Short Story/ Personal Narrative critics encouraged

imasmeasmecanbe

A little story i wrote the other day might be a metaphor for life and those here who believe in more -maybe not. whose to say

My Life as a Heretic


Looking back on it now I can see the funny side –it wasn’t funny at the time. It started out with a smokeless cigarette lost in the Eden of a foggy night. Ignorance is bliss or so people say -ignorant people who know nothing else. The same people say that life is hard and you can only reap what you sew. There are liars in this world that may try and force this belief on you but life? Life is easy and complete; life is nothing more than an assertment of “Randomicity”, within which the randomers are begotten by the strangers, begotten by the believers and the nonbelievers, begotten by the truth and the lies. The little white lies you would tell a child to see it smile, the mirth-making unbelievable lies that people take as gospel with the tip of the hat.
A smokeless cigarette hung out of the slack-jawed mouth of The Believer as he hit me with roll after roll of quarters, he bought my poetry and he sang me songs. He slept near enough that I could feel him breathe in the night –as faraway as ignorance would allow him another cliché of the modern world. As is looking back on bad times and finding humor in depression, beauty in disaster and love in loneliness. Time heals all apparently.
My story is one of no regrets and one which time will never heal. Timeless clichés the plot and liars and thieves the personages, one of those stories in which nothing happens but casual observations on life and the world in which we live. One of those stories that despite the nothingness and the nevers, the neithers and the nors it still captivates and intrigues. It is the all applicable story of life and love in the Foggy Dew, it is the never ending circle of lies that are forever circling, here, there and everywhere –floating and dreaming.
We slept side by side and the smoke filled my lungs as the rain filled the streets and the unuttered threats span round my head. I heard him stir in the night and I felt him shudder, making the air reverberate. The believer had fallen from the Grace of God and landed on the newspaper beside me. As my story is one of nothing his was one of everything, of riches and women, chalets and champagne, openings, closings and regenerations. He had had it all once, seen it too. He had the family, wife and two kids, he had the postcard villa in Spain, and he had everything money could buy –solid gold dancing girls, purple orange juice and a soft spot for space tourism. But alas his ignorance got the better of him. It is sometimes hard for two emotions to co-exist and so as the ignorance grew so too did the love diminish.
The now loveless Believer, believed not in his family. He traded his children’s names for another glass or two of brandy and perhaps a fine cigar. He forgot his wife’s face and how he had once felt for her. Too many parties had left him in a state of numbness from which he found it hard to escape. He was blinded to the problems in his life. He never noticed the sickness.
The wife of The Believer is now on a hospital bed, watching the life blood drip out of her day after day. The Believer drunk, unshaven and a mess, he is anywhere but by her side. So he returns to the money that has given him so much “belief”, before. He sends her love in the form of flowers and all the good health and happiness that a cup of “Random Sea Tea”, will bring. But it is all in vain, she died of a broken heart and was buried alone, the Believer wasn’t there when she died, and was alone and far from family when she was buried.
The Believer stirs again beside me, in his hands grasped tightly is a cigarette packet empty, a poem penned and a picture footed is all that I see. A picture of people, a gathering of some kind, it is wet and grey and the people mourn and comfort each other far off in the distance is a man, unlit cigarette ablaze, forever blaze. Above the picture the poem read



While I looked out across the bay
Not a thing did my eyes delight to see,
A lone red rose by her bare grave side
And the stump of an old Oak Tree

Dressed in black they mourned and wept
While beneath the earth my Angel slept
Raindrop tears flowing, golden sun glowing
I watch undisturbed, unknowing.


The Believer’s tale is unique to mine in that it is unique. My story is nothing and never but always relevant. His remains unhealed time and is his, nothing else. He picked his cast carefully, the set the stage and the lighting, all his.
I am the only key person in my story for it is exactly that –mine. These supporting characters they come and go. They stay for a while and then when I am quite finished with them they take their leave. They give little pieces of pictures, halves of wholes and the half-truths of belief. I am the man they flock to, the forgotten generations of loneliness searching for something new and unseen. I am the man that you see each and every day, face down towards a begging cup and hood about my head. I wear my coat of darkness to keep the elements from my back, I wear my hat and hood so you can’t see me staring back. I am the man that you avoid; you wait for me to walk ahead. You buy my worldly wears my poetry, my handmade ashtrays; you buy my pity but why? It is all done in the belief that I can get my life on track but my life is already there I am exactly where I want to be, lost in paradise and needing nothing. I am the lowest of the low, so your insults do nothing to me; your spare change gets squandered on the casual necessity of cans.
The believer is better than me though, he is one step up on the proverbial ladder, he knows you people from another life. He knew you when you were young and carefree with the world stretched out in front of you like a fantastic fairground. He knows your ways and your customs, your anecdotes and your witty remarks on the modern world. Yet you refuse to see him as well, just like you dip your hat unwilling to explain as you pass me you see his face, you recognize and refuse him.
The Believer came to me in a dream and told me not to fear, he told me his story again and again long after his body left my side. I keep one now, just in case he comes back –one cigarette forever flameless awaits him on his triumphant return to the life of a randomer.
And when we are reunited, we will live together in our Random City. We will await newcomers to our world and we will show them the how-tos and the whos, we will mould them into whatever we see fit. The kind and gentle will be the new Believer and the bitter and violent will take my place when I am gone. We will tell them our stories which they in turn will pass on to you. They will be the new peoples of the City, they will be awash in a mug of “Random Sea Tea”, they will be beautiful and they will be ours.
They will join our forces and as we drift off to sleep they will live once more. The Believer wishes you well, and asks you to wipe your feet on the mat and leave all past preconceptions behind, this is something new and never-experienced this is our Random City where the lovers are begotten by murderers, the flames begotten by blood and the lies begotten by belief.

skateing dragon

I have to say I really and trully enjoyed this piece. You are a great writer and although this story appeared to be about nothing, it was about everything. It seemed quite philisophoical and raised some great questions. The way you described everything with such detail and just the overall tone of the piece was wonderful.