Anthology Complex

by M. B. Julien

  Because of free will, it sometimes seems as if we all write our own futures. There is a man who sets up dominoes to fall in a specific order in a specific way. He hits the first domino. The beginning. Everything goes to plan, and finally the last domino falls. The ending. He does this until he feels confident that he knows what will happen every time. Now he sets them up again the same exact way, but this time he gives domino number sixty-seven a free will. He hits the first domino to start the sequence.

  Everything goes to plan until it gets to sixty-seven. Sixty-seven has removed from its spot and has wondered off, ruining everything. Now this man knows that he cannot predict what will happen if these dominoes have a free will.

  I've just come back to my apartment building after visiting my parents' home, a nice big fancy house that they left for me some odd-numbered miles down the road. I go to that area once every few months because it's where I spent my childhood. Everyone probably longs for their childhood in their adulthood for reasons I shouldn't have to mention. Down the road a few blocks from the house is the church we all used to go to. My mother, my father, my brother and I.

  I didn't know it back then, but my father didn't believe in God. Or Satan for that matter. Most people who don't believe in one don't believe the other. He never said he didn't believe in him, but I know he didn't; I know he went to church simply because it was the one thing my mother ever asked him to do.

  He was a good liar, he had everyone fooled. He had several different masks so that you couldn't associate his face with his character or his role.

  After my mother committed suicide we stopped going to church. My father and I, I mean. My brother was no longer around. I'm not even sure if the church-going people would want us to keep attending service, considering the good book says suicide is a sin.

  Some even-numbered years later my father developed cancer and it killed him. Maybe it wasn't the cancer, maybe it was because he was so angry that he wouldn't be able to continue his quest for knowledge. Up until even now I question whether knowledge is a good thing or a bad thing because the gaining of knowledge by humankind is a double-edged sword. It can be what saves us or what destroys us. Someone said that an individual's gaining of knowledge either brings them closer to humankind or it causes more and more of an isolation from it.

  I open the front door to the apartment building and I see Lynne checking her mail. She looks at me and smiles, and takes out all of her mail. I say hello and we both begin to walk towards the stairs. She asks me if I want some junk mail and tosses me some of her mail. It's junk mail. I read the name who it was to be delivered to, "Lynnette Parker." I guess she didn't take Silvio's last name.

  On our way to our apartments Lynne tells me that there was an old woman here looking for me earlier. Joe's mom. Lynne gives me one more piece of paper with a name and an address on it, but no phone number. It appears as if Joe's mom, Kathleen, wants me to visit her. I thought I was out of the whole Joe thing once she came back.

  I put down both the junk mail and the piece of paper that Lynne got from Kathleen on the table and I sit down on my couch and I think about what she would want. And then the phone rings. That damn ringing sound. I pick it up before it makes me go deaf and I hear a lady on the other end. Joe's mom, Kathleen.

  We end up talking about Joe's condition, and about how the doctors say even if he does wake up, they are not sure if he will be "normal." In other words, they are not sure if he has suffered any brain damage. She also gets me to agree to come visit her on the upcoming Wednesday even though she lives on the far side of town.

  Is it our brain that determines who we are? Is Joe the way he is because of the way his brain is constructed, and if he has indeed suffered any brain damage, will that change who he really is? We've seen the victims of stroke and how the ones who suffer from brain damage change completely. How they stare at you blankly. How they can't recognize people they've known their entire lives. How they can't do things they did before. How they can't continue their quest for knowledge because they have been compromised.

  If Joe wakes up and there is a screw loose up there, will he still be Joe, or will he put on a mask that no one recognizes?

  Chapter 26:

  HEADS, TAILS, SAME COIN

  "Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it." So many times a young man will curse his father's name and swear never to follow in his footsteps, and so many times that young man goes back on his word and does indeed follow in his father's footsteps.

  He doesn't follow the imprints in the ground because it is his fate to do so, but because later in his life he begins to understand why his father was the way he was. Sometimes these thoughts are met with forgiveness, even long after the father has died.

  I hadn't had a dream worth writing down or remembering in days until last night. Last night I dreamed that I was at some sort of crime scene, trying to find the clues to a puzzle that seemed as if it didn't really exist. I see the chalk outline of a body that was here before, but has long since been gone. I wish I knew the victim's name so I didn't have to refer to the body as "the body."

  A woman comes up to me and tells me that this is the sixth body that they've found in the month that was killed in the same manner. The likings of a serial killer who should only be referenced to as a serial murderer. This is the life of the sixth damned person who had a damned name that this serial murderer has taken on my watch.

