The following morning he woke up very satisfied, still on the ground where he cried his eyes out the night before after a long gaze at his father’s picture. Benedict was very sexually satisfied and the last thing he remembered was the arousing sexy ooze in Samantha’s voice that made him horny as hell. He almost gave in, she almost paid him a visit but then he decided he is better off taking matters into his own hand. He ended his call, raised his right hand in the air and asked as he looked at it with a fake pale smile on his face, “How was your day?”

The hand didn’t answer; it just gave him a good treat before he fell asleep.

Of course as he did so he knew the following morning he would regret not having Samantha come over or going himself to her place. Nothing would ever match the feel of a real woman, the scent of her perfume, the looks of wanting, the panting of satisfaction, and the sweet sweat of intimacy and well, the noises his ancient bed makes while things get intimate like it is warning him of its plan to finally crash and go out of service. But after all for Frank, Masturbation has always been the answer. His last days as a married man were full of that. In fact his last year of marriage was a huge one year masturbation plot.

Frank, still had one hand in his pants and the other holding the article, not implying that it had anything to do with his treat but in fact Frank didn’t wanna let go of the article and the picture accompanying it since he found it like it was his last ray of hope, like that picture gave him an objective in life, like that picture was something that would make a difference, a change that he is in dear need for. Frank is not that much of a believer, he is not that much of a man who would honor his principles, if he ever had any; but to be fair there are some traits he should always be given credit for and believing in fate was one of those traits. Frank knew it since he saw the picture in the article that it was predestined that he walks down that dark alley, he finds the magazine and he sees this article specifically or at least he did assume it was so. He knew that it is a sign of something or a sign leading to something but what that thing was, is what he couldn’t figure out. The tears that he cried the night before were so real although the man cannot remember having his father around, Samuel Benedict was done with our world by the time Frankie was two, that’s how he used to call him and how his mother used to call him, Frankie. He may not remember his father calling him so, but he always had this deep feeling that he can hear his voice in his head, like it was haunting him or warning him or giving him another chance to set his life straight, to set his wandering aimless soul free. And he always tried to keep up with the voice and he always seemed to fail, one failure after the other. He must have achieved some sort of a world record of failures. Who cares anyways?

Frank looked at the article again, gazed at the picture again. When a man dies defending his principles and fighting for a good cause that he stands for, that would imply one fundamental fact; this man’s life did not go in vain. Knowing that and believing in it Frank started thinking, kind of interrogating his own self, the voice inside him, “What if you died in your sleep last night with your hands in your pants? What have you died defending? Probably your sexual appetite, isn’t it?”

Frank felt ashamed of his very own actions at that moment, felt ashamed of the feeling that kept haunting him, he has brought the good Samuel Benedict name to the ground with every action he has done for the past few years. A sane person would think the voices that haunt Frank were sort of a wake up call, but they have been there for years, and they had never had a single positive effect on him, maybe momentarily effects were there but in the long-term Frank is the same person he has been everyday for so long he may have actually forgotten how he was before he became what he is now, he doesn’t try to remember anyways. If there is one thing that these voices have proved, then it is that Frank is a hopeless case, someone who keeps hitting a new low everyday. And the previous night compared to any other night, he has hit rock bottom, he did not even respect the article in his left hand as he gave himself a special gift with the right hand, the gift of sexual satisfaction, the great gift of masturbation.

The phone rang, and the lazy Benedict had to let go of the uncomfortable ground sleep if he wanted to take the call and so he did. All he could hear was panting and some static in the call. He did the usual routine of several hellos and he had no reply come back to him and so he hung up like a normal person would.

He walked to the washroom and showered, he finally washed off the dirt that has been all over him for the past couple of days and when he was done getting all cleaned up he prepared a hot cup of cocoa for himself. Frank wasn’t that interested in cocoa nor did he love it anymore but it always reminded him of his mother, her tenderness, the hot chocolaty drink that he loved to have before he went to school every morning and before he hit the sack every night. They say everything changes, maybe his love for cocoa did, but his love for his mother, and his love for the rituals he had as he grew up, with her taking care of him every single moment of every single day has never changed. You can kill a man’s conscience. You could put it to sleep like every aging dog but there is one thing of value no one ever lets go off, memories, and especially ones of those you love.

As he had his first sip of the big glass of cocoa he remembered his first day without cocoa ever, his first day without his mother. That’s when things started getting ugly for him, that’s when he kept making new records of new lows each and every day. Frank took a second sip as his phone rang one more time. He picked up and he got no where with that, the same panting, the same static, the same routine and then again he had to give up and hang up. He then decided to watch some TV. There was a baseball game on, just another memory, baseball, the sport he has always loved, but now is just one of the many things that are there on his tiny TV screen, something as insignificant as any other thing that is displayed there. Seems like, nothing could ever carry any meaning or significance for him, at least not now, not anymore.

