created by : deviatedspectrum, monsterofNone, lapietra, bealeblues

Rules: no rules

"And here i find myself again, drowning in the valley that seems all too familiar to me, once again with my sensibilities obscured by the promises of hope and anticipation that cradled me" the whisper thin man spoke into his coffee sending steam wafting up to cover his face in the cold Chicago morning. "i find myself here again, despite roadsigns road maps and emphatic promises along the way." What he didn't realize is that no roadsign or roadmap could guide him down the path that was about to be thrust upon him, and that those promises he'd forgotten had not yet forgotten him.

The waitress looked at him blandly. "Errrm... 'kay hun," she ground out slowly. "You just let me know when you're ready for your check." She topped of his coffee and turned away, giving him a last look that was not devoid of compassion, but clearly showed she seldom if ever ventured into the mental territory he visited hourly. He barely stirred, barely acknowledged that he was in the same universe with her. After a few long minutes he fumbled in his dirty flannel pocket and retrieved a curled and wrinkled filterless Pall Mall.

"this is it. this is it. this is everything i've ever needed and it's the only thing i have. i am swirling and curling and swimming through faces that never turn, always turning, and i can grasp nothing. nothing. i reach out and pass through all this quoted reality reality like smoke filters through the invisible web of air. i grasp nothing. but i can wrap my fingers around you." Those words echoed constantly through his head, mocking him, reminding him that he was beyond anonymous, even to himself. Yet he still clinged to her, well, the thought of her, because she was the only thing that offered color to his greying landscape. He could feel the silk of her hair... the scent of it was in his mind, stronger than the stale coffee and cigarette smell... it was a color, a shape, something glistening and curvy and delicious.

he stroked the cigarette seductively, straightening it out slightly before he placed a tattered end between his lips. he paused. "this is it," he mumbled. "this is it." He lit the cigarette with his last match. "this is it, this is it, this is it." The woman sitting next to him looked over at him as if he'd performed an abortion then looked over at the waitress. "Listen, mister," the waitress said in response, "you can't smoke that in here." He turned to her meekly and said in a whisper "Go screw."

He pulled in the familiar taste of sweet caroline tobacco. His muscles, his bones, his soul perched on his lips, brushing against his fingers and the cigarette. Even the woman noticed how he lingered and inhaled. She decided to leave him be- there wasn't enough of that sort of peace in the world.

Very quickly, a wave of euphoria rushed over him. It had been a long time. He held each lungful, absorbing as much as possible... closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, sending plumes of smoke upward. He grinned in a way that broke his face into a thousand fine lines. His skin looked like crepe paper, thin and leathery yet the waitress thought it would be soft if you were to reach out and touch it. For a passing moment she thought to do just that... to reach across the counter and cradle this poor man's face. She never realized that he'd never feel the compassion in her touch- the words had never left, and they still consumed him.
"this is it. this is it."

"Fuck it", he thought to himself as the day's reality began to show itself to him. "again here with my absence of time, the time that i have again been robbed of, left only to cling to something that i never wanted to hold."
Outside car horns blared, flooding the busy city streets with angry life. The heart beat of hundreds of feet pulsed through the sidewalk outside the diner. But the cacophony played upon deaf ears that tuned only to static waves broadcast from the past. He laid bills carefully on the counter, glanced up at the waitress in farewell, and gingerly pushed the door open out into the street, fighting the urge to turn and sit back down, hide out for a little while. But he knew it was too late. He could feel the world swimming about him now. His breathing was becoming shallow. "Maybe it'll pass this time, maybe this is it," he said as he cocked an eye toward heaven, "what do you think about it, you old bastard?" He thought once more of her and a night that might never have happened twenty three years ago. Her hair and the sweet smell of her perfumed clothing were as real in his memory as these dusky streets he walked.

"It's not about alone. It's not about when or where or to what arms I'm walking into at the end of a long day of spit and grey skies. It's not about voices or touch or subtle strands of connection," he plowed through the streets, mumbling to himself. "I need a pack of smokes." He needed those cigarettes about as much as he needed to take this route again, the route he knew in the back of his mind he would take today, of all days- the one that would lead him back to the one place he knew he didn't belong. Not today. Not ever again.

...and suddenly he was there...standing in front of the building. Couldn't remember how he got there. He fought the urge to scream in rage, over his loss of will, over his inability to guide his own actions. His gentle face became a rictus of intense emotion, barely contained. Then it passed. He was there. Standing in front of the building. He didn't live here anymore. He hadn't lived here since that other Bush had fought that other war in the Gulf. With a frustration that had become a constant companion in the past months, he began the slow process of remembering where he did live. His mind had become like swiss cheese in the past few years. what he remembered, he remembered with awesome clarity. what he had forgotten was simply a hole in his mind. He started in 1995 and he started to weep just a little. He ran his rough hand over his thinning brown hair, lifted his cracked glasses from his nose and held his palm over his eyes, trying desperately to place the past outside his eyelids. "where i live is where i try to forget, yet the candles burn for all the dead that still grapple at my life, leaving me nothing but the fragments of pictures and tatters of newspapers to piece together what used to be something that once resembled me". He was here again, just like before. But today would not end like it usually did, with him cradling his bottle of Absolut.