  I'm at the grocery store now, in line, thinking about how a human being could murder another human being. What it takes. How your brain has to be constructed. How your environment has to be. I remember one of my teachers in high school telling us about an experiment.

  There was a contained area where rats resided, and as the population grew the rats started to kill each other. It makes me wonder what will happen once humankind begins to overpopulate, if those happenings haven't begun already.

  Hunting a murderer and becoming a murderer are two different things, but also one in the same. The first step is realizing that you are a murderer yourself. Maybe not literally, but philosophically. Just as you may wear the mask of the law enforcement officer, you can easily go backstage and take it off and put on the mask of the murderer and the audience won't have a clue. The scary thing is you may not have a clue either.

  So it is gathered that if you want to be able to catch a murderer, it would be good to know how the mind of one works, how their brain is constructed, but the problem with this method is that there is a chance the person who is in pursuit of this murderer persona may lose sight of where the line is.

  The separation between good and bad, and bad for the sake of good. Icarus flew too close to the Sun and the consequences were less than desirable. There is no success if you become the very idea you hunt, but that of course is relative.

  I leave the store and when I get outside, I find that the bread I purchased has been smashed by the milk. That damn baggar. I look back in the store and I notice that the baggar is gone. At this point the dream starts to skip around as I remember it and then I find myself following someone.

  The only thing I can think of is that chalk outline I had seen earlier before, and how a person could murder another person. How someone could get away with it so easily, six times. I stare at the back of the head of this man I am following and I start to wonder if I could kill him and get away with it. I start to picture the murderer I have been looking for, I try to picture him as myself. What goes through the mind of a murderer. Certainly thoughts plagued with narcissism. I would find it hard for my serial murderer to not be some type of narcissist if he believes he can take the lives of others.

  Chances are every person on this Earth probably has some form of narcissism in them, big or small, superficial or buried deep inside the mind. There must be a reason why people long ago believed even the Sun revolved around the Earth. They must have thought they were important.

  I stop walking and I watch as this man walks away from me. Further and further
, until he is gone. I can't kill this man; I have to find out why. I realize that if I want to catch this murderer, if I want to understand the mind of a murderer, I need to start smaller. I need to find my murderer persona and understand it. Maybe I need to kill something. Not a human of course, something smaller.

  Maybe an ant, or a cat. A goat or an elephant. I swear to myself that I will never go as far as killing a human being.

  I woke up and couldn't help but think about how two people who learned to do something exactly the same way could end up doing that trade so differently. Roll the dice. This dream leads me to believe that nothing in life is pure good or pure evil. That everything is merely pure perception.

  Now the Moon has taken the place of the Sun and there is a knocking at my door. It's Jamal, a man I haven't seen in probably a little over half of a year. Years ago, Maria wanted me to see someone about my obsession with my dreams, so I did, but it wasn't too long until I stopped going.

  Maria realized that I didn't care, that I wasn't going to try, so she left. The man who I spoke to asked me so many questions that instead of trying to analyze myself and trying to figure out what is making me the way I am, I started to wonder about him himself. Why he has chosen this specific field of work.

  My interest in him only ravaged my obsession with my dreams and the many ideas about life that I had taking up space in my head. Soon after I found myself visiting a group therapy session that dealt with drug abuse. Not necessarily for the triumphant stories and the lack of self-acceptance stories these people had, but to analyze how the human mind can become so attached or dependent on a certain way of thinking. That fisheye view.

  Usually addictions become obsessions, but in my case the obsession became the addiction. I needed to see these types of suffering people so I could learn more about existence, and now I had one more addiction on my list.

  At a drug abuse session is where I met Jamal, who was forced to go to these sessions by his friends and family. The sessions didn't help though, I could see he was still involved in that type of life. That look of paranoia. Some people prefer Hell. After one session, we both ended up taking the same bus home and that's where the story begins.

  Jamal tells me that he is in some sort of trouble with certain people, and that this was the last place they'd look for him considering we don't socialize much anymore. I wanted to tell him that I didn't care about his troubles, but the truth is he never had a chance. Not where he grew up. Not who he grew up with. Someone dealt him a shitty hand. He says he only plans to stay for a night or two at the most, and then he tells me he'll be back. It turns out his younger brother was standing outside, and that he would also be residing here for the time being.

  Jamal says that his brother's name is Derek, and that he won't be a problem. I let them both stay in the room that houses my composition notebooks as it's the only other room in the apartment. I tell them not to touch any of the notebooks because they are in a specific order.

  In the morning when I go to see how they are, I see that Jamal is still sleeping, but Derek is wide awake. He is reading one of my notebooks. I wasn't surprised because I knew someone like him wouldn't be able to resist his curiosity. To see this complex of puzzlement before him.

