The wash of dawn just made the nightmares seem worse, and before he opened his eyes he’d dropped somebody’s throat on a lot of broken glass and stared into the red yawn of their neck.

A woman. When before all his dream adversaries had been men or monsters.

The ceiling was a smudge in the early morning, out of the window the sun was turning the space above the skyline blue like a brush of lavender across a pretty girl’s heavy lids or a cool hand on his brow. The dawn seemed to say, ‘no more sleep for you tonight, but that’s okay, I am here.’

The main avenue near the apartment was empty, just a few men selling roasted chestnuts and circles of bread crusted with sesame seeds. He buys one and a bottle of water, some cigarettes and the bread tastes good mixed with the water and smoke. He exhales long, empties his lungs and expects to see the rest of the black nightmare wash out with his last puff, but daylight has softened the shadows, made them sleepy, even the ones in his heart.

On the other side of the bridge, past a dozen men and birds fishing in the waters far below, three mosques call the faithful. Haunting, that song, beautiful even to a heathen.

“I wonder if I walked inside and whispered please, would you take the dreams away?” He asked the cool morning air, the wailing and lilting song washing around him indistinguishable from the wind.

What did I just say? You people don’t fucking listen.

Sigh.

Five years ago I had to stop boxing because I broke my eye socket for the second time and they installed a little silicon ramp held in place by a screw. My doctor very gently and slowly, because he must think I’m defective for this to be my idea of fun, explained that perhaps I wasn’t designed for this sport and perhaps knitting would be more appropriate. Kinda funny, I literally might have a screw loose, but probably not because every once in a while I jump up and down to see if I can feel anything rattling around in there. So far all is well. A year after that I tore something in my left shoulder and had to give up Brazilian jiujitsu because I couldn’t even lift a glass of water.

Bummer. Ow.

Spent two years trying to rehab the fucking thing with weights and in the process learned the proper way of strength training, learned to squat and deadlift and all that is good and useful about picking heavy shit up off the floor. I still missed fight sports, but I had to make due.

But the shoulder never really got any better and I couldn’t even do a push-up without serious pain that I couldn’t push through.

So shoulder surgery, which was by far the most painful surgery I’ve ever had and I’ve had a few. I’d have preferred to break an eye socket again that go through the pain of rehabbing my shoulder. But I kept going, listened to my physical therapist even though I was chomping at the bit to get back to the iron and one day jiujitsu. Eventually I did and a year after shoulder surgery I worked my way to a 475lb one rep deadlift without any grip aids other than chalk.

In the words of Bill and Ted, excellent. If you don’t get this reference it’s fine, I’ll be shopping for a walker and adult diapers tomorrow.

Then my neck started to hurt. A lot. Okay. Round the clock headaches, pain I couldn’t push through and not sleeping more than two hours at a time without waking up in pain. More physical therapy, a year of being stubborn and finally I make plans to get an MRI.

Four herniated discs in my neck alone.

Bummer. Ow.

Steroid injections, more physical therapy, fired one physical therapist and literally an entire office of doctors before I managed to get somebody used to working with athletes. My physical therapist’s exact words:

“You’re kinda stupid. I can work with that provided you listen.”

Okay. Five months of physical therapy. Five months away from the gym and I can feel my strength flowing away, my manliness diminishing, any minute now I shall buy some skinny jeans, grow an ironic mustache and be slightly effete and oh so cool. I shall pass myself in the mirror and my reflection shall laugh, point and ask:

Now after another five month break I’m working my way back to my previous numbers, but carefully and calmly, understanding now that the world of physical culture is not a series of tests or levels, that it’s a constant stream from birth to death and to treat it as a series of levels to be passed is to treat oneself to the feeling of constant failure, the gym becomes a chore and a goal in the ever-increasing distance. I have found this to be true with writing, with love, with everything that you run across in this thing called life. What you choose to fill your time with, it’s all life and life is to be experienced and enjoyed. This does not mean do not struggle and this does not mean do not fight to achieve.

Fight. Struggle. Work. Challenge yourself. Live.

But I was looking at this all wrong. If I just do this one more thing than all will fall into place. One day I will “get it.” And every day that I didn’t “get it,” was another day in which I had failed myself.

Obviously, it doesn’t work like that. But I need to pound myself against that immovable object until I began to understand this. And I’ll get it wrong again, I’m sure, before they nail me into that pine box. Or shoot my ashes into space strapped to a rocket that has “deez nuts,” written on the side.

I haven’t decided yet.

Make sure that you dare to fail, fail often and fail better. But you never fail yourself. That’s bullshit. Each failure I have broken my teeth against and bled on while I caught my breath has led me to a lesson that I will take to my grave. Or space. I haven’t decided yet.

And I’m probably not saying anything that anybody doesn’t already know if you haven’t picked up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul. That’s why I told you not to read this nonsense. But since you did, I threw in a bunch of swear words because I’m macho as fuck.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog and I can hear the rain on the corrugated metal roof overhead, tiny vibrations like a sound that ran down my lips, caught in my beard like whiskey, each drop a tiny fire I could taste as I licked my lips and stared into my own eyes in the mirror behind the bar. So many hours on this stool, staring into those same eyes muted by the dim light of the bar. I don’t remember what color they are, I can never look in the mirror except in the bar’s dim light through an amber film of whiskey.

But I do remember that this vision isn’t real anymore, that it doesn’t mean what it used to, but is instead a head that I inhabit, a door or a basement hatch in my mind that I swing open against the rusted protest of its hinges and drop down into the dim light when I want to write about you. When I open the boxes that I keep down there and blow the dust off these memories, pieces of things I used to think about that broke during the move from the forfront of my mind. Moved is an exaggeration, a kindness really, I did not wrap these memories of you in last week’s newspaper and tape the box shut so that nothing would shift or shatter, I just tossed them inside and threw them down the stairs.

I wanted to hear them bang and break.

But they remain, these memories now cracked and broken, and I don’t even remember the way this china puzzle used to fit together. They’re better broken, more useful and do you think its strange that I get more out of you now that you’re gone? You’re a resource now, a rich vein of something in a tunnel rife with coal dust and canaries. These days I bring the birds out of the darkness and free them from their cages, I don’t wait for them to stop singing and die so that I know something is wrong, I don’t mine the tunnel anymore, and I’ve since coughed the black from my lungs.

Now even the least amount of dust seems too heavy to waste even a sneeze on, but sometimes I need to remember and to write a thing so I drop into the dim.

Now I leave the canaries up in the sunlight so that I can hear them singing. I’ll follow their voices back up into the light and away from these broken memories.

I’ll follow them out of the tunnel.

“Get the fuck off my doorstep, Jerry.”

“C’mon, Celia, I just wanna see my kid.”

“Maybe you shoulda been here the last nine years of his life then.”

Jerry sighed, crushing his hat even further in his hands, the hat that had languished in a property locker for five-to-ten with good behavior.

“Please, Celia. I know I screwed up. Shit. I screwed up everything. But I’m trying. Here.”

Celia opened the envelope he handed her, an eyebrow arching up to vanish under her bangs. “Where’d you get this money, Jerry?”

“I been out three months already, Celia. I been working. Straight job on the line in my brother’s factory.”

Celia humphed. “Little late for this, Jerry. He’s been doing alright with just me.”

“I ain’t trying to take him, Celia. Just want to know my boy. Please.”

“I got a boyfriend, Jerry.”

“Just here to see my son, Celia. Have ten boyfriends.”

“You calling me a whore?”

“Jesus, Celia. No. Sorry. Look… Please? You think I don’t wish everything was different?”

Celia tapped the envelope against her hand, tongue in her cheek and Jerry recognized her “thinking about it but gonna give in” face, but kept his relief off his expression. A few minutes later the door slammed shut behind a slim, nine-year old boy with light brown hair.

“Hi.” Said Jerry.

“Hi.”

“I’m Jerry.”

“I’m Eliot.”

“I know.”

They stood there looking at each other until the curtain twitched and Jerry realized Celia was watching them. “You like ice cream, Eliot?”

“Sure.”

An hour later they perched on a park bench.

“pistachio? You really like pistachio ice cream?” Jerry asked.

“Sure.” Eliot answered taking a large bite out of the top of the cone.

“So… You already know I’m your dad?”

“Mom says I don’t have to call you that.”

Jerry sighed. “Yeah. She’s right. Just call me Jerry, kid.”

“You were in jail right?”

“Jesus.” Jerry got up, took one last bite of his ice cream and then tossed it in a trashcan. He lit a cigarette and sat back down.

“Can I have one of those?” Eliot asked.

“No.”

“So…?”

“You want to know what I did?”

“Mom wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yeah. I bet. And she’s gonna kill me when she finds out I did.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Kid, I just came from a place full of grown men who couldn’t keep secrets from the police. Think they could even keep shit from their mothers?”

“Please?”

Jerry sucked what felt like half the cigarette down in a single breath.

“I rented out performers to children’s parties. You know? Spiderman, Big Bird, Elmo. Shit like that. Adults in the costumes so the kids could say they met Elmo.”

“That’s stupid.”

“You don’t like Elmo?”

“Elmo sucks. He’s for stupid little kids.”

“Yeah, well let me tell you, adults like Elmo just fine. We didn’t make much money until the girl doing my bookings got an order offering three times per hour that we usually made. Just to send Elmo to some hotel room in Midtown. When the guy got back from the job he wouldn’t say anything. Just laid Elmo’s head on my desk, told me to go fuck myself, and left.”

“You said fuck.”

“Sorry, kid. I been in jail.”

“What happened at the party?”

“Well, it took me a little while to find out. But there’s these folks that really dig the whole plush costume thing. Not kids either. These are all grownups. I did some research on the old internet, changed hiring policies a little, and Captain Squishy’s was born. Best business decision I ever made. You wanna rotisserie chicken Big Bird? Done. Wanna know the truth about Bert and Ernie? We got it. Wanna know what Donald Duck’s speech impediment feels like or make Droopy Dog smile? Don’t even get me started on our Thunder Cats package, kid. And I do mean package. Our best earner, paws down. We even made these plush cupcakes with a little… Well, never mind what the cupcakes were for.”

“What’s rotisserie chicken?”

“Forget it, kid.”

“So, you got put in jail for pimping Elmo?”

“Who taught you that word?”

“Jerry, I’ve got the internet too.”

“Good point, kid.” Jerry looked at his watch, “We should probably start heading back or your mother’s gonna think I kidnapped you.”

“Okay.”

“How was your ice cream?” Jerry asked as he lit another smoke.

“It was good. Can we do this again sometime, dad?”

Jerry flushed down to his collar and felt the prison wall chill that it seemed like he carried away with him start to thaw. “I’d like that, Eliot.”

“Can I have a cigarette?”

“No. Dammit, stop asking.”

“You want me to ask mom what a rotisserie chicken is?”

“Jesus Christ. Now I know you’re my kid. Here. Need a light?”

Truck Full of Imps

“I just got back from Lakeshore Drive. No, not that one, the one in Hell. The Big L’s big new scheme, sell parcels of land down in the Ol’ Dark and Hot to homesteaders now that there’s barely any room topside. Cute idea. Better than some he’s had. Remember the Westboro Baptist Church? Yeah. Even he’s sorry about that. It kinda got away from him. Or so I hear, it’s not like I’ve got the big guy’s ear or anything, much less his attention. Be bad for a man’s health.

So I stopped here for coffee on my run back, you know this diner’s right on the border? Next door to Hell, you’d think they could do something about the coffee, it’s fuckin’ terrible, but I got no choice. This cargo has to be in LA before it starves or gets loose.

What am I hauling? Imps. Whole truck fulla imps. You know, little demons? Sorta like talking chickens on the food chain in hell. Long as they’re funny they don’t get eaten, so imps spend their whole lives running and collecting jokes.

Dangerous cargo but they’re rare up here in the world. Down in Hell they’re like pigeons and all you need is a net and some crates. Folks almost thank you for taking them away. They’re demons and damned souls though, so it’s hard to tell with all the growling and the screaming.

Christ, this coffee’s terrible.

I’m telling you, since they opened the ways back it’s a gold mine for the hard worker. See I’m gonna take this first load of imps to Los Angeles and sell them to actors for parties. I’m sure I can get at least one couple to adopt one or two all official-like and tell the authorities they’re malnourished Russian kids from before that adoption blockade came down. Comedians’ll buy ‘em since your average hell-born imp has heard at least half the jokes in human history. Just don’t go telling the buyer they’re gonna need dictionaries in eighteen dead languages to understand the punchlines.

Whadya mean you don’t believe me? Sure, I’ll show them to you. Fuck, maybe you’ll buy one. They’re great around the house. Better mousers than a tabby cat. Of course they’ll just teach the mice to talk, which can be problematic unless you run a circus. Hang on, let me just pay for my terrible fucking coffee.

See? There’s my truck. Look in the windows and you can see the crates. What? You don’t see anything moving? Shit, I don’t know. Maybe they’re asleep. It’s been a long drive back from Hell. Open the back? I don’t think that’d be such a good idea, man.

Well there’s no need to go and call me a liar. Folks I came up with’d skewer you for saying a thing like that. Fine. I’ll open the back. Lean in and smell that fresh imp. Kinda gamey and exhilarating, right? Like dry-aged beef and brimstone. Go ahead and climb in for a closer look, I’m telling you they’re pretty interesting.

Hey boys! Supper time! Have at him just try not to make too much of a mess.”

In a diner parking lot ten miles from the gates of hell, the doors of a truck slam closed on a grown man’s choked screaming.

IMAGE: hell creature from Fuseli’s 1781 painting “Nightmare.”