A noisy crowd of kids, no more than 14 or 15 years old, passed by him, around him, accidentally jostling him from his thoughts. "I'm sorry," someone said, touching his arm. He didn't remember kids being so genuine. When did that happen?

Tonight, he thought. "I need a pack of smokes." He reached up to his pockets and patted them. "I just had a pack." He looked up at the teenagers as they walked away. "OH! oh that's alright!" he shouted after them but now they laughed and pointed. He turned to the steps of the brownstone and sat slowly. Again he covered his eyes and tried to remember. In 1995 he had been living in the Hotel Astor. It was a one room affair with a hotplate. He could smell the mildewy scent of the mattress even now. His fragile hands fluttered over his eyelids as he journeyed back.

"there you were, standing before me, looking beyond my eyes and into my soul. only you knew what you saw there, for it was something that i had long forgotten to do, how to look within myself without looking away at what i'd become. i tried in vain to catch a glimpse of myself there while it lingered in your eyes, wondering exactly what it was you were seeing." It was all starting to flood through him now, those torrents which he kept dormant, rushing past him like the wind that was now bringing the misty rains that mixed with his tears.

And then it was really raining, big hard drops, just a few at first, and then billions, making a cold pattern on his face, making him blink violently. He stood there, let it drench him completely, before moving to stand under the awning. And then the door opened. "You coming in?" It was a man in his mid thirties, smiling. "Are you going to stand there in the rain?" The old man stared for a few moments trying desperately to find this face in his memory. Unsure of everything now he was, in his own mind, like a lost animal. Only shelter mattered now and he walked quickly toward the open door.

It's been so long, he thought, as he struggled to answer the question on the old man's face with a word, a sentence, some communication. But they stayed locked behind the steel door in his mind. Talking wasn't his problem, communication was. The moment began to fade into the grey haze of daylight filtered through the curtains, and he worked hard to keep a grasp on something... something real. "Mr. Peterson, isn't it?" the younger man asked warmly, "It's been, what? 10 years since you lived here." Peterson's mind began to settle now. "Yes, yes. 1991 I think or 92. I seem to have... my memory isn't what it once was. You're... " The younger man anticipated his lapse. "Jim. Jim Holden. I'm the super." It was then that Holden began to recognize the situation. The dirty clothes. Mr. Peterson's physical frailty. He made an almost imperceptible nod and motioned to the bench in the hallway. "open your heart, i'm coming home", Peterson thought to himself as he sat for the first time in hours. He hadn't actually walked inside this building in years-- he'd never mustered the will to do it. There was no going back now.

"Can I get you a glass of water?" Holden said, anticipating a positive answer. When Petersen didn't answer, he went off to get it anyway. The old man sat a bit awkwardly, looking down the hall, squinting into the dim light. He heard a faucet go on, then off, and realized his mouth was terribly dry. Water, water, everywhere.... Holden came back with the glass, and Peterson reached for the glass instinctively without realizing what he was doing. Holden heard the couple in 5E 'discussing' things again by throwing their plates against the wall, but he was apprehensive to leave Peterson there all alone, considering the vacant look on his face.

"Hey... I've got some stuff to do in the office... you wanna come keep me company?" Holden asked, immediately embarrassed; Petersen wasn't a child. But there was something childlike about him, something lost and vulnerable, that drew the younger man to him protectively. And Petersen stood up immediately, as if he was happy to have a reason to. He followed the younger man into the office, where stacks of paper vied for space with various books and assorted toys collected throughout the years; a Rubiks cube; a wooden puzzle, a yellow 8-ball. Peterson walked over to the desk, picked up the Rubiks cube, and began fiddling with it.

Jim settled in behind his desk, reached for the phone and dialed social services. Peterson was consumed by the little toy. "Yes, this is Jim Holden, I'm superintendent of the Holshire Building, 177 North Abingdon... yes. Well, a funny thing, one of our former tenants is here and he seems, well, he seems a little lost. He's... Mr Peterson? How old are you, sir." without looking up Peterson answered, "Eighty three in September." Holden smiled and repeated the information. "That's what I'm assuming... No, he's passive enough. Okay then. Okay. Thanks." Holden turned back to Peterson about to fill him in when he noticed the old man had solved the puzzle. There in his small hand was a perfect six colored cube. "Stupid thing," Peterson mumbled and dropped the cube onto the desk.
Holden sat there amazed. He'd solved it before, but he did it by peeling off the colors and replacing them in the correct sequence. Somewhat startled by his underestimation of him, Holden asked, "Why are you here Mr. Peterson?"