  From the moment I saw him I knew he was one of those kids that didn't belong out on the street. He wasn't like his older brother even though these were the types of people he was around all day. At a young age he must've figured out that life was much more than it seemed to be, but the truth is he never had a chance.

  Chapter 27:

  SATAN IS IN THE DETAILS

  Jamal is reluctant to tell me who he is hiding from and why he is doing so. I have to know what I'm getting myself into so I tell him if he doesn't tell me something, he will have to get the fuck out. He tells me that he borrowed some money from someone, and that he hasn't been able to pay them back.

  He says that in the past, that person has broken some of his bones, so before he goes back to his home he has to have the money first. I ask him how he's going to get the money and he tells me that he has some sort of deal that is going down in a few days. I tell him that a few days and one night are two different things.

  Derek is now going through my composition notebooks as if he were studying for a test the next day. The only thing more intriguing than his reading skills and his comprehension skills are the questions he asks. He asks me how a dog could have a soul. How come fate and coincidence are the only options. Why a thief would rob himself. When the universe ends, is it actually beginning.

  While Jamal is making phone calls, Derek and I are discussing the dreams I have had, except he doesn't realize that they are dreams. He thinks they are short stories attached with some kind of message.

  Three days go by and they are both still here. Derek has taking a liking to my "short stories," and Jamal is constantly on the phone. Last night the people on the news say there was another murder around my area and once again it was filed under "D" for drugs. People killing people. Sometimes I wonder if man discovered murder or invented it.

  Now I'm on the bus taking a trip to visit Kathleen, Joe's mom, because it's Wednesday. On the bus I remember a dream I had three years ago. I'm in an airplane, and the only other passenger is a man sitting to the left of me. He begins to tell me about the evolution of man, how the creature first learned how to communicate with its own kind and other kinds around it. He tells me how all forms of language is simply the outward projection of the mind.

  The questions someone asks, the way they react to a certain event, these are who they are or who they want to be. He starts to tell me that man created a part of the brain that deals with everything that is exterior to the body it belongs to, and a part of the brain that deals with everything that is interior to the body it belongs to. He tells me that these functions were birthed from the need to survive.

  Now the man is telling me that he once knew God, but that they had been separated long ago because they disagreed. He tells me that they were working on a project. They were nearing completion when they came to the last aspect of the project, whether all the lifeforms in all possible places would have a free will or not.

  He tells me that God believed that they should have a free will, but that he himself believed that they should not. That if these lifeforms had a free will, they would eventually destroy the entire project itself.

  He says he tried to remind God that even the beings who created him and God had stated that giving him and God and all the others of our kind a free will was a mistake. Apparently the mistake was going to happen again, and maybe again sometime down the road.

  So this man says he and God argued, disagreed, and then they were separated, God being sent to one place, and the man being sent to another place, and it was decided that God would finish the project alone. The man was angry when he saw that God had decided to grant the lifeforms a privilege of free will.

  Several days later, the man swears to God that he will make the lifeforms murder, steal and deceive one another to show God that giving them a free will was a mistake. The man says he kept his promise for years, and eventually the sins grew to a degree that he no longer had to continue to prove his point. The lifeforms became so sinful that they teach their offspring the ways of sin, and it simply carries on by itself.

  Now the man says after so many years, he realized that God had not once shown his face to his creation. He had not once intervened. He let his creation destroy itself as if he didn't care. The man says at that point he isn't so much concerned with the wills of the lifeforms as he is with the will of God.

  For years he claims that God is a hypocrite, saying he has given will to his creation yet has no will of his own. God never responds. This man says that those were his last words to God, and since then he has been waiting for God's reply. The man says knowing God for as long as he did, he will probably only speak through the actions of his creation.

  I ask the man how he knew God, and he tells me that he was once
one of God's angels. I start to wonder that if maybe it was this man who was running the entire universe instead of God, if our lives would be better. We would however have no free will, but that's of course if free will is what we think it is. I say to the man that perhaps God has actually intervened. I tell him about Moses and Jesus, and the man says that God was not in these people.

  He says that Moses and Jesus were just two of the people who were born from people who murdered and stole and deceived. That Moses and Jesus learned and chose to deceive people because of the free will they were given by God. I ask him about the people who God has spoken to, people like Abraham, and he tells me that these people were disillusioned. They saw God because they needed to see God in a world such as this one.

  Now there is a familiar-looking man walking towards us, and after he passes, the man I am talking to tells me that the man who just passed us is the antichrist. I ask him why he looked so much like Jesus, and the man tells me that it was merely a mask. Just like the mask he himself was wearing a mask.