The phone kept ringing for the next five hours, every half hour, not once did the caller miss calling, and not once did Frank miss picking up and not once did he get anywhere with his hellos.

Then the phone rang again and this time Frank got a reply from the other end of the call, “Hey Benny Boy, I was worried about you.”

“Oh, it’s you again.”

Frank realized at that moment getting a Caller ID, an answering machine, anything that would get him to screen his calls and skip the unwanted moments would be the smart move, the intelligent one.

In a quite angry tone he asked, “Were you calling all day long?”

The very same sexy voice from last night went on, “No, this is my first call today baby.”

“And are you planning on calling every single fucking day?”

“What’s the matter with you now? You were eased up by the end of the call last night and then you hung up all of a sudden with a promise to call back and never did and now you are acting all weird. Cool down baby, you needn’t do the routine every single call. Just relax.”

“Hang up, bitch.”

Frank knew if he let the call go on he is gonna give in to her, he hated the way she kept asking him to ‘relax’, in fact he hated the effect of her way of saying the word and not her way. As for her way, it just drove him hornier and wanting her more which was not what he wanted to happen, not the effect he needs to have when it comes to Samantha. It is true that Samantha is hot, true that she is sexy, true that she knows how to rock a man’s world in bed, this man in particular, and true that it would be really great to have someone in bed for one night just for a change of pace, someone in bed or someone around this joke of a flat, all the same. Yet he didn’t want her there. He wanted her to stay put where she was, as far away from him as possible even with the hormones in his body yelling at him asking him to give up, requesting him to submit to her, ordering him to give in.

“I am coming over, baby.”

Frank kept trying to resist the temptation as she kept talking and inviting herself over to his place. He knew she wouldn’t give up unless she got what she wanted, the night before she got him all relaxed and she now seems to be planning to get him to give her the relaxation she needs. She is gonna have her fix, now that she has already in some cyber way started giving him his. Frank knows she wouldn’t again fall for the ‘I will call you back’ statement, and he knows there is nothing he could do about it except resist with words, keep resisting until he either wins or gives in or find an alternative plan.

“Benny, I thought I made it clear, I am not taking no for an answer.”

“Isn’t it too early in the morning to be coming over just for sex?”

“Oh Benny Baby isn’t it too late to say words thinking they would embarrass me or talk me out of getting there?”

His eyes had a bright look as he said in a low tone, “Ok Samantha, I will be waiting.”

That being said he ended the phone call, he ended it and walked out of the door with no specific destination in mind, just a long aimless walk. The whole day flew by as Frank walked around and around on a road to no where. He then decided to go back home being sure deep inside that he is not gonna have to meet Samantha. The day almost ended until a few minutes after the old clock on his wall covered in spider webs hit midnight. That was when he heard a knock on his door. The only person he could think of at that moment was Sam with a hope deep inside him, more like a prayer that it wouldn’t be her.

Posted by Unknown at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

A sexy ooze of a voice spoke.

'Hey Ben, it's Sam, baby'

'Didn’t I ask you not to call me Ben?', shouted Benedict

'Would it make you feel better if I called you sweetie pie instead?'

'Didn't I tell you not to call here again?'

'O, come on. How would your life taste without me, Ben?' giggled miss sexy.

Benedict pulled the phone chord over to the sofa and lied there listening to blonde Samantha giggle and laugh in absolute hysteria, picturing her strapped into a white shirt inside a pillow-walled room, giving her excuses to gloat and mock, creating reasons for himself to listen. He knows she's blonde because she said so.

'Samantha, what do you want?' asked Benedict rhetorically.

'Not in a mood for a little chit-chat are you?'

'My rate is still a dollar twenty five you know'

'Baby, you're worth much more than that. How about two bucks?', again giggled the mischievous voice.

'Like I need that'

'Aww… it must be time for your fix now. I can make it all go away. Just ask the initiative question.'

'Initiative! Wow! That's a big word for you. A-word-a-day toilet paper, is it?'

'Benny baby. Just ask', whispered the sexy vocal chords.

Benedict asked like it was inevitable. He knew that he was going to give in anyway. He had no control. He asked because all things began with a question even the notion of freedom, love, sex, existence, war, and God.

'What are you wearing?' asked Benedict, and so began the conversation.

'Breathe', Samantha leaked into Benedict's mind.