Peterson tried to hold tight, keeping the harangue chained behind his tongue, but the pressure was too much. And the time was right.

"This is it," he mumbled, reaching for a cigarette that wasn't there. "This isn't how it's supposed to be, but this is it. Where is everyone? Behind their tall walls and locked doors and clinking clanking gates. Eyes. Eyes. Eyes pressed to the windows from drawn blinds, blind to life but watching the shadows it casts on the streets." He wavered for a moment, sort of looked like he was going to go down, but then he straightened up and looked into Jim's eyes with a breathtaking clarity. "I lived here in June of 1992. I... I'm not sure where I live now, but if I could just sit quietly for a moment... I think I can remember. You. You should probably call Social Services." Jim smiled at the thought of what this man must have been in his prime, "I just took care of that. They're sending someone over. Do you remember me? When I used to work here in my twenties as a handyman?" Peterson looked at him ad shook his head slowly from side to side, "No. No I can't say that I do... but my memory isn't what it once was. It's slips away like the tide and then comes rushing in again unbidden at times. Should I?" And, like that, his clarity seemed to rush away again.

The words were coming in legion again, casting their pallor over Peterson's eyes as he tried desperately to make sense of them. As he wrestled with his thoughts, he reached his hand into his coat pocket to touch the last thing she ever wrote- that torn, yellowed page he had kept all these years, his own tangible torment to hold fast. He handed the page to Holden to read aloud, as if hearing her words would again somehow make her live.
".... to watch you sleep while you watch over me, i feel the most comforted... i fear that when i drift to sleep now with the passing of the rain, i will never see your eyes upon me again. know that my eyes will always rest upon you, with the dawn of light, with the silver of moon, with the rains that breathe its life. know that you gave me peace, if only i could give it back to you...."

Holden looked up to see Petersen looking out the window, eyes brimming, continuing to mouth the words where the younger man had left off reading. He didn't seem to notice the reading had stopped, and continued until he reached the end of the letter. Then he sighed. "This," he said, "is it." He patted his pockets, looking again for the nonexistent cigarette. Jim reached into his own pocket, pulled out a pack of Marlboro's and offered one to the old guy. "We aren't supposed to smoke these in here, but I don't think there's anyone in here to stop us or write us up." Peterson lit up. His eyes shone as he accepted Jim's light, "You tell 'em to 'go screw.' That's what you tell 'em. A man's got a right to pursue happiness and isn't that what these are? Happiness? Tell 'em 'go screw.'" "I'll do that," smiled Jim.

He watched Petersen fish a lighter from his pocket, light the cigarette, and take his first drag. He realized with a shock that he'd never enjoyed anything as much as the older man enjoyed that cig, at least, not since he was a kid. He'd loved ice cream that much, and baseball; but he couldn't think of anything he had enjoyed with such unfettered pleasure since then, not even making love to his wife, which had become something as commonplace as breakfast; enjoyable, but to be expected; nothing out of the ordinary. He watched Petersen take another drag, with such reverence, such focus. It gave him a sense of awe. He had trouble looking away.
That's the one thing Peterson kept all these years- his reverance. It wasn't so much that he kept reverence, it was more like his reverance kept him. It kept him clutching those yellowed words, kept him retracing the same steps for years and years from the fear that he'd lose even the most insignificant of memories. "The Tao of Alzheimers," thought Holden. Here was a man who had slowly and consistently lost his connection to the world... to the present and the past... and yet he had found a way to survive. Maybe he wasn't exactly thriving, but he continued to solve his own problems. It was amazing what Peterson had been able to compensate for using, apparently, his singular intellect. "Mr. Peterson, do you want to try to remember where you live now?" The old man nodded, sat down, and covered his eyes with his hand. He began a sort of littany of memories, quietly mumbling to himself. "1995, Hotel Astor... 1998, 4th Avenue Shelter for Men... 1999 the shelter came under new management, privatized..." finally he ended with a sigh..."I think I've been living down by the 7th street bridge. There's a community down there. We watch out for each other. I was going out to buy a pack of smokes when I stopped in for coffee." He looked up triumphantly.

Then his face crumpled. Holden saw that his eyes had rested on the letter. He picked it up and handed it to Petersen, who gently took it and tucked it back into his pocket. "She's in there, this is all... this is her, you know, all I have..." He passed his hand over his face as if to wipe away a veil of dust. "Not even a picture. Ah, well." They sat for a while in silence. Mr. Peterson thought about a past he could not remember. Mr. Holden Thought about a future he could not imagine. From time to time they regarded each other with a slight grin, a knowing grin, a recognition of themselves in each other.
Outside, both men could hear the raining passing, letting off its last fury- the storm was said and done.