a pair of white pants without spilling something of a spaghetti sauce-red origin on them, rendering them useless for anything other than car wash rags or ghetto Halloween costume pieces. Unfortunately, common grace, even in small doses for men, cannot be purchased at a department store.

As I have watched the roses bloom and die and bloom again from this chair, I wonder if it’s because I could have given Shanna more flowers. I tried to do so many other things, but none of it would please her. I know she knew there weren’t any other, more pressing tasks for me to accomplish. I could have brought her bundles and vases of so many varieties; she never would have even had time to smell them all—to appreciate them all properly. I could have told her I loved her every single day. I would only have been lying half the time.

But it’s a conundrum. I don’t want to let someone else give her the flowers I never did. And she never got close enough to me to appreciate my scent. Or check for thorns.

Like the one I hold now in my lap, loaded, for 12 hours every day. If I hadn’t bought the one with the telescopic lens, I never would have noticed the scar and the fanny pack Bag wears, and in my opinion, it’s just one more reason he needs to die anyway. Maybe he doesn’t deserve death for stealing the woman I only half-loved; maybe he has to die just because…

Ten minutes are up.

Prologue: Working Title Forthcoming.

(This is something I've been turning in my head for a bit now...not sure exactly where I'm going with it past the first two chapters and this prologue. I guess we shall see. © Melissa Melton 2008 like every other random thing on this blog...)

She sits so perfectly still in the frozen grass, snow swirling around her almost in slow motion, somehow never actually finding purchase on her pale skin. It could be midday…it could be much later.

The sun provides light from somewhere entirely hidden, tucked away securely behind a gray wall of clouds, forcing dim rays down at odd angles that wash everything else out against its will. The gray, now almost brooding, threatens to take the scene over if not for the two spots of color too powerful for it to engulf: the lush red velvet of the girl's flowing cape draped like a curtain over the ground around her and the tiny specks of a much darker red dripping from her ashen lips. Her shoulders pitch forward and seem to heave against the wind every now and then, but her sobs make no sound. Only the wind calls, trying to pull the frail bodies of trees along with it as it blows over her small frame, raking through her silver hair, leaving nothing but more misguided snowflakes and urgent silence burning in its wake.

"Why can't I find him?" she suddenly asks aloud, accusing the retreating wind. "What have I done?" Her purring voice trails off into a barely audible whisper.

The wind does not reply; it simply grates over her numb skin again. Her frame trembles slightly as she is met with more disparaging silence between gusts.

Suddenly, I feel it. The fear. It comes on fast, shooting a sick, hot tingle up my spine that explodes at the nape of my neck.

In the trees at the edge of this clearing before us, something watched her. Something waited. Something hungry.

Go! I want to yell at her. Run! I want so badly to scream, to grab her shoulders and snatch her up from the ground if she won't get up on her own, to warn her of the deadly threat stalking her from the dark tree bank less than twenty feet away, but I can't. I'm frozen like the grass, silent like the snow, helpless against the cold wind. Thick sadness clings to the air around her body like an aura. She mumbles something once more about the man she cannot find.

Please, oh please, run, RUN! But she doesn't hear the begging trapped inside my head, caught deep in the prison of my throat.

A sound claws at me, the cavernous low rumble of a growl from somewhere in those trees. I hear a forceful snap, a dead branch breaking under heavy weight…

RunrunrunRUNRUNRUN!!

But she doesn't move an inch. Only the wind and the tiny snowflakes and the waning light in its haphazard descent seem to realize the danger.

And now it's too late.

My screams rake their way up my throat and catch in my mouth as it rips through the trees, coming for her.

This Writing Exercise Scars My Fingertips.

Gist: A room has one large window, from which a nosy neighbor constantly glares. It's the middle of December in Antarctica with temperatures below human living conditions. It's 12:30 in the afternoon on Friday the 13th. These objects are in the room: * jarred porcupine fetus * a mentally challenged left handed gorilla wearing a gold tuxedo * baby's first alphabet book * gateway to another dimension * soap box derby racer WITH windows * Kleenex box with one remaining tissue * a mentally unstable cockeyed hobo who is lonely. He has a "wandering eye"...his good one ***** "God, can't you just tear yourself away from the window for one shiny second, assface? The view hasn't changed in hours since that old lady checked her mail this morning, which wasn't exactly a life-changing event. Aren't your legs getting the least bit tired? That's what you get for nailing your feet to the floor in front of the window, stupid." I hate that guy. I wish he'd leave already, but I guess he can't since it's Antarctica and people can't just go walking around in temperatures that fair below human living conditions. I don't even remember his name, but he's been here since November. Just showed up like that happens all the time in some Antarctica. I'm about to brick over the window just to spite him, but it's the only one in the room and I don't want to be left in the dark with this guy...you know...just in case. Bobo, the mentally challenged left-handed gorilla in the gold tuxedo, tries to hand me another copy of Baby's First Alphabet Book, but I quickly snatch it from his fat, stinky fingers and fling it through the gateway to another dimension in the corner. "A is for assface, assface." I hate that damn book. Where did this gorilla get 2,587 copies of it anyway? Was the Ruin My Life Bookstore having a sale? That's hardly fair to actual babies who suffer from a real yearning to learn the alphabet and who posses the ability to do so, you know... Stupid nosy neighbor. Stupid monkey, literally. I've become so much more sensitive ever since my entire bottom half turned into a hippo. That's what I get for eating all that pie I guess but still. I grit my teeth together until they make an audible noise, torn between wanting more pie regardless and the territorial feeling creeping over me regarding the last tissue in the Kleenex box lying on the coffee table. Oh great. The stupid soap box derby racer just got back. He left his car blocking my driveway, again, not that I could fit into my car now even if I wanted to and I don't have anywhere to go anyway unless I decide to try and locate some more pie like there are so many places to just get pie on a whim in some Antarctica. Anyway, I told him soap box derby cars aren't supposed to have windows, but he doesn't listen. He'll probably steal my tissue, too. Douchebag. The only thing missing from this picture is a mentally unstable cockeyed hobo with a wondering eye and then...Armageddon. That was Bob, but he got lonely and left. I don't blame him. Nothing here but a bunch of gold tuxedo wearing, baby book reading, nosy assholes who put windows on things that aren't supposed to have windows and steal my last tissue. Douchebags, the lot of them. Bobo tries to hand me another copy of Baby's First Alphabet Book. This time I snatch the jarred porcupine fetus off the shelf of random jarred animal fetuses next to my television stand and chuck it at his head. It glances off and bounces across the floor into the gateway to another dimension. Damn. Lost another one. Now I feel sorry for the dimension. I wish with every fiber in my half-hippo being some pie would come out of it. "Hurr Durrrrr!" Shut up, Bobo. Douchebag.