Dave Matthes's Blog - Posts Tagged "rage"

A PDF Edition of the EBOOK is up for download or to be read on the Goodreads website, for those who have been asking.

Quick Link here: The Passive Aggressors click "Read Book", and have at it.

Below is a sample from my upcoming novel, "In This House, We Lived, and We Died", a story about an old man leaving his life to find the riddled and muddled remains of his memory lost to time. It's plot/story/themes are similar to and were inspired in part by A Christmas Carol, The Divine Comedy, What Dreams May Come, etc. As with the other sample, this text is not final and more than likely will be edited/added to/ subtracted from by the time the book is finished.


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“You’re insane.”
My words escaped slowly, synonymous with the fluid motion of a river's drive around rocks; with the same aromatic onset I placed the barrel against my temple. I knew this was what he meant all along and there had been indeed a searing suspicion from my end that the gun wouldn’t fire if aimed at him. This place was under his control...his rules...this was HIS game. And he was right...if I did want to find a way out, I’d have to listen to him.

Only now...I couldn't even leave the table. But why was I so resilient to resist this place’s invention? Why and equally as important, HOW did I become so accepting? I’d only begun to speculate as to why I was here at all and now, like a fool I was willingly putting a gun to my head with one hand while allowing this old motherfucker to set nail and hammer to my other hand. Am I me? Am I sure this desire to raise this gun to my temple is mine to avow?

The coldness was like that of a fathomless ocean, deep and quixotic, its true darkness invisible to all senses. Transparency was lust’s way of deceiving me, forcing me to digest the stalwart and mutable breath of fate; how was I to know this bullet was mine to swallow? There were too many variables to decode, a cast pair of dice whose faces have been altered to accommodate the agenda of June. Was she doing all this? She had always been a cunning linguist, dancing about in an endless duet with my conscious de la spectacular. But then again...she had left me long ago; there was little hope she’d ever return even if but for the sake of my own dismemberment, be it spiritual or literal or both. Perhaps the answer would forever elude me.

Pragmatic. Distilled. Purified. Kinetic. Juxtapositionary. LOVE. All things found beneath the toenails of a giant.

Pull the trigger.

Pull the trigger, he said.

I’d almost forgotten where the gun had ended up. And without further delay, I bit my lip and squeezed.

And at once, the veil of the darkest room in the darkest tower in the darkest of places was pulled back, exchanged for the bursting glares of an indignant sun and haphazard blindness. The splinters of the wooden floor boards were removed abruptly, and in their place the smooth, warming sensation of perfectly fine sands found their calling between my toes. My already shattered mental buoyancy was now completely skewered.

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I was in a desert. Somewhere off the map. The sky a true turquoise, the horizon infinitely locked in a slumber of tranquility and unfaith. And on the farthest dune, where the top of the crest embraced the weatherless sky, there stood a figure, a woman, dark against the blue, her tattered dress taken by the wind at her feet. Her face was hidden and it was impossible to ascertain the true nature of her stance. The only clue to behold being a chant atop the breeze, something mature and flagrant. Deliberate and unashamed. Perhaps this was her theme, her voice, her desires immutable and numbing. This was not my place, this was hers and-

CLICK.

It is not your time. How fortunate.

“How surreal,” I corrected him.

I was back with the old man. Cold and unforgiveable. The wooden shards of desperation welcoming my feet’s return. The hollow shells of burdens moist and dripping with hate and dread accompanying my every breath. And the gun, this mocking token of freedom, was still in my grasp.

Where then, when then, would I find the end of this terrible discourse? Why was my hand still nailed to this table...this tapestry of infamy? And who was that woman so far away, so long off to the touch, her musical voice the only orchestral searchlight to the abyss of my heart? Would I not find the stitches soon, I would soon bleed out whether from my hand or from my unquenchable well of empty answers.....



---In This House, We Lived, and We Died