Benedict dropped the phone handle on the sofa carelessly, stood up half straight, and walked towards the window. He liked to stare through at the city line in the morning. He enjoyed it even more at night when everyone out there were invisible, when he could just stand there by his fifth floor apartment window and feel king over all; but how far really can a person get? Benedict's apparition of a home was on the fifth floor of a 19^th century design 15-storey building. Two elevators yet he always took the stairs. He stops for breath for a minute on the fourth floor and wonder why he hasn't taken the elevator, only by then it's too late to go back down and he's got to go all the way up. It's been like that ever since his divorce. He thought that could mark a healthy change phase for him. The phase passed, but change was still nowhere near. He believed that with time he could take the stairs to his apartment and that he did. He thought that change was possible. but being foolish is not a habit. It lurks in the genes that get passed over from one generation to the next, until all that remains is plain stupidity.

Abstractedly, Benedict walked back to the sofa and picked the handle and placed it close to his ears, close enough for him to feel that all the sex in the world grouped against him in the form of a voice that waits for him to give in, for him to fall.

'Break loose of it all. Don't resist. Follow your survival instincts, your animalistic first impression. Ejaculate your fears and doubts. Mourn them with an erotic grin. Satisfaction is all about…', whispered the sexy bitch.

He knew it won't be over that easy.

'Satisfaction?', he thought, as he dropped the phone handle on the ever-green sofa that reminds him of the lawn he had back then when he was a husband, a successful and disciplined employee at REX, a Good Samaritan, back then when he had what he often refers to as 'a life'. He sat at what he referred to as his 'dining table' which was just about a bumpy surface and four legs that didn't match in height and were shaped as tree trunks, probably to bring a Caribbean feel to the pimp hole this place was once. He grabbed his divorce papers copy and stared at her signature at the bottom; cursive, too cursive actually; that was how fast she must have signed.

'Had I gotten to be that unbearable?!', thought Benedict to the surrounding emptiness he bore around.

Benedict walked over to the sofa and leaned over to place his face close enough to the headset to hear the sexy thing at the other side of his parallel universe.

'Relax… Adapt', said the sexy blonde.

'Adaptation. The magic word', he daydreamed as he dropped to his knees; 'If only I had a magic lamp to make it all go away, to start from scratch. If only I could run and start fresh and clean, baptized. If only I could resurrect H. G. Wells and ask him to invent a time machine and send me back in time, back before I was divorced, before I got fired, before I got married, before I went to school, before my father died, before I had my first cry, before I was born, before I was shaped into fetus, before I was a nuclei. I just want to vanish. That! That would be my fair adaptation.'

Benedict's eyes rolled over and stopped at a spot on the floor, at that article he tore out of page 32 and crawled over towards it, reached out, and held tight to it, like the two year old boy he was when it happened, and so began the water works.

People still look at him and see a splitting image of his father. However, the way Benedict sees himself; he's not half the man his father used to be. Every morning Benedict wakes up to enjoy a long stare at his shattered reflection in the broken mirror hanging in his apartment and sees nothing but a fool trying to justify his distorted mentality by rebelling against mankind, emotionally and silently. His father actually believed in those odd cult-fiction words he used to write and demonstrate about. His father was a hero. Frank barely exists.

John Samuel Benedict was a man of principles, something that doesn't come around these days. Not so unlike today, John grew up in a time of dormant wars. Opinions were controlled by expired food products and hollywoodized movie features, slavery was not unethical and had become more of a profession to help people survive, and politics was merely a major for yuppies of the society to study at expensive big shot universities. It seems like time has frozen since then and everything that has ever survived back then still survives now, except for John who was left behind, underground. Unlike Frank, John was a man of faith and was two steps away from becoming a full-time saint. 'A time will come when everything and everyone you've ever known will treat you like total strangers, and when that time dwells upon you, faith will be the answer to your questions. Seek God, for He knows.' That's what he used to say to little Frankie, the little man shit.

'Oh Benny Baby', oozed the sexiness of the world. 'Are you up for another round, you big wild dog?'

By that time, he had her on speaker.

'You bet I am', whispered the reincarnated soul.

Яαgιи' Яανєи

Posted by Яαgιи Яαvєи at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments

The place is quite a mess; in fact that description would be a huge insult to the word mess. It is like dirt flies all over the apartment. You can call it the house of dirt and it would hold true and no one would blame you. On the ground and very close to the very old king size bed that is more like a huge garbage can he laid snoring. Frank Benedict, who slept in the same clothes he wore to the dark alley the night before, seemed to be suffering lots of nightmares. From the looks of his own place you can even consider Benedict a symbol of suffering. A tiny place with tiny hallways and furniture that looks more than a century old is where this man lives and depresses.

