PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Blessings & Retching

© Scott Meyer



    The air was thin…. The way you find air when you’re in the state of dread.  It was the first time in my life that I have truly felt something.  Sixteen years of trials, triumphs, punishments, letdowns, betrayals, archetypal experiences that comes from life. I thought I had feelings.  Despite my ways of life, this was the first time I had truly felt anything.  The emotions that I had were never truly felt they were experienced.  My bloodstone never allowed it to go beyond that point.  It was my fault this ordeal had happened.  I could not have my balanced schedule altered to the very second.  My harmonious synchronized methodical custom does not do well with alterations.  There is one time in my day that is in harmony despite the other constants of my life.  The dawns coming were always the same, thought would run rancid into the quarry of alienated memory. This morning was an exile of the others; it was not a conformist as the others all chose to become.  I was late…my realization came when the choice was presented.  I could have chosen to trust myself for the first time in my life, which I scarcely had done before.  Or I could doubt myself and let my trust pare; I choose the latter.  According to the blinking light on my alarm clock I was marginally belated particularly that morning.  I had rushed through the morning routine I put myself through daily.  That morning it took me only three minutes what normally cost me ten ticks of the minute machine.

    Machines my newfound enemy.  As I ran out of the house, I discovered the back of my head had ventured into the path of an awkwardly aimed baseball.  Queer thing was that the ball field was nonexistent around my homes’ dwelling.  When I lowered myself to pick up the ball, a small beady-eyed boy stuck his hand out waiting for his retrieval of the ball.  As my fingers wrapped themselves across the ball, I saw him run away from me.  As confused as I was, I managed to find myself running from him as well.  After a few steps I heard a word finding refuge in the depths of my ear.  I’ll never forget the only syllable I ever heard from him.  One simple “hey” got my attention enough for me to stop in my tracks.  After I subconsciously willed myself around; my eyes set right on this little three foot tall boy, holding his bat, swinging it as if he were waiting for me to pitch him the ball.  As delayed as I was, I managed to find the time to pitch the ball.  While it neared his bat, I turned to continue on my journey.  Seconds later…glass shattered but not after cats hissed on the point of a ladies scream piercing the placid air.  All caused by one crack of a bat.  Paying no attention to any of this I continued my quest to make it to my destination.

    With a few seconds to spare my quest had ended.  I found myself in the room with eleven others, unaware what was to come.  Eleven apathetic people that had no experience of their current task except what they saw in the television shows.  When we got acquainted with each other, and had finished giving our introduction, we had once again found ourselves confused at our next task.  Hearing the facilitators’ monotone explanation of how we were to hear both sides of the case while we weighed our personal beliefs with moral beliefs whether or not if he should die, being as how this was a capital case.  Knowing nothing about the case, defendant, or the victim’s families there was a common belief to be drawn from the air.  Eye for an eye.  After we had chosen the leader we went into the courtroom and settling ourselves into our area.  During the case, I heard every word of all speaking. In the end I looked into the defendants eyes. When I stared into the eyes I saw his vengeful soul.  I saw how he had no regard or concept of remorse.  Yet I could also see his blank eyes. Blank eyes are not from a man who had just been accused of murdering his wife.   Blank eyes are not from a man who had been through a case where it was agreeable that the jury would come back with little deliberation.  Blank eyes are not from a man who had just been accused of murdering his wife.  Blank eyes are from a man whom has nothing more to live for in his life.

    In the deliberation room, eleven spoke while one remained silent.  The others questioned how he could murder with hatred and passion; I questioned why he said he was not guilty.  The evidence was so strongly against him, but there were a few time elapses including holes to be found in the prosecutor’s accounts.  How the defendants’ attorney missed that the dirt for those holes was circumstantial evidence I couldn’t fathom.  I tried to remember how the prosecutor explained how the deed was executed.  Once again I found plot holes.  Why did a man owning the build of six feet and eleven inches in height weighing over three hundred pounds, have to drag his wife.   Why is it a woman that was a foot shorter; two hundred pounds less than he is, dislocated her shoulder by periodically being jerked when the ground was rougher to slide a body across?  Than how did he also break down the Solid Oak door’s hinges with his fist?  How was it that he had lifted a boulder weighing over two hundred pounds to smash her skull to finally kill her?  When the other jury members had quelled there incessant baffling they had reached one general idea… he must die for what he did!  When it was time for my ballot casting, I found a few more words resounding in my ear, “Release Me”.  Then I released my ballot, twelve unanimous votes were collected before the court had collected one more azoic.

    At last the juries task had been completed while the end of our day was nigh.  I looked throughout the room at the empty seats, in this desolate room I walked out of the room, shutting the door behind me.  Once again the twelve civilians that had no qualms about putting a man to death were assembled.  Receiving a “Thank you for your time.” from the Bailiff, I watched the others venture to the clerk at the front desk for further instructions as they were told.  Everyone person showed some form of identification to the lady before they received a manila folder containing papers that were needed to be signed by our employers for remuneration of our lost wages.  I was last in line to receive the folder.  Later that night I noticed the same child as I did before, this time however he was not in possession of his sports equipment he donned earlier.  He donned a sullen look deep in both of his eyes.  As I found our eyes locking onto each other a lady from the corner called him inside.  I turned to go inside my home heading off to bed that night as I had done many times before.  When I laid myself to bed that night I remembered the rush of life given by awakening.  I remembered the smile of the ignorant young one, ignorant to the cruel and apathetic souls of this world. I remembered those bereft eyes.  I remember the azoic.  If I had a childhood of my own, I would of cast my ballot into a fire enraging the apathetic dolts that had no regard.  That boy will never know his blessings, as I know my retching of my heart, as I felt the dread of my vote.

Many great compilations of theories found themselves into the narrow depths of my desolate head of what happened to the boy.  Everyday I would leave my house looking for the boy, listening for the cracking of his bat, waiting for my head to once again discover that it had transfigured into the path of a wayward ball.  Years of anticipation came and went.  My anticipation never waned, I had not grown of obsession but for those seconds of our meeting I had grown of intrigue.  I would look over to the house he had entered the night we met.  There was something that did not quite fit into place with the cosmetics of the door.  It was as if that door was the void of my circle.  If I had known why the door was so cryptic then perhaps I would not be of intrigue.  By chance my anticipation would abate giving me release, therefore I would no longer be tied to the boy.  On a midnight dreary I entered my home as I looked back once more at the entrance of my void it had come to pass.  The door didn’t sit right nor was the front end smooth.  The door was hinged post manufacturer, after being beat down.  

    That morning I knew what was to fill my nugatory.  I neglected to drive that morning as I normally had.  I walked past my normal places of interest all the way to the cemetery.  Finding the headstone of the man that had his fate toyed with I saw a man in his early life with a baseball bat I had seen so many years before.  He looked at me as if he were staring into my soul as I had done before with the defendant.  I never knew whether or not he was able to see my soul but after that moment my void was filled.   Looking away he took his baseball bat and slammed the headstone with his ferocity.  While a crack formed down the middle he laid his belonging before the headstone and we walked our separate ways.  It was at that moment that I realized I should have the cracked head stone.  I was the one that had cast the last stone.  I was the one who had toyed with fate.  I was the one who had murdered.  I was the killer.  I was the one that had ended a life, not the man that was buried below me.  The boy and man were merely pawns in fates grand joyful game.