In no time Benedict would open his eyes and start looking around in amazement, trying to remember details of the previous night. He could remember darkness and could still smell his fear all over the place. He stands to his feet feeling a mild head rush before he walks to his joke of a kitchen. A table, a very small stove and an electric kettle from the looks of which you would think it has been manufactured before Electricity was discovered or invented or whatever. Benedict opens his fridge, which from the look on his face stinks. He pours himself a glass of milk and takes a sip that he soon spits in the sink; for even the milk in his life decided to go all stale on him.

He then walks in the direction of his green sofa stepping on a couple of roaches on his way and pushing his hands in his pocket. Suddenly, he halts just a couple of inches away from the sofa. He then pulls a folded paper from his pocket and gazes at it after he unfolds it getting his memory to light up with the events of the night before. The head rush is gone. Everything that existed a minute before has been replaced by a couple of tears carving their way through his cheek.

He looks at the page he cut of the seventy’s magazine, at the image as he reads the words in the headline, “Business figure, John Samuel Benedict murdered with ten bullets to the chest.”

Twenty eight years have passed and it yet hurts to remember, and if another twenty eight like them do pass he is always gonna feel the same. This is news from when he was two, news he got to understand later on in his life when he grew from a young innocent baby with toys to a keen to know young boy with hope for life. It hurt then and it still does and always will. And if there is one thing Benedict should have learnt from his past life, it should be to give up on being happy and to accept the sorrow that keeps following him everywhere he goes. If there is one thing Benedict should have learnt from his past life it should have been that forgetting is a blessing, but he was never entitled to have it, he has never wanted to forget, he has never forgotten. If there is one thing Benedict should have learnt from his past life it is to buy a new bottle of milk when the older bottle has been in his fridge long enough it is logical that it should have gone stale.

Suddenly the phone rings and the lazy man Benedict is, hesitates to go for the set on a small table a couple of meters away but then he makes up his mind and he takes the call.

Posted by Unknown at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments

He walked for a couple minutes on a sidewalk downtown then swiftly drifted apart from civilization as most of us know it and into a dark alley that marked the end of time for his fake Rolex. He should have stayed on the sidewalk. He should have stayed in the light, all civilized and in sight of witnesses, even if they have been avoiding his encounter, even if they've been ignoring his presence, pretending that he's just the stranger he really is. They were right, he was wrong, as always. He should have changed his fake made-in-China Rolex batteries. He shouldn't have bought a watch in the first place. Watches and clocks tell us exactly how old we are. They tell us how our life is ending one second after the other. They'll mark our final hour while we "watch", staring at a brand name that makes us feel better about our miserable lives.

When you walk into a dark alley, you don't expect to find a quarter on the ground, you don't expect to see visions from heaven, the girl of your dreams, or your once in a lifetime opportunity. When your own very freewill drives your feet into a dark alley, that's when you realize that you've walked in seeking a door that says 'exit'. It's when everything becomes silent, the air holds still, anticipating something spectacular, a life altering event, a fourth page newspaper article, an arbitrary reason. Shadows start making sense, evolve into something monstrous. You feel small yet feel special; so special that you feel that even the garbage can and the trees are staring at you, waiting for your move. Your ears gain super powers and now every dust particle that moves catches your ears, shortens your breath, chases your heart into an unexplainable pulse. You wait in anticipation for a big black dog to chase you down that dark alley and kill you. Mental faculty paranoia in its prime and at its peak.

Then he said 'let there be light' and lit a cigarette in hope that the smoke would hide him from harm and stink up his adrenaline stench, in hope that maybe the burning tobacco would lead his way through the darkness of his path. He inhaled the essence of cancer and exhaled every inch of oxygen he had stored in his blood combined with two parts carbon from every burnt out particle of a soul he had left inside his human form. 'Let cancer take hold', he thought, 'oxygen has never served me well'.

Benedict pushed forth his legs, wanting to reach his undesignated destination, his made-believe destiny, his mind falsehood. He stumbled across some homeless bodies of semi-dead unidentified individuals. He walked past them and dared not to look back. That's when, suddenly, a scream from a distance far behind him caught his ears, his attention. He looked back and that's when he tripped over, hit a greasy wall that he couldn't grab hold of and fell. The grease which seemed like someone else's cum rubbed off on his hands and clothes. Life couldn't get any lower. But when things reach the bottom of the world, there's only one way to go. A magazine with faded colors and worn out pages grabbed his attention; a homeless man's ex-blanket that protected him from the cold shivers of the winter nights. The man's gone now, yet the magazine remains. He picked up the old magazine that was dated back to 1978, back when hippies were appreciated as a culture, when culture itself was appreciated and acknowledged, and there it was, a picture on page 32, a two dimensional visual image that is as old as he is. He found his reason to be, his vision from heaven.

Яαgιи' Яανєи

Posted by Яαgιи Яαvєи at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments